Anyhow, so far, so good.

One mile on the track, jogging the front straight every time around. Low thirties, I think, but it felt quite a bit colder with the wind, but I survived. It will be interesting to see how my calves feel come the morning.

And assuming the scale is to be believed, I’ve lost six pounds in eleven days. So that’s a plus, I suppose.

It hasn’t really helped that there is snow on the ground, fairly deep in places, and it has been fairly cold. It’s also been less than optimal that my parents want to go walking with me. In order to get any sort of an actual workout, I obviously have to maintain a certain pace, and they simply aren’t up to the task of walking fast enough for me to feel like I’m working out while we walk together. They only came along on two days this week, so that helped, and I managed to lengthen my route by “slaloming” while they kept to a straighter path, and on Friday, Mom wanted to deposit some checks in the bank, so I told them I was going to keep walking on a longer route while they went inside to handle that (there’s no walk-up ATM at this particular branch).

Next week, beginning Monday, is supposed to be the beginning of the actual running, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to make that happen. There is still a lot of snow on the ground, including on the track near the house that I had planned to run on to a) let me know precisely where I’m supposed to transition between walking and running on each lap and b) make things easier on my knees. And more snow may be coming through on Sunday, which makes it even more complicated.

Anyway, I may have to push back the running by a week, and hope that I get better weather so the snow will go away, at least enough to see the track edges. We’ll see.

Thus, beginning next Monday (February 6, 2012), I will be posting, perhaps daily, about my food, exercises and such. My overall goal is to enter a Tough Mudder or Spartan Race (both?) in 2013, and that will require some effort and some improved health, because right now either of them would probably kill me.

Step One: I’m establishing a baseline in a fitness journal, living my (hopefully) last week as a profoundly sedentary lump.

Step Two: On 2/6/12 I will go for a walk around my neighborhood, including the nearby high school, and will repeat that every day of next week. Partly to just get moving, and partly to establish that the school’s track is available to the public in the afternoon, so I can begin

Step Three: I’ll be following a training program to be able to Run a Mile in 4 weeks (modified by me to take 5 weeks–I’ll repeat week one, with the first pass at week one being a lower intensity than I think is really intended, since I’ve been so lazy for so long).

Step Four: Then I’ll do the Run Two Miles in 4 Weeks program. And between the two, I should be able to run two miles at a stretch before my next birthday.

Assuming I can achieve that, I’ll then look at working up to running a 5K before the summer is out. Only another 3.1 miles, so it should be doable. I’ll post info about changes to my eating habits, but that will come more slowly, so probably fewer and further between on that sort of posting.

So explain to me why it is we would take pains to treat Osama bin Dead’s flailing corpse in accordance with traditional Muslim practices? Why do we want to be certain he’s buried within 24 hours in accordance with the Koran or hadiths or whatever, if he isn’t really a Muslim? Do his actions and beliefs pervert Islam, or adhere to it? Because, if he’s been perverting his supposed religion, it seems to me we’re under no obligation to respect any damn thing he might have wanted or expected.

Someone help me out with that one, will ya?

Tell ya what, jock-you stick to running around on Sundays trying not to get hit, and don’t worry your pretty little head about things like physics and math and chemistry. Let the grown-ups deal with all that, m’kay? All you need to know about 9-11 is “can” and “did”.

I understand he took a headshot right through the forehead, so he saw what was coming–the best troops in the world gunning for his sorry, cowardly ass.

Irritating.

That being said, though, I don’t have (much of) a problem with unions in private industry. There have certainly been abuses by business owners in the past, and unions of the late 19th and early 20th century played a significant role in correcting those abuses. Every worker today, union or not, owes those early unions for the various work rules we largely take for granted now.

Beyond that, when a company and it’s workers have a dispute, I have alternatives. If Safeway’s cashiers go on strike, I can get food at Target or Walmart or Albertson’s. If United has a pilot walkout, I can be rebooked on Delta or American or (shudder) Southwest. I always have another source for whatever a given company provides, so I can work around a strike (or lockout) if I have to. Granted, it might cost me a little more, or come without all of the particular services I like-there’s a reason I choose a particular grocery store, airline or whatever over it’s competitors-but I still have options.

With a public union, this is not so. If government employees go on strike, that means the potholes don’t get filled, or the kids don’t get taught, or the driver’s licenses aren’t issued, marriages go unrecorded, fires aren’t put out, criminals don’t get caught. Government services are monopolies-you can’t just godown the block to Ed’s Discount Fire Protection; you get the service from your local employees, or you don’t get it at all.

Beyond that, the fiscal incentives are different for governments and their employees than those faced in industry. A CEO has an incentive to resolve a strike as quickly as possible for the same reason I don’t mind private unions quite as much-customer choice. If we can’t go to our regular provider of some product or service, we can get something similar somewhere else. Companies run a risk that an extended strike leads customers to decide they like the competition better, and may just decide to stay with the competition even after the contract is resolved.

Of course, the unions know this, too, which is why they go on strike in the first place. It’s also true, though, that the unions know there are limits to what a company can do in terms of increasing their own costs via massive giveaways in their contracts. This acts as a brake (however weak) on unions asking for the moon in negotiations. If this company runs up wages so high that they can’t compete on price with that company over there, it will go out of business, and then the employees are all making nothing at all.

With a public union, this isn’t true. The executives-especially Democrats, though historically Republicans much of the time, too-figure, “Well, we have to get them back to work, so let’s give the union what it wants, and we can just raise taxes to cover the costs.” Governments can decree how much you will pay them, whether you like it or not, and you have limited options for applying market pressure to them to hold costs down. There are many states these days which require a vote to approve new taxes, so that’s something, but you’re never told it’s because of union wages exerting an upward pressure on government costs.

The union model for public sector employees is simply unsustainable. Thee is no more economy to tax. Government budgets must shrink, or this nation will go bankrupt. The Tea Parties have put some spine into some Republicans, finally, and we might just have a shot at actually containing costs and-dare I dream-reducing the size of governments at all levels.

The answer? Yes, there is universal truth. There must be. I know relativists claim otherwise, but their claims are self defeating. For the relativists to be right, it must always be true that nothing is always true. Thus, there is universal truth. Any two people may not agree on what things are universally true, but there is something.