Day: January 27, 2010

Erging

I went over to Stephen’s house to erg tonight. The past two Wednesdays I’ve gone to Doug’s, but he was busy tonight. Stephen’s house is a bit of a haul, but gas is cheaper than buying my own erg. Plus it’s fun to hang out with different paddlers and talk about stuff.

We did 5 minute intervals, alternating. Stephen hasn’t calibrated his erg, so I think the speed it was showing was a bit fast. I would do a set with the resistance set to about 5-7, then he’d do a set at about the speed with the resistance set to 7-9. My heart rate was in the middle 150s. After we both did 6 sets, Stephen had had enough, because he’d done a hard workout yesterday, so I did a steady 15 minute piece at about the same speed. The last couple of minutes of my piece, I sped up and raised my heart rate into the 160s.

It was a great work-out. Plus I got to inflict my CD of “Kilted Generation” on Stephen.

Facebook

The Facebook “Suggestions” box, which normally shows me people who know somebody I know or groups that a Facebook “friend” or two has joined, is currently suggesting “We can find 1,000,000 people who DO believe in Evolution before June”. There are only two problems with that:

1) Evolution is a fact. It doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not, it just is. The only people who are swayed by arguments about whether something is true or not by how many other people “believe” in it or not are idiots. The world didn’t suddenly start orbiting around the sun because a majority of people “believed” Galileo and Copernicus, it was always that way. And it didn’t stop doing so when Galileo renounced his theory under torture. And anthrogenic global climate change isn’t going to go away if you stick your fingers in your ears and go “LA LA LA I DON’T BELIEVE IN YOU”. (I’d say that idiots who can be swayed by majority belief arguments aren’t worth arguing with, but unfortunately they hold a lot of political power in this country.)

1a) As a scientific fact, I don’t think “evolution” deserves that magisterial capital letter.

2) The fan group, rather than presenting facts or arguments about evolution, is actually more about making fun of people who believe in one or more Gods, especially Christians. So maybe they should state that as their purpose, instead of making it about evolution, a scientific fact that many theists, even Christians, understand is true.