Category: Life

I had a simple thought that has lead to a bit of philosophical pondering. I seek input. My thought was; in many sci-fi novels the tech exists to upload your memories, your brain pattern and basically your consciousness. If you had the tech implanted so you were always backed-up, when your body died would you still be alive?   My gut reaction, strangely is ‘no’. I am not religious, I believe our intelligence is what defines us and that is the sum of our biology and experience. Ergo, if that survives so should we. But knowing I was backed up, if someone threatened to shoot me I would still be afraid of dying. Therefore I must think ‘I’ die. All my reason points to the fact that I should say ‘yes’, I live on. We live in a construct of our own making, we ‘see’ the front of a book and our mind fills in the missing sides and gives it mass. We have no direct experience of the ‘real’ world, everything is an interpretation by our senses. Light hits the eye, is turned into electrical signals which the brain interprets by medical voodoo. We are not seeing the object, we are receiving an interpretation of electrical signals. I think therefore I am, (I think, therefore there must be something doing the thinking, call that something ‘I’ therefore ‘I’ am/ I exist)  but beyond that we cannot be certain. If, the outside world is mere construct surely we can reproduce it to keep the ‘I’? Of course there’s the famous Samuel Johnson kicking a rock “I refute it thus!”  By which he shows he perceives a rock to have matter, solidity and indeed existence then kicks it, supposedly proving it’s existence by the pain he receives.  This sophistry can be dismissed by what turns out to be a fake Buddha quote (bloody internet!) “The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.” Again it is just the interpretation of signal, not the actual ‘reality’. So the outside world has no independently verifiable reality, it is all just interpretation of electrical signals. These are the perfect conditions for our uploaded consciousness to continue. If my brain was to be transplanted into another body I would feel that ‘I’ survived. So it just a biological prejudice?   I am still me, even though I have two false teeth. There is the key word though, ‘false’. I think a programme that was running “Buck 1.1” would be a (I shudder to use the word) soulless machine. However perfect a copy it would not be me. So what is ‘me’?   I must be missing something. Sorry for the sloppy structure, I’m not clear on my arguments here, I’m just fumbling for an answer to a question I don’t fully understand. Any clarification/ answers would be appreciated. Bonus points for answering the other simple one; the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Demerits, the dunce’s cap and a lengthy spell on the […]

Bloody marvellous. I’ve been hale and hearty for as long as I can remember, I finally had my first ever simple flat marathon (the Chester marathon, today, Sunday)  to test myself. Not at the end of a triathlon, not a hill marathon, not an ultra, just  an honest to goodness 26.2 mile trot. Then on Thursday I was having a bit of hassle at work and thought I was feeling down with it, when I suddenly realised it felt like a cold. *PANIC!* Friday I felt drained, Saturday I got up at 11.00 and gave up and went back to bed for 20.00 hrs. Not that that did me any good, I got straight to sleep then the neighbour’s kids woke me having a squealing high pitched game of tag. I couldn’t get back to sleep then until gone 0130 and I had to be up for 0600 for the race. I got hopped up on painkillers, cold medicine and coffee and set off. I didn’t feel too bad to start with, the first few miles were suspiciously easy. Then I realised I’d set off behind the wrong pace setter. I was behind the 4 hour marathon guy, I should have been near the 3.15 one (for a 3.20- 3.25). I spent the next few miles catching up and passing the 3.45 pace setter and working my way through the field. I was doing alright until about 15- 18 miles then I had nothing. My feet had done that painful numbness thing I usually get on the bike (online advice suggests it’s putting pressure on a nerve in the foot) from early on so it was wasn’t much fun. Then before 18 miles I was just a wreck. It was only pride and stubbornness that got me to the end. If it had been a training run I would have quit. Anyway, even after dropping back through the field I finished in 3.47.59 about a minute a mile slower than I was expecting, but I was glad of the finish. Wendy, as ever, was saying I would have to skip the race. At least I didn’t do that. Btw, it bloody wasn’t flat. Not killer hills, but enough to know you were doing some. Some guy just tweeted “I thought you said it was flat? #ouch 19 minutes off PB :(  “ So it wasn’t just me being a mardarse. The most amazing thing about that race though was the crowd support. Even when we were running back through Chester (and the traffic that had been coned off to let us run was crawling past) people were beeping their horns and shouting encouragement. Not the “Get off my road you fat bastard!” encouragement I would have been shouting but genuinely good willed. Amazing. The winning time was 2.21, a new course record. Bastard. That means I have to aim for 2.15. I know it’s virtually impossible, but the hope is in the ‘virtually’. I might be able to do it […]

That bloody treadmill. It was way down South, cost me £85 just in diesel. All day driving there and back (well, from 0900 to 1730). I specifically ordered a low, short wheel base transit as that was all I would need given the dimensions of the treadmill and the load dimensions of the van. Would it fit in in it’s operating position (ie at it most stable and less likely to break)? Would it buggery! The van was an inch to small. So I had to improvise, adapt and overcome. This meant I had to lay it down, leaving the handles on the floor. So then I had to fashion a strap to hold the handles off the floor so they wouldn’t snap off. Then I got it home and had to try and manhandle 100kg of unwieldy treadmill off the van on my own. Wendy was trying to help but she is a total feeb. I’d got it half manoeuvred through the front door when I realised I would tear up the floor before I could get it past the second door. Plan B, partially strip it, whilst wedged in the front door. Eventually we got it into the kitchen and I set about re-assembling it. All in all it must have took an hour and half just to get it into the house. There is no way it is going to pop in the understairs cupboard. It is ginormous. Seriously huge. In it’s discreet, folded up, small mode it looks like the urban pacification robots off Robocop. And it won’t go upstairs so I’ve had to leave it in the kitchen. Wendy is so less than pleased. I can’t blame her. It’s just monstrous. Completely incongruous. I took some snaps, look; That’s how big it is, head height, wider than I am, and as deep. Oh dear oh dear. What a farce. A folly.   But it does the full 20kph  (4 minute 50 second /mile) the incline works and what the hell, it’s here now. Also it’s quite noisy when you are charging away at it. I gave it a few minutes at 6 minute/ mile pace just to try it (and me) out. I was doing alright, I could have done a mile at that pace.  I’ll have to leave it this week as I have the Chester marathon on Sunday, but after that I am going to set a baseline at 6m/m then work up from there. Hopefully but up to marathon distance within 6 months, then, if I’ve not died, start throwing in the 5 m/m’s. Already got the conversion chart (from it’s measured speed in Kph)   While I was transferring the pictures from my ‘phone I came across these I took on that 50 miler; apparently they flooded a village to make the reservoir we were running around. Due to the low water level you could see bits of remains. (And it was just plain picturesque. Here’s the hills reflected in the […]

First off, better update you on the Wendy front. She went back to the hospital on Thursday as an outpatient, the whisked her straight in and scanned the crap out of her. They couldn’t find it at first but kept looking until they confirmed it was a shitload of tiny gall stones, about 1mm each. Apparently this is the dangerous time, when they are still small enough to move and crash vital organs. If they are large they can’t go anywhere. If they are large they must have started small? Whatever. The doctor said they were dangerous now, which is what the pain was; small stones moving and blocking the bile ducts. Whatever they are, or do. The point being, they have to remove the gall bladder. Wendy hates hospitals, but she is really relieved it is something as straight forward and relatively minor as this. Not that the pain is to be dismissed. Believe it or not Wendy is quite a tough little cookie when it comes down to it. I’ve seen her with a broken arm, with metal rods drilled through her bones, dropped on her head, all sorts of really bad, painful things and she’s never made too much of a fuss. She had an attack on holiday and she was actually crying with the pain. That’s pretty damn bad. By a strange coincidence, our next-door-but-one neighbour had her gall bladder out last week. It’s obviously catching. She reckons they can do keyhole surgery and have you out a few hours later. Got to say it has been pretty damn impressive from the NHS so far. That 111 line gave good advice and called an ambulance. The paramedics did loads of tests and reassured us it wasn’t a heart attack. The A&E did a battery of tests and ruled out all the fatal stuff then sent an appointment for a scan. The scan doctor found the tiny gall stones and told her there and then, now we are just waiting for the operation. Probably the finest thing we have to be proud of, our NHS. Damn Cameron for selling it to his rich mates.   I did that 50 mile ‘run’ last week. Oh dear, oh dear. That was all wrong. What I’d read on the internet about Ultra running (any distance over marathon) was that you ran 20 walked 5 minutes. I was doing it run 25 walk 5. No-one in the race was stopping! Also to walk all hills, first lap no-one did that. So my training was to cock. And it said it was a flat race so I did my training (two runs) down by the canal, perfectly flat. It was up and down hills! I did 35 miles in 6.30, had a 15 minute pit stop to eat and drink before the final lap (I saw someone else quitting while I was there) then set off again. It took me 3.20 to do the last 15 miles! 10 hours 6 minutes in […]

We’ve had quite the eventful couple of weeks. Before I start let me say Wendy is OK. We didn’t know that at the time, though. It must have been Sunday night, I was playing on the internet, Wendy was watching crap on the telly, when she called me. She was suddenly in a world of pain, right in the centre of her chest around the solar plexus (the bit where your ribs meet at the bottom) . She was doubled up with it. She said she couldn’t breathe and if felt like she had a crushing weight on her chest. I thought it was a heart attack. I shit. I gave her some aspirin and looked up the new NHS advice number, then rang that 111 thing. They got talking to her and immediately sent out an ambulance. The ambulance people said it wasn’t her heart (phew!) but had to take her in anyway. I followed in the car. They gave her some serious kick-arse pain killers which settled her after a while. Then the doctor came in and prodded her. She was still very tender around the solar plexus. Apparently this is also the site of the the pancreas. Gail, Wendy’s top-nurse sister,  had warned her of that when we were drinking; that pancreatitis –damage from drinking-  was fatal. If you’ve got it you’re a gonner. So we have been lead to believe, might not be true. Anyway, we were again thinking she was on her way out. They ran a battery of blood tests and it wasn’t her pancreas. We were quite giddy then. We’d both thought she was going to die. Gawd bless the NHS! They sent her away but said she’d have to come back as an outpatient for an endoscopy and scan. By coincidence our nextdoor-but-one neighbour asked Wendy what the ambulance was for, and she has been having the same. Agonizing pain starting in the centre of the chest, in the area of the pancreas as we now think of it, then spreading right around to her back. It’s her gall bladder. She was just about to have it removed. Wendy had another attack four days later, then an even worse one while we were on holiday last week. We rang the doctors the next day to see if they’d got the notification from the hospital and booked and appointment, they said it was unclear who was supposed to be booking the outpatient visits. We were a bit miffed, but what are you going to do? Wendy was going to go to the doctors on Monday and try to get them to sort out an appointment. We were thinking it was going to be weeks of ballache. We got back off holiday today and the hospital have sent her an appointment for a scan for next Thursday! Gawd bless the NHS and all who sail on her! If it it gall stones, which apparently block bile ducts or some other voodoo, they will show […]