Music post

Today is Sunday and the host is not braining or doing any active thinking but I thought you would enjoy good music this weekend. So here is something to listen to while staying at home.

my week in cycling

Because I don’t want to brain today, i thought i could just tell you about my rides. I enjoy doing enduro rides (rides longer than 100km. It is time that I don’t have some times).

I ride 5 days a week with two days for rest, that is Friday and Sunday. Those two days I walk or run. I have not always been this active. I have always had a reason to not run or cycle until Covid and then the government put restrictions on movement into and out of Nairobi, encouraged employers to allow their employees to work from home. It then occurred to me I could actually be active & boy, I have tried.

This week I have been on the bike for a total of 16hrs 42 minutes, covered a distance of 407.2 km (253 miles for Muricans) and climbed a total of 5,065m (16,617,45 ft again for bloody Muricans). Why do they insist on using feet, miles and pounds?

The longest ride was 182km and the shortest 37km. I am trying to train to run 5km. Most of my runs & walks this week were a few metres short of 5km. Hopefully I will get to run 5km in under 30 minutes.

Well, this picture speaks for itself.

Today’s long ride.

I changed the bike. Will be looking for drop down bars soon.

We learn

In a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

The Plague by Albert Camus

This was a good read. And it fits the times we live in. A small happy town has been struck by the plague. First, the authorities are not sure of what to make of it. When the deaths start piling up, measures are put in place to address the pandemic. And it is in the lives of those who find themselves within the city walls that we find we are in sympathy with their situation and wish that it goes away.

Tarrou who has been busy helping the doctor in his work succumbs at the very last moment. And it is such a sad take. The priest dies too. And Othon’s little boy. The old man who’s battling asthma survives the pandemic & such is life. Unpredictable. Cruel sometimes. But also provides room for greatness.

A book I would recommend to you all.

Government in crisis: reblog

By Adam Przeworski – Democratic governments have implemented measures similar to those by autocracies in response to the pandemic. Are these value trade-offs temporary experiments, or will they be here to stay?

COVID-19 reveals the fragility of our values

Give me liberty or give me death appears, at these times that we live in to be an aberration. Billions have chosen life.

Hunger or Covid19? That’s the million dollar question for the daily wage earners.

Racist police violence reconsidered

If you haven’t seen this article, I think it would make for very good reading on the issue of police and race. And even challenge some of the positions people hold.

And while you are here, this Guardian article about the hypocrisy of Europe in the BLM issue and particularly George Floyd is quite good.

 

Bike day out

Your host enjoying himself

for the love of bicycles

I found this quite interesting

On vice and virtue

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.

Albert Camus, The Plague

On suffering and god

[….]since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for god if we refuse to believe in him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where he sits in silence.

Albert Camus, The Plague

Is violence counterproductive?

The last 10 or is it 12 days have seen violent protests in most cities in the US of A and in some other cities around the world following the police killing or is it murder of George Floyd and there have been arguments about whether the violence is really useful?

I have seen a post that calls the violence immoral and ineffective. Immoral because the destruction of property of bystanders and ineffective because it will not earn the demonstrators any sympathies.

Should the demonstrators adopt only non violent means to achieve their ends?

I want to suggest here a unpopular opinion. That violence seems sometimes to work & its only downside is that it costs lives & property. Independence was warn in many places because of sustained violence against the colonial authorities. America has mastered the art of spreading violence all round ( cloaked in spreading democracy).

What do you think? I am not asking you to support violence but only to comment looking at history if there are situations where violence has led to progress? How can the same be achieved without resorting to violence?