April is the cruelest month...

This afternoon, as I cycled into a strong headwind and monsoon like rain, battling my way for a swim at Cardiff International Pool, I couldn't help but think of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

I must say, this April has been particularly cruel with its rain and cold; especially when you place that against the recent drought headlines. On the face of it, it seems farcical. But, so the BBC reliably informs me, our sopping wet April this year is a lonely peak amongst the troughs of below average rainfall that we've experienced over the last 2 years.

The P in our pools...

I mentioned to a few colleagues today that I was going swimming this evening after work. I can't quite remember how (it was probably my doing) but the conversation quickly turned to peeing in public pools. As I swam tonight I contemplated the amount of urine in the water I was now swimming through. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

Up and down my lane I swam, thinking that only kids would do such a thing. I couldn't see anyone near me younger than 20 and surely no adult would urinate in Cardiff International Pool, would they? Furthermore, if they did, don't they use a chemical that turns the water red when it comes into contact with urine, thereby pinpointing and shaming the perpetrator?

When I got home from the pool, I decided to see what information I could find online. In a US study, when questioned, one in five adult Americans admitted to peeing in public pools. I dread to think what the percentage is for kids. There's even a Peeing in Swimming Pools Facebook Page. As for chemicals that dye the water red or dark blue when urine is detected; it's an urban myth - no such chemical exists.

I then read a US website about pool hygiene which started by asking people not to swim if they have diarrhea. At that point I stopped reading. I can't help thinking that front crawl may not be such an attractive stroke...

Immortality...

Swimming in a virtually empty 50m pool is the perfect opportunity to ponder the big moral questions that face us, such as the meaning of life or is Madonna better than Kylie. Today it was Easter that captured my attention as I thrashed, gulped and gasped up and down my lane.

As the different Christian churches and denominations struggle to make their story more relevant to the communities they claim to serve, I think it's time they sat back and reassessed the situation. Our engagement with their message may not be as pessimistic as they sometimes assume. As an increasingly secular society, we may not actually be that dismissive of and far removed from the central Christian story.

The Gospels would have us believe that Jesus, the son of God, died for our sins and was resurrected today, Easter Sunday - the most important date in the Christian Calendar. In doing so, Jesus proves his immortality to us and, with his aspirational message of "Be nice to others and you'll go heaven", offers us this immortal option too, come the day of judgement.

I'd argue that we have all of us, believers and non-believers, taken that message on board in some shape or form. Immortality has captured our imaginations for thousands of years and has been a tantalising quest for many down the ages. It seems to be a universal obsession. Along with Christianity, many of the other major religions have dangled this carrot as a reward for signing up and living by their rules. Literature too is littered with stories of immortality: Dr Faustus, Dorian Grey, Peter Pan and Orlando, to name but a few.

Pictured on the right is me aged 34 - about the same age as Jesus when he died, give or take a couple of years. No thinning hair, no grey, no wrinkles (other than a few laughter lines) and able to eat any crap in any quantity I fancied. How time changes us! At that age, would I have welcomed being frozen in time as I then was? Probably not. Ask me the same question today and, while it's not quite the simple and straightforward answer it was 15 years ago, I think the response still has to be a no.

While I have no desire to live for ever, I wouldn't mind prolonging my health, maintaining my looks and hanging on to my faculties for a little bit longer. Who wouldn't? At 49, I don't think I'm doing too badly; I try to stay reasonably fit, I try to eat a healthy diet and I try to stay active both physically and mentally. Ultimately though, as you well know, I'm fighting a losing battle; we all are.

As sure as (Easter) eggs is eggs, we're all gonna die. In the meantime, should we need a helping hand in squeezing the brakes and resisting the ravages of time, there are many options open to us, in addition to simply trying to remain active and eating a good diet: anti-aging creams, hair restorers, botox, cosmetic surgery and cryonics are, depending on your budget, worthy of consideration. However, no matter what advancements they make in science, cosmetics and medicine, deterioration and expiry are, ultimately, an inevitability.

While many of us no longer believe in the Gospels' every word, I think that the desire for immortality is part of our culture - even if that only stretches to a momentary and cosmetic defying of mortality and a slight postponement of the inevitable. And, for you believers out there: in the unlikely event that the Gospels got it right and immortality is really an option; well, even you are going to have to age and die prior to your moment of rapture.

Time...

Tonight's run was glorious; the weather was warm and the sun was shining. Tonight's run was glorious for other reasons in addition to the weather. Tonight's run was glorious because today I finished work, not just for the weekend but also for a whole of next week.

It really is the most beautiful feeling in the world, poised at the top of a hard won slope that means I won't need to climb again until April 2nd when I return to work. However, as with all holidays, time will rush by at a breakneck pace; faster than the neutrinos in the Hadron Collider.

What is it about our perception of time? Next week will race by for me, whereas for you it may drag. If only we could control it and crank it up or wind it down as we liked. Do I really want such control? Mmmmm... That phrase favoured by my mother warning me about wishing my life away is bouncing around my head.

Theories of General Relativity aside and as far as I can measure, I know that we mark time in even units of a set period. However my experience screams the contrary; time bends with age, enjoyment and hard work. Why is it that this next week will fly by disobeying any logic? I'm not asking for it to crawl. No. All I'm asking is that time plays fair and passes at its usual work week moderate plod.

Today's run at 18:13
Distance	4.01 km	Time	21:12
Pace	5:17 min/km	Cadence	80 spm
Comments: Sunny.

Slapheads...

I'm not bald but my hair is thinning and receding a little. I don't much care about it; I'm a happy slaphead. For men it's a natural part of the aging process. The only attention I pay is to ensure that it looks neat. As such, I have it buzzed short. I don't think a comb over would suit me, anyway.

I read on the BBC that scientists may have found a clue as to why men lose their hair when they get older. They've found that levels of a protein called prostaglandin D synthase are elevated in the cells of hair follicles located in bald patches on the scalp, but not in hairy areas.

Scientists are not sure if inhibiting this protein will stop the baldness or reverse it. I can't help thinking that there are far more important conditions worthy of investigation than pandering to the vanity of a few bald men.

If, like me, you don't really care whether they cure baldness today, tomorrow or never, you might want to take a look at the Slaphead Society.

Today's run at 18:06
Distance	4.01 km	Time	21:26
Pace	5:21 min/km	Cadence	80 spm
Comments: Clear.

Zebra stripes may have evolved to keep biting flies at bay...

The headline on this BBC article reads, "Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay". It's an interesting piece about a study undertaken by Hungarian and Swedish scientists who measured the attractiveness of certain colours and patterns to biting flies. They began by painting boards different colours, then they left those boards coated with a sticky substance in a field. After a set time they counted the flies stuck to each board.

The black and brown boards turned out to be the ones with the most flies stuck to them, with the lighter boards attracting the fewest flies. What came as a surprise was that the boards with zebra stripes attracted even fewer flies than the white boards. This they deduced was because of the light wave formation reflected by the different boards and detected by the flies. They repeated the experiment but with painted horse models covered in a sticky substance with much the same result.

However, it seems that the scientists did not say, "Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay". No. And in the BBC report Prof Matthew Cobb, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester, pointed out that the experiment did not exclude the other hypotheses about the origin of zebras' stripes". He went on to say, "Above all, for this explanation to be true, the authors would have to show that tabanid fly bites are a major selection pressure on zebras, but not on horses and donkeys found elsewhere in the world... none of which are stripy,"

And despite all this the BBC went with the headline, "Zebra stripes evolved to keep biting flies at bay". Who was it who once asked, "Why let the facts stand in the way of a good story?"

Ain't no shrimp...

This is the stuff of nightmares; a crustacean monster, some as long as 34cm, has been discovered lurking 7km down in the deep off the coast of New Zealand. When I saw the news item on these gargantuan amphipods, I froze.

You have to admit that this king size member of the amphipod family is a repulsive brute. Even at their smallest, they're not the world's cuddliest of creatures. At over a foot long, cuddly couldn't be further from my mind.

You'd need a couple of jars of Thousand Island Dressing to make a prawn cocktail out of these daddies.

Today's run at 18:30
Distance	4.01 km	Time	21:40
Pace	5:24 min/km	Cadence	81 spm
Comments: Cold. Clear.

Memory...

My memory is now so bad that I've reached the stage where, not only can I not remember why I walked into a room but, by the time I get to the end of my question asking myself why, I've forgotten the beginning of the question. I fear that one night my heart will forget to beat; yes, one day even homeostasis (look it up) might fail me as my memory already has done.

It didn't used to be that way. Time was when I never wrote anything down; my memory was like chiseling into granite. I never needed a diary nor that 1980s fashion must have, a Filofax. Dental appointments, birthdays and holidays were burned into my brain. Those days are sadly gone.

My dad had Alzheimer's and they say it has a genetic aspect so I guess I'm at increased risk. Imagine my delight then to score 90% (I'm counting that as a good score) in this online memory experiment in the Guardian.

Go on, you know you want to... but you only have until Tuesday Jan 31st 2012.

Today's run at 17:59
Distance	4.03 km	Time	21:18
Pace	5:17 min/km	Cadence	82 spm
Comments: Cold. Cloudy.

I'd be dead if it wasn't for this man...

Frederick Banting was a Canadian who, in 1921, was one of the main discoverers of insulin, which was achieved by keeping a diabetic dog alive using daily injections of canine pancreas extract. For this and his subsequent research, he won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1923 and was knighted in 1934. His discovery has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people ever since, me included.

I have been diabetic since I was 15. I didn't get it because of bad diet or little exercise; I got it because my body started destroying the cells that produce insulin. This is sometimes know as Type 1 diabetes and it's an auto-immune disease.

Diabetes is one of those conditions that everyone thinks they know about but in most cases, they do not. The myths about diabetes are many:

You get diabetes because of a bad diet
You get diabetes because of lack of exercise
You can't eat sweet things if you're a diabetic
You can't drive if you're diabetic
You get ill all the time if you're diabetic
You have to eat special diabetic food if you're diabetic
Diabetes is contagious

Incidences of diabetes are increasing worldwide and especially so in the west. The cost of treating diabetics and keeping us healthy is huge but that bill becomes even bigger if we are left untreated and lose our health.

There's a rather good article on the BBC's website today that outlines the initial research on diabetes undertaken by Frederick Banting.

It's depressing...

The third Monday in January has become known as Blue Monday; the weather is cold and damp and the days are short, you wake to the arrival of a bloated credit card bill and the growing realisation that all your New Year's resolutions have failed. Science proves it to be the most depressing date in the calendar.

But does it and is it?

In reality Blue Monday started as a press campaign by Sky Travel in an effort to get people to shake their (so called) winter blues by booking a holiday. The article was largely pre-written before being circulated to the scientific community for endorsement. Cash was offered as a sweetener, should the thrill of seeing your name in print as the author of this claim not be enough.

Cardiff University's Dr Cliff Arnall, a psychologist, stepped up to the mark and into the limelight, and with a scientific equation to prove it.

Following the initial thrill of New Year's celebrations and changing over a new leaf, reality starts to sink in. The realization coincides with the dark clouds rolling in and the obligation to pay off Christmas credit card bills.

Cardiff University were quick to distance themselves from Dr Cliff and his psuedoscience. Dr Cliff has since gone on to write an equation to calculate the happiest day of the year (sponsored by Walls Icecream).

That was in 2005 and since then the press have run this story every year, despite some public campaigns (notably by Dr Ben Goldacre in his Bad Science column) to discredit this as meaningless babble. Google it today and you'll see from the results it's still a story that the media are prepared to flog to death. Surprisingly, it has also been used by organisations concerned with mental health to bring a focus to depression.

What's really depressing about all this is that depression is a real and very serious condition. It is not a slight feeling of vague sadness to be hijacked by the media and paraded through the press like a bank holiday; something to mark in your calendar for next year.

A land fit for heroes...

Alan Turing was a British mathematician who is widely held to be the father of computer science. He developed the concept of a Turing Machine, an early theoretical computer, in the 1930s. The Turing Machine is considered the basis for the modern theory of computation.

In the war years he worked as a cryptanylist for the Government at their code breaking centre at Bletchley Park. Here he led a team responsible for breaking the Enigma Code. It's been estimated that the intelligence gathered by this deciphering work brought the war to a close two years before it otherwise would have, thus saving millions of lives.

After the war he continued his work with computers, creating one of the early designs for a stored programme computer and during the late 1940s and early 1950s at Manchester University, his work founded the basis for the field of artificial intelligence.

In 1952 he was prosecuted for homosexual offences. His security clearance was withdrawn and he was chemically castrated.

He committed suicide in 1954.

In 2009 Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British Government for the way in which Alan Turing was treated.

Today's run at 17:23
Distance	4.02 km	Time	21:24
Pace	5:20 min/km	Cadence	81 spm

Don't go there love...

I've never believed in astrology. Its wild claims are nothing more than utter nonsense. There is no such thing as fate and no-one can predict a person's future from planetary configurations at the time of their birth.

Following his recent appearances on BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing, astrologer, Russell Grant is at pains to resurrect his dormant career. In an interview for the Radio Times, he claims that he foresaw Princess Diana's death 10 days before the accident that killed her in 1997. Indeed, he claims to have warned her of it, "Don’t go there, love. Just don’t go anywhere with him. You’ve got to knock this on the head." Leaving no cliché escape alive he goes on to say, "I basically said their relationship was so fated it was going to end in tears."

There are believers in astrology that, when under attack, wheel out the psuedo-science. A favorite explanation being their claim that the gravitational pull of the planets and stars, given their mass and particular alignment at the precise moment of our birth, will act as an influence on us. However, what they fail to understand is, gravitational pull is not merely dependent on the mass of an object but also on its proximity. Given the distances involved, the obstetrician and midwife are far more likely to have had an influence on us.

Yes, but why...?

Tonight's run of 4.02 km in 21'54" at a pace of 5'27" was a wonderfully moist affair in the Cardiff drizzle. While I ran I thought about last night's post, in which I talked about why I blog. This was in answer to Navid's questions about The Scarperer. I said that it was my way of recording my thoughts, possibly for future reading. It all sounds very noble and very worthy, doesn't it?

There's a line of thinking that states all behaviour is driven by our need to be satisfied at some basic level; the desire for food, shelter, sex, self worth. Even seemingly altruistic behaviour can be explained using this thinking. For example, do people undertake charitable work in order to help people who are less fortunate or to increase their own self worth?

Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The Selfish Gene, where he stated that animal (and human) behaviour could be explained by its effect in enabling that organism to pass on its genes (or, at times, in enabling a relative of that organism to pass on its genes). It's a pretty good model for answering those questions about why certain animals sacrifice themselves for the good of their neighbours. The behaviours of ants and bees are good example of seemingly altruistic behaviours. It seems that self sacrifice can be advantagous in passing on (some of) your genes.

In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins coins the term meme as an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. He describes the replication of memes in the development of human culture. This brings us neatly full circle with memes being replicated throughout the blogging world. They are the double helix of the blogosphere; they enable blogs to live and develop as they spread throughout the interweb.

So why do I blog? I guess there are a number of benefits I get from blogging but at a basic level it satisfies that need in me for self worth. Selfish, I know but aren't we all...?

Shake ya booty...!

I watched Origins of Us tonight on BBC iPlayer. It's a new 3 part series looking at human evolution with Dr Alice Roberts. Last night's episode looked at our bones and what they tell us about our development from a tree climbing primate to a Savannah dwelling hominid. From the rotation and dorsiflexion of the ankle we can now pinpoint when we ceased to climb trees. From the adjusted angle of the foramen magnum in the base of the skull we can pinpoint when we became bipedal and from the development of a waist and a cranium ridge we can pinpoint when we started to run.

I've written here before that we are born to run and, indeed, this theory was supported in this programme; it seems that our ability to run long distances in pursuit of our quarry was key to our survival as a species. And what is it about having a waist and a cranial ridge that allows us to run? Well, the waist allows us to rotate our bottom half to counter balance the rotation of our top half. This is crucial if you need to run and not fall over within the first few steps. The ridge on the back of our skull allows the attachment of a ligament that stops our head being thrown forward with every footfall; again, essential if you want to run and you need to see where you're going.

I demonstrated my pitiful dorsiflexion, my vertically adjusted foramen magnum and I put my pronounced waist and cranium ridge to the test again tonight with a quick scamper around the Bay. What Dr Alice Roberts won't be able to find in any of the skeletal remains that she unearths is the sense of smug pleasure and smiley joy brought about by even the tiniest of jogs. And if that isn't enough to entice you out, what about the promise of an aesthetically formed gluteus maximus (beautifully sculpted butt to you and me) to boost that smug feeling even more?

Shake ya booty...!

Coming to my senses...

So, there I am, swimming up and down my lane at the pool today and suddenly, I become aware that I have passed a female swimmer in the lane next to mine. I am jolted out of my zoned out state of mind and into reality by it. How did I know that the swimmer was female? No, this is not one of those lateral thinking puzzles but, undoubtedly, it has the potential to form part of one. The reason I knew that it was a female swimmer that passed me is because I could taste her; I could taste her perfume in the water.

Our senses of taste and smell (apparently they're related) change over time and sometimes as a symptom of certain medical conditions. For those of you wishing to dig deeper, this article on disorders of taste and smell seems to cover it quite comprehensively. For example, as we enter old age we can sometimes lose the keenness of our taste and smell; it's why old people often lose their appetite. At the other end of the spectrum, it seems that we are pre-programmed as children to like sweet tasting, safe, foods such as ripe berries rather than the potentially dangerous, bitter tasting foods such as poisonous berries. Most of us go on to develop an adult palette as we move out of childhood; we develop a liking for more bitter tasting foods and drinks.

I've noticed that my sense of smell has changed quite recently. I've developed a heightened sensitivity to perfumes, aftershaves and deodorants. It's what alerted me instantly to the female swimmer in the lane next to me. Not only has my sense of smell (and taste) become more sensitive, my perception of the sweet smells I once sensed has transmuted into something different. Many perfumes now seem to me to have a sharp and acrid edge, not dissimilar to the sweat they are trying to disguise. And I smell them wherever I go. I was walking down the street yesterday and I must have fallen into the slipstream of a good looking guy in front. All I could smell was a heavy, bitter, sweaty smell with notes of Gucci Pour Homme in there somewhere. I've no doubt that to anyone else he would have smelled as sweet as... well... as sweet as a sweet looking guy wearing Gucci Pour Homme.

So why has my sense of smell changed so markedly in the last couple of weeks? Quite honestly, I have no idea, however, I am reminded that George Gershwin died aged 38 of a brain tumour in 1937 and one of the symptoms he noted was the impression of smelling burning rubber wherever he went. I trust that the recent change I've noticed is an olfactory blip rather than a symptom of something more serious. In the meantime, I'll hope that people going for a swim at Cardiff International Pool have a shower before they get in; that's why they have poolside showers and I'll point you toward this beautiful performance of Gershwin's The Man I Love, as a tribute to the genius that he was.