A belated New Year resolution

I didn’t make any New Year resolutions. Very bad.

So I will make a belated resolution. To spend less time reading rubbish on the internet. I wrote an article here: managing life with internet.

As an economist, I often read articles on economics at papers like the Guardian and Independent. In one sense they are free, but the cost is that your eyes often get drawn to reading the useless comments at the bottom of the articles. In the old days, these comments were more carefully thought about, selected and the best published as letters to the editor. – And I rarely read letters to the editor, because they weren’t very good anyway.  So why have I spent time reading things that only give a mild sense of frustration?

I like this page – don’t read the comments. Three of my favourites.

“The problem with internet comments is that you can never really know who’s saying them.”

— Winston Churchill

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Clip from British Time Trial Championship 2015

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In 2015, I entered the British Time Trial Championship. It was really expensive and awkward to enter.

Usually I do time trials governed by Cycling Time Trials, a UK body. But, this race came under UCI rules – the International cycling body have strict rules about size and shape of bike parts.

I had to spend £400 on a UCI fork and UCI compliant aerobars, to make my bike “UCI legal” (more…)

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The journey of one hundred thousand paces begins with

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I try to have a few more meditations on Christmas Eve. It’s a good feeling as the world slows down and becomes a little more reflective.

With the sun setting below the hills, I closed my door and burnt some incense. The pungent fragrance filling the room. Settled in the chair I felt unusually receptive for meditation. I started to chant AUM, AUM, AUM … – when from above, I heard an unexpected sound.

“The journey of one hundred thousand paces begins with a flat tyre and a broken fan-belt.” (more…)

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The unexpected peace

From a concert by the music group, Ananda – performing the songs of Sri Chinmoy.  Lord Mayor’s Chapel, Bristol, 13 December, 2015.


The entrance to the concert was through a modest wooden door. In a street filled with the brilliance of commerce, it would have been quite easy to walk straight past. But this reserved entrance, hid an unexpected sanctuary of peace – within the chapel a generosity of light and calm.

bristol-church
A small crowd gathers, patiently in the ancient wooden pews; a few intrepid souls, perhaps wondering what is to come.

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A visit to a local church

A dull winter’s day, but I drag myself from the comfy, soporific atmosphere of being glued to a screen.

The chill bites through a thin winter’s jacket, so I walk at a quicker pace up the hill. Still, a rather aimless march – just a break for blurry eyes and cramped legs.

church-graveyard
I contemplate the local church on the hill. The sombre graveyard, the memories of a young child – sitting in a service I didn’t understand, counting off hymns, thinking of football. I’m not so comfortable with the glare of gravestones, but the church still pulls me in. What do you find in a church these days?

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Doping and cycling

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I started watching professional cycling in the mid 1990s. One of my earliest memories was watching Bjarne Riis accelerating up a mountain  to defeat the five times winner Miguel Indurain. I didn’t know at the time, but Riis was doping on an industrial scale. His amazing speed was almost entirely due to the huge quantities of EPO in his system.

 

To later learn that the sport was essentially corrupt and full of doping was hard. The joy of sport diminished, and the result irrelevant.

In 2005, the journalist David Walsh was asked who do you want to win the Tour de France? He replied “I don’t mind. Anyone who is clean”. I agree with that sentiment 100%.

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