Welcome to Fred's Website
  • Home Page
  • Fred's Blog
  • The Right Writes
  • Mascot Serial
  • Contact

Three Score and Ten

11/25/2020

0 Comments

 
Simon and Garfunkel have a song titled "Old Friends" on their Bookends album. One line near the end is "How terribly strange to be seventy." For someone under forty, yes, it would seem strange to be that age. But when you come to it a minute at a time over all those years, it doesn't seem so strange. It seems inevitable. What is also inevitable is the loss of what you can do, at least physically. I find it very frustrating now of all the things I used to take for granted that now take effort, or that I can no longer do at all.
Of course, some of that is not so much age as it is wear and tear. As Indiana Jones said, "It's not the years; it's the mileage. Over use, misuse, and abuse. I should spend a couple of hours every day on physical therapy, but I don't have that much time, so I don't.
Here's my theory on how long a person lives: Neil Armstrong was right, but he was wrong. The first man on the moon was different from his peers in at least one respect. Most if not all of them were dedicated exercisers. He was not. His philosophy was that a person's heart has only so many beats, and he didn't want to waste any of them.
He was wrong because regular exercise, especially aerobic exercise, saves heartbeats. An example: Ignoring the time it takes to gain necessary fitness, thirty minutes a day, five days a week, achieving a heart rate of 160 beats per minute while the resting heart rate is seventy. That seems to "waste" 2700 heart beats five days a week—13,500 beats every week.
However, with that regular exercise, the resting heart rate will drop to sixty beats per minute (or less, or not quite that low, depending on age and physical condition) which will save ten beats per minute for the other twenty-three hours and thirty minutes every day, which equals 1410 minutes, which saves 14,100 beats every day. So, that regular exercise saves more beats per day than the extra beats used in a week. Let's go a step farther. That comes out to 5,146,500 heart beats every year. 36,792,000 heart beats per year at 70 beats per minute. 31,536,000 heart beats per year at 60 beats per minute, plus the 702,000 used for the exercise equals 32,238,000 per year. So that simple exercise can save you over 4 million 500 thousand beats every year.`
Yeah, I know the two savings numbers don't quite match. I figured from two different approaches. One reason is that in one of those examples I figured the exercise rates for seven days a week instead of five.
Obviously this does not take into account heart rates raised through work or additional aerobic exercise. But it's easy to see how steady aerobic exercise can help a person live longer.
One of the disadvantages of "the mileage" is that I can't do that anymore. My toes and my left hip flexors are too painful. Still, I do get in a two-mile walk on a treadmill at an average of 4.2 mph. Average walking speed for an adult human is between three and four mph. (Average walking speed for a horse is the same.) One reason to use a treadmill is that I can make sure I keep up the speed. If I just walk outside I tend to gradually and unintentionally slow down. Unfortunately, it's only once a week. I have three days a week I don't work, but I spend the other two on anaerobic exercise—weight-lifting, a plank, sit-ups, etc. Including warm-up, warm-down and stretching, I devote about an hour a day at that. These exercises, too, have become limited due to "the mileage."
Okay, wandered off on a tangent there. To continue my original point, I believe Armstrong was correct—each person's heart has only so many beats in it and a person can do nothing to increase that number. This is based mostly on anecdotal evidence. But it seems likely that genetics determines how many heart beats we have available. They can, however, maximize the number of days and years that predetermined number lasts, as the example above demonstrates.
On the other end, it is far too easy to reduce the number of heartbeats a heart manages. Smoking, alcoholism, high blood pressure, obesity, all can significantly reduce the heart's potential. There are also diseases like diabetes that can reduce the heart's life time. Diabetes, cancer and some other diseases are also linked to genetic affinity.
And still other things that reduce the heart's ability to perform to its ultimate potential: poison, Covid-19, and other diseases brought on by environmental factors. Trauma, too, can have an adverse effect. Being hit by a truck will definitely interfere with heart function.
This was certainly a different kind of blog than usual, but I felt like writing about some of the things on my mind as I finish my seventieth year.
Happy Givethanksing. If you happen to have The Decades Channel somewhere in your cable or satellite menu, Thanksgiving day will feature the Dan Martin Roasts. Some of those are really funny.
And don't forget to read!
Thanks for dropping by.
   
0 Comments

November 11th, 2020

11/11/2020

0 Comments

 
Well, darn it, I didn't get back to this before the election. I hope you all voted the intelligent choices. I saw a funny picture on Twitter. It was a photo of Trump and his daughter. The double- caption is: "Daddy, are we going to jail?" "No. You and your brothers are. I'm going to Russia." I suppose your judgment as to the humor in that might depend on your political preferences.
I just saw something regarding the President's desperate attempt to stay in office by challenging the legitimacy of the election. He's filing suits in several states, claiming ballot should not be counted, and Republican office holders are generally backing him. This gentleman from Harvard pointed out that many of those same ballots voted for Republican Senators or Congressmen. So if Trump somehow wins and gets those votes for Biden thrown out, then those votes for those Republicans will also be thrown out.
My three 400-word shorts to Fractured Lit got the thumbs down. Rats. If you read my FB page regularly, you know that my short story "The Weatherman" was accepted by Page and Spine Fiction Showcase. I was surprised; the story is about 1300 words longer than their normal limit, though on occasion they'll accept longer and split it into two parts. "The Weatherman" did not lend itself to that treatment. However, sadly, Saving Atlantis garnered another rejection. Darn.
I submitted a previously published very short story (506 words) to Sequestrum's reprint anthology. Sequestrum does that once a year or so. The entry fee is less than $7.00, which is pretty good.
I pay any writing contest fees through PayPal. I also get paid for any submissions the same way. And if you want, PayPal credit has certain advantages. The interest rate is high (at least for me—about 23%) but each purchase is interest-free for six months. And then if you carry a balance it tells you how much to pay to avoid the interest charge.
I finished the Black Veins horror anthology. I pulled out an Isaac Asimov anthology I hadn't read in decades--The Bicentennial Man and other stories, which features that short story and some others. If you haven't seen the movie, The Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams, I recommend it. The movie follows the story very well, and Williams does his usual very good job. I hadn't got to that story yet when we happened to go to LaCrosse and I stopped in the Goodwill Store. I bought another James Patterson book--Kill Alex Cross—and another Dean Koontz novel--Velocity. I'm reading those two before I get back to the Asimov anthology.
The Patterson novel, like the previous one, is a fast read. It's easy to see why he sells so many. A real fan reads one, and is ready for another after just a few days. If the reader is voracious and has plenty of time, a Patterson novel can be polished off in one day, a day and a half, maybe.
The Koontz novel has not yet earned my praises. It does have one really good feature: he gives his protagonist choices to make, the man makes the choice, and that leads him to being required to make another, tougher choice. And then another, still tougher choice. And I keep thinking that his first choice was wrong, his second choice might never have been been necessary if he'd chose better, and the last choice (so far) was easy, but he missed it. The protagonist, Billy, is not a particularly bright guy. He believes he analyzes his choices, but in fact he lets his emotions (and not even strong ones) make his decisions. So, yeah, the book is keeping me involved, but I don't like the story. And his writing is not quite as colorful as the other books of his I've read so far.
No writer hits a homer every time (unless he's writing about The Simpsons). Steven King has had a few that are generally regarded as inferior to other works of his. But again, this is very subjective. I found Dolores Claiborne and Dreamcatcher to be mediocre (for King) but they both became movies. On the other hand, many readers felt Rose Madder wasn't very good. King himself has said that with that one, he was "trying too hard." I thought it was pretty good. I stole one little feature from it and put into my horror story "Switch."
I think that's it for now. I'm hoping that I will soon be able  announce that Just Lucky, Book 1: Friends and Enemies has been successfully self-published and is available, at least for Kindle. I think the paperback version will go quicker once I have the process down better. Hope so! I could probably have it done by now but my writing drive is to continue with Lying Swords. I'm beginning to appreciate the advantage of writing a series. I had just wrapped up a long sub-story and was ready to get on to one of the other things going, and I got this idea for a nifty (like that word? First known use: 1865) continuation. If I was writing a novel I'd have to skip it, but now I have plenty of room for a little more controlled violence. I just haven't decided which one of two ways to introduce it. The joys of writing—of creating.
Everybody! Read! Read a dozen or so comic strips in the morning on line. Read the newspapers, or the sports pages, again, on line if a paper edition isn't available.
And maybe read the obituaries to make sure you're still alive. Here's a link to some hilarity involving death (I posted this on my FB page, too): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83yyMAdbrpE&fbclid=IwAR3W4Q1ktn1K3kAKXW1niughPDkmSLr9e6rVlJsqgVGEkuJul6LOxzTfmUc
And live the best you can, treat others like you'd want them to treat you, and pet a dog or a cat to make you both happy.
0 Comments

    Author

    I'm a former teacher and current warehouse grunt that loves writing.

    Archive

    February 2023
    January 2023
    September 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly