Original thoughts and ideas on various subjects in education, philosophy, futurism and general life.
by Yoav Armony
Why NOT to do sports
2017
A friend asked me how I manage to walk 10km every morning? This is what I answered her:
Every morning when I wake up, while still in bed, I explain to myself why today I can skip sports (I have many excuses). Once I dismiss them all, with no choice left, I put on sneakers and go out for a walk. I sincerely hope that one day I will find the ultimate excuse that will convince me to stay home.
As a service to the public (and my loyal friend) below is a set of excuses that do not work for me:
- I went to bed late yesterday / I have a hard day today.
- I have been doing sports for a week / two days / a whole day, it is time to rest.
- Yesterday while walking I felt pain in my leg / chest / spleen, first I need to do a check-up.
- My sports clothes are in the washer / torn / dirty.
- Today I have a birthday / Jerusalem day / My mother-in-law is getting married – need to celebrate.
- Today will be the hot / cold / humid day.
- I read an article that sports are unhealthy, and it is better to swim / play tennis / drink milk / smoke.
- As an exception I will go in the evening / tomorrow / next year.
- And the excuse that is really hard to resist – I am getting up in five minutes.
Readers around the world are invited to provide an excuse that will convince me tomorrow morning.
Calculating machine
2009
Imagine an antique collector (who also happens to be an alien) who happened to wander around the galaxy to our blue star and fell in love with an orange Mini Minor (orange goes well on blue), 1955 which has been in a junkyard for twenty years (aliens are known to love orange). The outsider took the car with him to his silver star and added it to his impressive collection. But alas, the strange alien above loves that all the objects in his collection from across the universe will work. Early knowledge does not help that alien, since in his world (and in all the worlds he has encountered so far) people move with the help of their power of thought and do not need orange or other aids.
On his next tour of the area, although the alien found a user guide in German (aliens are not known to speak German, think how much effort they have to put in since the days of Moses to learn Hebrew), he still did not understand how the hell this strange thing works.
Exactly the same way I feel these days. I bought a calculator from Thales that was manufactured between 1930 and 1940 in Germany and despite its impressive exterior, it does not work and has not worked for at least the last two decades. All I know is that it should know how to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division up to 13 digits (impressive no? You can calculate 7,967,237 times 147,896 – I will give you the result after I finish repairing the machine).
So now I have two tasks, to fix the necessary fix (in some cases I don’t even understand that it is broken), and to understand how it does the magic. So, I disassembled part by part, removed the rust and tried to use it while understanding the operation. One part I have not yet cracked, and it is the mechanism that rotates the whole system (if you wish, the mechanical engine of the mechanism or, in professional language – Antriebskurbel fur das UW) that is painfully stuck and no WD40 of any kind helps.
I too, like our alien, found a user manual in German and I too, like him, do not understand German (what a coincidence). So, what do we do now? Two options 1) keep trying, 2) as the guy who sold me the machine said: If you want it to work buy a calculator for ten shekels.
- It took me half a year to repair the calculator and to this day it is in my living room (and working).
- Google Translate was not yet invented then.
- The machine also knows how to raise power and take out a root (very complicated).
- I found the glitch why they stopped using the machine (and fixed it).
HE