Rules for a planet

I’ve always believed in the truth of Agent Smith’s words:

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we, are the cure.”

There is yet another equally powerful thought I came across in Yuva Anandan’s blog.

He points to an interesting comment on BBC – “…it’s not the planet we should be worrying about, it’s us.” In principle, I agree with the point of view that whatever damage human activity has caused to the planet till date is not major. With the race being supposedly being well past the peak oil, perhaps our ability to inflict further damage to the planet is limited. When the oil prices go up in the next few years, I would expect the food production to drop and people will dying of malnourishment. The population would drop and people would be forced again go back to living in fertile lands near water sources.

But for the human race, it has never been about the planet. It has always been about us. It is the same callous attitude that prevailed for centuries and still continues to do so. For once people should think about living symbiotically with the host planet. I wish there was a global political body that laid down rules for the planet. As a finite planet, the earth can only sustain finite human activity. What is that point? We will really need a careful scientific evaluation to find out. To me, ideally, politics should be simple human welfare. We need to have an association with this planet such that the damage we do is minimal and every person on this planet has a joyous experience of life on this planet. If it means limiting the population of the planet to a billion, then we should get there in the next 50 years with a clear plan.

Global politics, beyond regional interests, is the need of the day. Like in Starwars, we sure need a galactic republic and a Padme to decide for each planet.

Best time on a treadmill

After 15 years, today, I ran 5 kilometers. I was on a tread mill belt and not on terra firma – like I used to in “those days” when I ran before my Karate practice sessions.

I walked 500 m in 5 minutes to warm up. After 5 minutes, I started to jog at 8 kmph, slowly picked up speed in steps to 11 kmph in steps. As pain set in after 15 minutes of running, I reduced my speed in steps to 10 kmph, 9.5 kmph, and so on till I was running the last 500 m at 8.5 kmph. The whole thing lasted 32 minutes and 19 seconds and the belt had rolled 5000 m. When I crossed 5010 m, I hit the cool down button and dropped to 6.8 kmph. I cooled down by walking 420 m in 5 minutes.

It was the first time in years that I had run non-stop for 5 km. On earlier occasions where I’d run 5 km non-stop, I’d not timed myself. So this automatically became my personal best.

When I stepped off the treadmill, my calves where still beating to the rhythm of my heart. I could feel pain and I sat on the large steel frame of a rowing machine panting for a few minutes.

My instructor didn’t even seem to notice. He walked up to me and said, “Enough of rest. Now go pick the barbells, do four sets of 12 reps each and then do 3 sets with dumbells and wait for me”. When I hit the shower, it looked like another day at the gym. But now I feel good about it, despite my aching legs.

Daily values of nutrients