Runner's Heights: Rowed to Extinction

Not all cross-training is created equally. I am talking about the off days from running when you wish to give those tired running muscles a rest. In the category of cross-training (or, X-training, as the new moniker goes), I believe that the elliptical trainer is in the big league. The reason that it trumps biking is because it also kicks in an upper body workout, similar to swimming or the rowing machine. If you are a land animal, like I am, and you never learned to swim, that option is certainly out and rowing machines are often a rarity these days in many gyms. Elliptic trainers, however, are in vogue and the only reason why they might have won over rowing machines is because they put less stress on the lower back. Since I am not an exercise specialist, I could not explain the dearth of rowing machines in the gyms today but, I must confess, I hardly use them myself anymore.

As I am getting closer to the end of Tom Friedman's book, The World is Flat, I am realizing that he is glossing over a lot of important material, including world events, with a very perfunctory approach. Throughout most of the book, he uses very rational constructs and peppers each of his theories and claims with supporting evidence that is verifiable. But towards the end, he starts juxtaposing plain opinion with hearsay, even quoting the inveterate propagandist and war-mongerer, Rumsfeld. Freidman never bothers to elaborate on whether Rumsfeld's claims are true or just part of his war-induced rhetoric. As if that was not enough, Freidman, using the help of his religious teacher, even ventures into theology and interpretation of his version of God's plan for this earth. An intellectual of Freidman's caliber should know that God and religion should remain in the realm of an individual's personal spiritual quest. As long as religion -- any religion -- pretends to represent the collective spiritual interest of many, it subsumes and kills individuality and betrays the uniqueness of the spirit in every individual. Freidman, of course, peppers Karl Marx in small doses throughout his book. But it was Marx who commented that "religion is the opiate of the masses." And like any other addictive drug, religion, should be administered in small doses, for medicinal purposes, and only for those who feel a need for it. You need only to look at world events around you today to see what happens when there is an overdose of religion -- tyranny, mayhem, degradation of women, and abuse of human rights. Trying to explain the gigantic spirituality of this world through the parochial and constrictive windows of a few major religions will only choke the human spirit, not free it so that it may realize its true potential.