Soma Purana

I signed up for an excellent online course called Mathematical Thinking by Keith Devlin, a Stanford professor. This course is primarily about mathematical logic. This is week #3 and it is going really well. It is not easy though! I also have signed up as a community tutor (I don't know yet what my responsibilities would be). My initial experience was so exciting, I signed up for a whole bunch more future courses. Computational Investing, Part I Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning Introduction to Genetics and Evolution Introductory Organic Chemistry - Part 1 Know Thyself Calculus: Single Variable Introduction to Astronomy   These are all given by eminent scholars in ivy league schools and are free! These are known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course). If someone is interested they can browse the available courses at https://www.coursera.org/courses   I would think, this is going to be the future!  One can design and follow whatever curriculum th

Going forward, I will update the walk review once a month. I want the blogs to be more of my thoughts and insights rather than mundane exercise talk. This week I made 42 miles with some difficulty. I had soreness in my knees during many nights, particularly, in early morning. I thought it was because of inflammation after long walk. But, I think it is because of lactic acid buildup that happens when aerobic respiration is not adequate and the muscles resort to anaerobic process to generate energy. This is just my theory, I need to understand this a bit more. For the last three days, however, I have not had this soreness.

Records are meant to be broken. 8 miles was my limit. I do 8 miles several times now and one day this week, I made 9 miles. I walked six days (one day I didn't walk, not because of weather, but because my knees cried for rest). I made 46 miles putting 6 miles in the bank. My walk these days consists of an hour of brisk walking and an hour of slow running. I am using arms quite a bit while walking. I start off with my arm at 90 degrees from midsection and swing it to slightly higher than my heart level. This is helping me tone my arms muscles. I may have to perfect my arm movement to maximize the benefit.

I walked all 7-days, hooray!!! I made 47 miles total. 40 goes to my quota and 7 in the bank. 8+7+5+7+6+7+7=47. This week was very god for walking. No rain; temperature was perfect.

I read quite a bit of fiction. I generally don't buy books but pick them up at Mercer County Community college where I teach as an adjunct. Most of the books I pick up are trash, I throw them away later. Some are real jewels. "Eric Ambler's "Dirty Story" and Herman Wouk's pulitzer winning "Caine Mutiny" are among those. I just re-read Dirty Story. Absolutely fascinating novel. Caine Mutiny is just marvelous reading (I didn't like the movie that much). I liked Dirty Story so much I ordered The Light of Day by Ambler whose sequel is Dirty Story. The Light of Day is just as suspenseful and a delight to read. The unlikely hero in these sequels Arthur Abdel Simpson is a thief, a swindler, a coward, an opportunist, somehow gets mixed up in constant troubles, yet, a reader walks away extremely sympathetic towards Simpson and convinced that the world has dealt a very unfair hand to him. I don't think I would want to swap my life with his, but exper

What a wonderful book! Read it for the 2nd time. Once you start, you cannot put the book down. This novel won Edgar Award for Best Novel, 1964. In the previous post, I wrote about a little madness in Zorba. You see plenty of fascinating madness in the Simpson character in this book. I have read another fiction by Ambler "Dirty Story" which is a sequel to "The Light of Day". Simpson's life is so rich because of the madness. I can't wait to re-read "Dirty Story." Eric Amber writes so well, the language is so appealing. I wish this book was made into a movie!

Watched two movies. "The Apartment" (2nd time watching) was truly entertainng with superb performance by Jack Lemmon who should have won best actor award. The movie won best picture and bagged four more Oscars. Truly entertaining movie. "Zorba the Greek" with finest acting by Anthony Quinn as Zorba who also should have won best actor award got three Oscars. This movie is quite entertaining while being quite philosophical. The most memorable quote for me in the film is Zorba's " Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everything except one thing: madness! A man needs a little madness, or else..."