To add to the Narnia debate

I came across the following link on Dennis Dutton's trust Arts & Letters Daily page. It's a review from the New York Review of Books of Andrew Adamson's first go at Narnia and of two books of literary criticism.

As in depth a review as anyone could hope for.

On happiness

The following essay from Paul Graham, How to do what you love, was posted to Slashdot recently. It's a really well written, pithy journeyman explanation of what's turned up in happiness research. In many ways I think it shows Paul's genius that he got so very close to what can be found in Dr. Martin Seligmann's Authentic Happiness. Both Paul's article and Marty's book are very highly recommended and well worth reading.

Although I must note that all this research on happiness seems a very 21st century, very middle class thing to do. I suspect that we didn't have the time nor money nor opportunity before.

Actually, I came across the blog of my friend Alasdair. He's an interesting fellow who's done almost the same thing as my sister Steph. He is/was an engineer who got a bit bored with it and decided to do an arts degree. His blog is very interesting because it's interesting seeing him apply his intellect to the arts.

Makes me wonder if I should go off and do something random. Work's rather boring and frustrating at the moment but hopefully that will pass.

On Sport

Raced in the second ever Scorching Triathlon on Monday - good chance to see how things are going. Distance was 500m swim, 20km cycle, 5km run and splits were 10:52, 54:39, 28:41. The same distance last time had splits of 12:06, 48:25, 26:34. Given that there was more wind this time around I think those results are fairly much the same. Nice to see the swim improve so much though.
It appears the biggest problem I have is my cycling. I came out of the water roughly in the middle of the pack and then everybody passed me. I had an interesting conversation with the running coach Jim Kerr. He mentioned that I should probably work on the pull up of my pedal stroke more. I think he's right. Time to work on more technique I think.
Overall results? I wasn't the last man home but I was last in my division. Second to last in my division finished in 1:28:33 compared to my 1:34:12. Looks like I've got a lot of work to do, huh?

Last night was the first volleyball game of the season. Thanks to Mashugenah for filling in to make our team up to 6. It was a close game: we won the first set closely, then they won the next set. We won the third set and thought we could relax until they won the fourth set. Fortunately we were ahead 7-3 at end of play so we get the win - rather important for grading.