Binge watching Netflix The Flash

I wasted a considerable amount of time this past weekend watching The Flash, a Netflix Original.

Granted, I was injured so I couldn't move, however, consider this.

There are 4 seasons of The Flash.

Each Season has about 29 episodes.

Each Episode is about 42 minutes.

I managed to watch 2 seasons.

That's 2,436 minutes of Netflix. Good thing I have unlimited Internet.

That's 41 hours and 36 minutes of Netflix.

Considering that the weekend is 48 hours long, you're probably wondering how is that possible? Did I only get 6 hours and 24 minutes of sleep?

Well, I actually started on Friday night, so there's a bit of an adjustment, but yes, sleep was secondary.

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The theme around The Flash is about this guy who get's the ability to run super fast. This ability came to him after lightning struck his lab and he was subsequently doused in chemicals.

In reality, my interest with The Flash isn't in the fact that he can run really fast, but the spinning of science around the story. Specifically time travel and the discussions around what happens when you go back in time and change the past.

This reminds me of the movie, The Butterfly Effect.

With The Flash, his mother was killed when he was a kid by another super fast villain. When The Flash realises that he can go back in time (by running really fast as to create a hole in the space/time continuum), he goes back and does just that. He goes back in time to stop his mother's death.

However, as always with these plots, things go wrong. And so he returns to the present, to find that it wasn't like he left it. He has altered the past, which invariably has had a ripple effect on the future.

And what does The Flash do? He goes back again to try and fix it. Even to the point where he allows his mother to die, so that things can get back to where they were before.

We learn that going back to the past, isn't a remedy for fixing the way things are today. Perhaps there's an underlying moral story here, but it's a stretch to have to think and get it. What happened to me as I watched it was this sense of how stupid The Flash actually was. He never learned. Even after he was told, repeatedly, by people from the future, that going back was going to make things worse, he kept trying.

Like the saying, "youth is wasted on the young" in this case, "super power was wasted  on this idiot."

The series had a lot of science. Mostly futuristic stuff, with some sense of believability. This is science for the common person. Like being able to create a machine that alters your chemistry, allowing your brain to alter the atmospheric atoms around you, commanding them into different shapes, some of the shapes lethal. The machine itself, based on quantum physics, lots of electricity, and a superficial knowledge of biochemistry.

I loved this stuff. Quite unbelievable, but interesting to listen to. How these super bright kids (at the start of the series), can hack into almost anything, anywhere and stop any type of criminal was a good story. And this is how the world moves. By imagination and creativity. Star Wars and Star Trek allow us to dream of space and then NASA makes it happen.

There are other movies that tell of strange and wonderful things happening, but they rely on magic, mystery, sometimes religion and the supernatural. I think the science approach tells a better story. Because they try to appeal to your sense of logic. When the story tells you that your cells can be altered to vibrate at a different frequency, therefore giving you the ability to merge with solid objects, that vibrate at the same frequency, allowing you to walk through walls, this is good stuff. Because we know that atoms are mostly space, so molecules are mostly space, so our bodies, are mostly space.

Quite convincing.

And electricity seems to feature in all life. Vibrant and life-giving. Those synapses firing in our brains allowing messages to be passed. After all, we are conductors of consciousness. So I'm told. And if you can map the mind, you can download your consciousness into a disk drive, and then transfer it into a different body, hence allowing you to live forever by simply replacing the machine that carries around your consciousness.

While The Flash was interesting to watch, and able to sustain my attention for the four seasons, the character of Barry Allen (The Flash) was frustrating to no end. Most of the Marvel super heroes do have an illogical, stupid side to them. We see it when we're watching (don't go in there!!!), but at the end of the day, if you're a super hero and you cannot die, then you can be as stupid as you want to be.

I give this 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Eliud the Super Great

I wrote an article Eliud the Great back in August of 2016. And at that time, I knew that Eliud Kipchoge was the greatest marathon runner in history.

Not just in the recent time.

But the greatest marathon runner in history.

On Sunday, September 16, 2018, Eliud Kipchoge made history, again, at the 45th Berlin Marathon. He is the first person ever to run a marathon in under 2 hours and 2 minutes.

His time, an astonishing 2 hours, 1 minute and 39 seconds broke the former record by almost 1 minute and 20 seconds.

Running at an average pace 2 minutes 83 seconds per kilometre, is simply astounding for 42.2 km. I cannot even sustain that pace for 1 km, even when I was running slightly under 3 hours for the race.

Even on a treadmill, that pace is astounding.

So, how fast can marathoners really go? From the first officially recorded win in 1908, at 2 hours 55 minutes, to Eliud's time of 2 hours 2 minutes (if you just round the numbers), you have a increase in performance of 53 minutes.

In a little over a hundred years, 53 minutes have been knocked off the marathon. And the next challenge is to see if a human being can run in under 2 hours.

Back to Eliud.

In May 2017, Nike organised a run on a track with three marathoners to see if the marathon 2 hour barrier could be broken.

The event was aptly named Breaking2.

Eluid Kipchoge was in that race and ran the marathon, on the track, in 2 hours and 25 seconds. He was only 25 seconds short of breaking the mark.

The race was not an official marathon race because of many factors. The runners were paced by different pace runners, coming in and out of the race. There was even a pace car. Fluids were handed to the runners, while in a regular marathon, the runners have to get to the water stops and pick up their water bottles off a table - sometimes missing them.

What did we learn from Breaking2?

Wall of pace runners protecting Eliud during Breaking2

Breaking2 taught us that the two hour barrier is a mental one. And while I don't think that it will be broken for the next ten or so years, I believe it will be broken in my lifetime.

David Epstein, the author of "The Sports Gene" had a very interesting TED talk titled, "Are athletes really getting faster, better, stronger?" It's an interesting take on sports and performance. While there is an allusion to the possibility of various forms of enhancement, he sticks to the fact that the human body has evolved. His book, "The Sports Gene," presents a denser academic version of that talk.

Eliud Kipchoge is the greatest marathoner in history. He's run 11 marathons and only lost one (he came second to Wilson Kipsang who broke the world record to beat him).

Eliud Kipchoge is a great ambassador for Kenya, and stands uniquely among those athletes who are true heroes. Soft spoken, intelligent, determined and extremely dedicated to the sport that the world has come to know him for.

Eliud Kipchoge is my hero, and he inspires me to get out and run.

On Writing

Writing is a craft.

Writing is a profession.

Writing is a discipline.

Writing does not happen miraculously.

Writing takes agonising patience and dedication.

Most writers will tell you that the act of writing is the hardest thing that they ever did.

Then why write?

Why?

Because the act of writing, when done well, has spurts of pleasure.

When done well, the act of writing feels as pleasurable as an injection of endorphin.

Like the runner's high.

Samuel Jackson said that, "great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance."

While Steven Wright said, "I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done."

And the one that I like the best is,

Willa Cather wrote, "Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."

So, don't let anyone tell you that you cannot write. Write if you have something to say.