Understanding ignorance - a new MOOC

The world of MOOCs is a wonderful place. This are Massive Open Online Courses. They're available on the internet and cover more topics and themes than you can imagine. And they're free.

I haven't done a MOOC since the bunch I did early last year and I've been keeping an eye out for one. 

My new course starts tomorrow / Wednesday and it is hosted by edX. The course is called Ignorance! It is offered by the Australian National University and runs over five weeks.

In the course description they write:

Ignorance is everyone’s business. Ignorance is relevant to every discipline and profession, and to everyday life, both at work and at play. 

We will explore questions about ignorance such as: Where does ignorance come from? How do we impose ignorance on each other, and even on ourselves? And why? We usually think about ignorance as a bad thing, but can it be preferable not to know something? How do we use ignorance? What roles does ignorance play in social interaction, group relations, institutions, and law? Can ignorance sometimes be a virtue? When can ignorance be good or bad for us? How can we harness the unknown for learning, discovery, and creativity?

A few months ago the best friend of a lady-I-know passed away. Apparently she had a quick-onset cracking headache and was very ill. By morning she was dead.

The lady-I-know said her best friend has died because of the stress of her car being stolen a few days earlier.

I explained about meningitis - the onset, symptoms and prognosis. This seemed the most likely cause. I thought that the lady-I-know would think about this and consider that this (or something similar) could be the most likely medical explanation for her friend's passing.

A few weeks later in a random conversation she again mentioned the car theft as the cause of her healthy, mid-30s friend's sudden passing. It troubled me that she was ok with this.

Ignorance comes about when a person lacks knowledge. I'm not quite sure what you call it when you don't ask questions and you don't consider other possibilities?

I hope to learn more about ignorance over the next five weeks.

Copy-cat events

On Monday I had the most lovely lunch with a dear friend and she told me about a new series of night runs on Jo'burg golf courses.

"But that's what Heidi and Stephan have been doing for the past few years," I exclaim.

The Kinetic Night Trail Runs are held on Wednesday nights - the first Wednesday of the month. Course distances are 4km or 8km and they use a barcode timing system. Their entry fee is R70 pre-entry or R100 on the night. Prizes for a variety of entry categories are Trappers vouchers to the value of R300, R200 and R100.

This other bunch, fitCAL, had an event in May and there's another in June (I don't know which other months they've had - and will have - events but I assume they're monthly). Monday nights, it seems. Their distances are 5km and 10km. Certainly double-lappers too, like the Kinetic runs. Pre-entry is R100, late entry is R150 and on the night is R200. Timing is ChampionChip so if you don't have  one you have to buy one. Their prize money is cash, and a lot of it. 10km: 1st: R2000, 2nd: R1000, 3rd: R500 5km 1st: R1000, 2nd: R500, 3rd: R250.

Considering that upwards of 600 people participate (or even many more!) and only six people receive the prizes, prizes are of little relevance to me.

When there are so many creative things that can be done with events, I don't see why fitCal chose to do what someone else has been doing already for years. But, there you have it.

Imitation is, supposedly, the sincerest form of flattery. I just think it is lazy.

Many days of running

After three weeks of illness I've been back to running for a week and it is nice to see my mileage gaining ground again. I've kept up daily running - or walking - since I started my annual pre-birthday game on Saturday, 25 April 2015.

It was meant to be '39 Days of Running' - in celebration of my 39th birthday. I started my runs early this year as I would have been at Expedition Africa. But as I stayed home, I decided to just keep going. Tomorrow, on my birthday day, I'll clock '54 Days of Running/Walking'.

I'm heading off for a birthday surprise this afternoon. I don't know where I'm being taken to for the next few days. I do know that it isn't too far away (no driving for hours) and that there are some mountain biking trails.

Celliers writes in his packing instructions email, "There are some mtb routes, not sure how long. Just pack your cycling clothes then. And clothes/shoes for walking/running. But I guess that is a given. :-)".

He's a fast learner.

My mom has baked me a delicious chocolate cake with a decadent chocolate icing. She reports that there is a slab of dark chocolate melted into the icing. Yum!

The internet has some good - and funny - images related to birthdays. Here are a few for 39. Big one next year.

12-hour Dawn 2 Dusk circuit race entered

Nine years ago I ran my one-and-only 12-hour circuit race (thus far). I had such a great experience there. The race that I did, the Toyota 12hr in Randburg was discontinued the following year and I recall entering Dawn 2 Dusk in Pretoria but was unable to make it as I ended up running in India at the five-day Himalayan Stage Race.

Over this past weekend my friend Asa (the same person that I seconded at Washie last year) tagged me on Facebook for the Akasia Dawn 2 Dusk 12hr circuit race. He lives in Malawi but will be in Jo'burg over this weekend and so he was scanning event listing to see what he could catch while in town.

I didn't even hesitate.

"I'm in!" I replied.

Our entries are in and on Saturday, 29 August 2015 we'll be running many, many one-kilometer laps. This event is run during the day, not through the night like the other one that I did. I enjoy running at night, but this daytime run is definitely easier on our supporters.

D2D route drawn by Fanie Naude (thank you)

My goal is to better my distance of 98 kilometres that I did back in 2006...

Last night I had a good jog-walk following this past week of throat infection and meds. Now that I've had cough-cold-infection for three weeks I hope that this is it for the rest of the season!

It is now the time to log a lot of running - race coming!