Various and sundry reasons for running

I came within 90 seconds of a Boston-qualifying time of 3:34:59 at the inaugural Central Park Marathon last year. Didn't really mean to; it was a February race a few weeks into my last semester of grad school, so I didn't have much of a plan and ran mostly by feel. (Which apparently is a reliable way to PR – who knew.) Afterward I stumbled around looking for my half-marathoning friends who'd stashed themselves on a hill with a flask -- it was the bleak midwinter, after all -- to cheer. Sure enough, they pounced on me soon thereafter and off we all limped to a glorious and egg-filled celebration.

So the 2^nd Central Park Marathon is coming up this weekend and I've been thinking about the last one as well as other happy running memories. The kind that don't really consist of any real story but only an image, a feeling, and a warm fuzzy. Thus, in no particular order and for no particular reason, I give you...

Camels and Corruption: Two Things Bill Gates Doesn't Get

When you use an analogy to show the contrast between two things, it helps if the analogized items are as different as the items they're supposed to describe. “That's like comparing apples and oranges,” you say – not “comparing oranges and navel oranges.”

But in the 2014 edition of his foundation's annual letter, Bill Gates compares the difference between worldwide income distribution in 1960 with that in 2012 using the example of a “camel world” (with two humps representing the income in the then-developing world and wealthier countries) contrasted to a “dromedary world” (representing the gradual convergence in income levels between the “West and the rest”). Given that a dromedary is a kind of camel, Gates' classification doesn't make a lot of sense if he's trying to set up a contrast between these two curves.

...OK, fine, so it's hair-splitting. (Maybe with an element of glee derived from the fact that your humble blogger can call out a billionaire techie philanthropist extraordinaire on his camel taxonomy [even one responsible for Windows 8].) That's one view; another is that it actually provides a neat illustration of how Gates misunderstands one of the largest obstacles to development in a considerable number of countries, i.e. corruption.