Nine miles in 72 minutes. Pretty decent run considering how weak and dehydrated I am. We're having a big batch of really polluted air right now in Salt Lake City. This is something they call SMOG in most places, but here in Utah we refer to it as an "inversion". This sounds a lot better. Anyway, I've never been bothered much by this but today I could feel my lungs burning. Looking out my front window I can't even make out the faintest trace of the Wasatch Range about two miles to the east. I assume the mountains are still there. I'm listening to an interview now with Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Apparently he has a new book out about "traditional societies" and what we can learn from them. A "traditional society" is one in which people, even though we are living in 2013, haven't ever plugged in an electrical cord or made a phone call. Societies like ours which have electricity and running water and sewage systems apparently lack traditions and are "not traditional". I think we used to call these traditional societies "backwards" or "primitive".
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