Concrete dumbbells

My son needed some 25 lb dumbbells for home workouts, since we took him out of his school's workouts due to COVID, but our local stores were out. So we made concrete ones, using 3D printed molds. A bonus of concrete: because they're bigger for the same weight, they make one look stronger.

Build instructions are here.

Adding a USB charging port to an elliptical machine

Last night I added a USB charging port to our elliptical machine, using a $0.70 buck converter, so that we can exercise while watching TV on a tablet even when running out of batteries. Here are instructions.

Note, too, how the tablet is held in place with 3D printed holders. My next elliptical upgrade project will be to make it be a part of a USB game controller (the other part will be a Wii Nunchuk) so that one can control speed in games with speed of movement.

Health

Is there a good of overall health, over and beyond particular goods of health, such as having keen eyesight, being able to run fast, etc.?

Suppose you have a broken leg and you believe this was your only health problem. But then you learn that your hearing is below normal and that this cannot be cured. Before you learned this bad news, you thought that fixing the fracture would both restore the health of the leg and overall health. But after learning the bad news, you knew that fixing the fracture would restore the health of the leg but not overall health. If overall health has a value over and beyond its components, then your level of motivation should go down, since previously actions that promoted the health of the leg apparently promoted two goods, while now you see that they promote only one. Yet surely your motivations wouldn’t decrease, or they hardly would. This suggests that the good of overall health is either not a further good or at best a minor good.

'Ought' implies 'can'?

I am sick. Here's a heartening argument: Next week I have some teaching and I can't teach while sick. I ought to do the teaching. Ought implies can. So I will be well by next week.

One gap in the argument is that my doctor may tell me I'm not sufficiently infectious to be unable to teach. But that can't be all that's wrong with the argument.

Spiritual sickness and spiritual death

There is a temptation for Catholics—also present for non-Catholic Christians but with different terminology—to settle for avoiding mortal sin. After all, if one has living faith and does not reject Christ's salvific grace through mortal sin, one will be saved. So why should one worry about venial sin?

Leaving aside the question of purgatory—for that is not the heart of the issue, but something more in the way of an effect of it—here is one thing that is wrong with this. In a state of mortal sin, one is bereft of living faith, of charity and of Christian hope. One is spiritually dead. If one is not a state of mortal sin, then one is spiritually alive. But surely we are not merely satisfied with being alive.

It would be silly to say: "I shall not go to the doctor. Yes, I have a great big ulcer, but after all, I am alive, and that is all that matters." While there may be contexts where it is appropriate to shout with joy "I am alive!" as if that was all that mattered—for instance, right after one's life (spiritual or physical) has just been saved. But as regards the body, we do not just want life. We want a life of health. One can be alive, but very ill, close to death. There is still reason to have the joy of life—there is a qualitative difference between that life and death—but that is not what we aspire to. (Here, of course, one recalls what Socrates says about how happiness is thought to require health of body and in fact requires health of soul.)

But there is a disanalogy between the physical illness of those who are physically alive and the spiritual illness of those who are spiritually alive. For while this particular physical illness may not win out, our mortal body is after all heading for the grave—perhaps unless the eschaton intervenes.[note 1] But while spiritually ill though in a state of grace, there is reason to hope—not just hope to overcome that particular illness, but to overcome them all, by the grace of Christ living in us. Thus we do have more reason to rejoice over being spiritually alive than over physically alive—but this rejoicing cannot lead to idleness, since after all, how much do we want to prolong our ill health?