Pavlov was right!
There used to be a bizarre circuit training room in the basement of the Johns Hopkins athletic center, right down the hall from the more standard issue weight room. The circuit training room had early versions of today’s fitness machines; the resistance was provided via pneumatics. To adjust the difficulty, you would adjust an air pressure gauge. I have no idea what era these machines dated from, but judging from the light brown they were painted, I’d say they were from the late 60s or early 70s. When I first started at Hopkins, I used this room because it was always empty, and back then I was even more impatient than I am now. There was this laminated sheet of paper on the wall by the door, so when you left, it was hard to ignore. It said:
“The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best”
- Thomas Jefferson
Actually, I think it said something else, but I can’t find another exercise quote attributable to Jefferson, so either my memory is faulty, or the sign is. There’s no way to know. The rest of what I was going to write makes no sense based on the above quote, so I’ll just let this thread trail off… wish I remember that quote… man, that’d be great!
A few days ago, Annie bought a Nike+ gizmo that works with your iPod. Check that - it works with an iPod Nano. A few days after that, she bought an iPod Nano. Since then, she’s been running up a storm. As such, it has served its intended purpose of giving her motivation to exercise. It’s a neat little thing, keeping track of each step you take on a run, so you can imagine the various data breakdowns it provides. It’s an anal retentive dream! Highly recommended if you’re into running or data visualization or both. If neither, you can safely avoid it.
I think two days ago, Annie ran a workout, a 5k I think. She was proud for pushing herself, and felt like she was really getting into good shape. But lo and behold, she had forgotten to activate her Nike thing. When she got home and tried to sync up her new workout numbers, there weren’t any, and suddenly she felt like she hadn’t even worked out. Pride gone. Isn’t that incredible? We’re able to condition ourselves over the course of a single week. For Annie, the signal that she worked hard (the Nike data) was more important to her sense of health than the actual health-creating activity. This is pretty similar to the stuff I read about in sixth grade, with Dr. Pavlov getting dogs’ mouths to water by ringing a bell.
I feel like this sort of thing is absolutely fundamental to our culture. Money is a prime example; it’s a stand-in, but people often care more about money itself than what it is used for.
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