kingkongrevenge

The assertion that people are built for steady long distance endurance is dubious considering the negative health consequences of endurance events.

People are clearly built for brisk walking very long distances. Running is not so clear. Marathon runners and cyclists have a lot of problems.

http://www.arthurdevany.com/2005/08/top_ten_reasons.html

The human body is multi-purpose. Most animals can't climb trees as well as humans. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a great idea to climb lots of trees.

I bet that's working out great for ya. Tons of advantages. I'm green with envy.

Summer weight wool is cooler than cotton.

The responses in this thread are convincing me that a dress code is a great idea. It would keep out the socially clueless nerds nobody wants to be around.

What I really don't get is these people who seem to WANT to look like shit. We don't have a dress code here. I could easily wear jeans over half the time. But I don't and nobody else does because it looks horrible. Personally, I find being surrounded by well dressed people a substantial workplace selling point.

Do you have any idea how juvenile and tasteless you look in cheap jeans and sneakers? Do you realize how much dramatically better you look with proper shoes and well cut wool pants? To give up that advantage just indicates idiocy to me.

I don't think the article went into the fact that most of people's medical spending happens in the last couple months of life.

Per capita medical costs will just keep ballooning until as a society we change our attitude and approach to dying of old age. We simply can't afford every called for treatment for every dying geriatric. There has to be some rationing mechanism whether it's the market and individual wealth, insurance bureaucrats, or government death panels.

"Old Age" isn't even a cause of death anymore for statistical purposes. Sorry, but when a 90 year old dies the cause of death is old age, regardless of whether it was heart failure or cancer.

Cancer types and rates have varied dramatically over time in populations and between populations. Ergo cancer is driven by lifestyle factors.

> saying that the "tails" of market changes are going to be larger than the current models

The claim is that people using the models are well aware that the gaussian distribution is only an approximation, and that substituting fatter tailed distributions into the models don't actually affect the outputs very much.

He's saying that Taleb's points are not very useful or original.

That's false advertising. The original story was about whether Taleb is a crank. It also offered a useful and interesting definition of a crank.

You're annoyed that sharp rather than nice fluffy headlines work. You know what I'm annoyed about? How pointless meta-whining like this floats to the top. I was looking forward to hearing from some finance savvy types.

Headlines are supposed to convey the thrust, not nuance. There's no false advertising.

Your basic complaint is that concise and sharp headlines do better than detailed, dull ones? Welcome to humanity.

It doesn't take much to disappear if you're willing to live like a pauper in the cash only economy, and you don't defraud anyone in the process of disappearing.

Apples oranges. Compare Czech republic to the Minneapolis metro. I don't actually know the numbers, but I bet Czech republic loses.

These low immigration, long industrialized European nations are NOT comparable to the US as a whole. Huge swathes of the US were borderline feudal agriculture all of 80 years ago. The populations are very different and it has nothing to do with health care.

You guys realize Europe has all kinds of laws against large retailers and in favor of mom & pop shops, right? This is basically about the inefficient "shopkeeper lobby" that makes it difficult to buy various things outside of weekday business hours.

Small businesses are not inherently better than large businesses. In general, employees of large businesses make more money. Larger firms tend to be more economically efficient.

I am not at all surprised that Europe has more [antiquated] small businesses. I'm a bit surprised someone is trying to present this as a boasting point.

Mob violence and various laws, actually. More than once mobs in the Northwest rounded up Asians and marched them to the docks.

No, actually it was the articles about white flight from California I've encountered over the last few years.

Arguably the real reason many people are keen to move to Portland, especially from California, is that it's the whitest city in North America.

Because preventive medical intervention and testing doesn't work. Lifestyle changes work, but getting a bunch of fat cola guzzlers into doctors' offices more often has no impact on the care they will later require.

> social reform must either be the republican or democrat position

Uhh, no. It just so happens that in this case some Republicans are the only people putting forward the idea of taxing medical benefits as ordinary income, to reduce the role of insurance in the system. I don't even vote, let alone think in terms of democrat vs republican.

He says he is a democrat, but a reasonable interpretation of the article points towards the republican solution of taxing health care benefits. The problem is that both the industry and consumers are very insulated from price sensitivity, so costs shoot out of control and providers have little incentive to improve quality. People need to be paying for far more of their care out of pocket with cash. We need price wars between hospitals.

> reasons outside their control (bankruptcy, families abandoning them etc)

Those reasons are usually well under individual control.

> didn't choose to be homeless

Let's be realistic here. One generally ends up in that situation by exercising bad judgment and choices over time.

The problem is the bums themselves. Japanese homeless don't make garbage messes or harass people. They generally manage to peacefully scrape by without imposing themselves. It's much the same in other more homogeneous industrialized countries as best I can tell.

The problem is the American underclass.

The "muscle burns calories" idea is a popular myth, as you explain.

The value of muscle mass is that it buffers glucose and insulin. Muscle forms and stores glycogen that would otherwise go right to fat cells. These glycogen stores then also help control appetite, fending off acute snack attack hunger pangs that a scrawny person accustomed to a high carb diet gets when blood sugar wanes.

> you can break down muscle for energy

Yes. Lean body mass can atrophy from starvation while fat deposits are growing.

The point is more that the equation as stated is a useless way to think about fat loss. Hormones drive the lean vs. fat configuration of your body, not calorie counting. Cut out someone's pancreas and they'll waste away no matter what they eat. Inject testosterone or growth hormone and they will get leaner and more muscular, all else held constant. Inject insulin and they'll get fatter.

Exercise affects your body composition more effectively when you focus on how it changes your hormone profile rather than count calories burned. High resistance major muscle group exercises boost growth hormone and testosterone and increase insulin resistance. Long distance training actually reduces testosterone levels.

> Weight gain = Calories In - Calories out

Not true. People and lab animals can be made to get fatter while in caloric deficit with elevated insulin levels.

I read the article and it does not really say that. In fact, the only bit that comes close is this: Another British study, this one from the University of Exeter, found that kids who regularly move in short bursts — running to catch a ball, racing up and down stairs to collect toys — are just as healthy as kids who participate in sports that require vigorous, sustained exercise.

I would agree with the general idea that daily walking at a relaxed pace is better than "jogging".

I think proper intense 10-20 minute workouts are so outside of the field of view of people who read and write articles like these they don't understand them. Doing a few sets of no-rest olympic lifts and then five minutes of double-unders with a jump rope does not boost your appetite much. It will make you a bit nauseous. It is not at all like going on a 15 mile bike ride or swimming a mile, which leaves you ravenous 30 minutes after.

> lots of low-intensity exercise that burned calories

The way to lose fat is with intense and brief exercise, like weight circuit training with no rest between sets, on an empty stomach a couple times a week.

Acute exercise in the fasted state, compared with the carbohydrate-fed state, for a given exercise intensity and duration, stimulates the oxidation of fatty acids from both intramyocellular (16) and peripheral (17) fat depots. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01195.2007

Related: Short fast sprints 'cut' diabetes http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_ea...

Brief intense training decreases insulin sensitivity, which leads to less fat.

Working out every day to "burn calories" is a very poor use of time. Work out hard and short (20 min) a couple times a week. This will change your hormone profile, boosting growth hormone and testosterone and reducing insulin sensitivity. Those changes make you leaner.

I like how all the articles about the F-22 say it's a relic of the cold war; a case of fighting the last war. Right now "the last war" is asymmetric bombing of poor brown people. The next war very well might be a conventional war against a nation with a serious air force.

I have no real opinions on the F-22, but all these dismissals of it as some obvious waste are odd to me. Specific merits of the F-22 aside, pursuit of air supremacy over technologically advanced nations is not so obviously a waste, I don't think. It merits discussion.

I keep a few grand in small bills stashed around the house. It's one of those things you just might be ridiculously glad you have in the unlikely event you need it. Imagine a natural disaster or a ten day blackout.