But being fit for a marathon is very different than being strong, or even being fit as a sprint runner.
Marathon runners are usually very lean, and perhaps even gaunt. In contrast, sprint runners look more "average", if you will. And some of the strongest men look nothing like they you'd expect to be.
I think most people want to work out for aesthetic reasons, so that's a whole different ball game.
Their lifestyle is not the same as yours. We lead a much more sedentary lifestyle, and we consume a lot more in terms of raw quantity (and with increasing frequency). The idea behind wheat belly can be extended to carbs in general -- wheat, rice, corn etc. And I've found that cutting carbs and calories is the biggest factor in getting in shape, and lowering your bf%. You can skip everything else, but if you're maintaining a caloric deficit consistently, you'll lose weight.
I was at 19% body fat, and once I started cutting carbs and working out, I just started burning fat that much more quickly. The journey from 19% bf to 15% bf was a nightmare, but the journey from 15% bf to 12% bf was much easier. And the journey from 12% to under 10% was much, much harder, only because it requires an insane amount of discipline.
Unfortunately, the holidays wreaked havoc and I'm back in the 15% range, but I am amazed at how just simple things with your diet help a lot. Complex carbs and protein for breakfast (think oatmeal and eggs), salad with fruit for lunch, a couple of protein shakes in the afternoon, and salad for dinner. No cheat days. Watch your calories carefully (I use the LiveStrong MyPlate), and maintain a reasonable protein intake. You'll see progress in no time.
for most people, even modest exercise is enough to keep them from getting fat and weak
I would actually say that diet is infinitely more important than exercise. There's a reason it's said that six packs are made in the kitchen.
Someone who eats healthy and does not work out is often in better shape than someone who eats junk and "works out" for half hour a day. Most of those people just use their momentum to do some crazy exercises with piss poor forms, and eat unhealthy crap afterwards because they've worked out (think middle aged man with flabby biceps and a beer gut trying to bench press, when he probably has 30% body fat).
Of course it's boring when you start out. It's like everything else. When you start programming, you don't start writing game engines -- you start with the basics.
When you start working out, you start with the basics, such as cardio and working your basic muscle groups. But over time, you will get in good enough shape that you can start doing interesting things.
In fact, even if you just played a fast-moving sport regularly, you'll see a great improvement (think soccer or tennis, not baseball or golf).
One of the best hobbies I picked up was rock climbing. It's intense, and works all your muscle groups. And you work your legs, your upper body, and your core. Over time, you just get better and better, and you realize that your gym time actually helps you perform better at your choice sport.
Personally, I find that I can run more without tiring, that I am just stronger and have more stamina, for all activities.;-) Plus, girls love washboard abs.
You know, I used to feel the same way (i.e. macros are more important, and as long as you got your nutrients, the source doesn't really matter).
But a while ago, I changed my lifestyle -- vegetarian, gave up alcohol, coffee, and most processed foods, and just started eating healthier foods in general.
I've seen a drastic difference in not just my fitness levels, but also my stamina. I'm having the flu right now, and yet, my buddies and I just had an intense workout out for over an hour at the gym, and I didn't even feel tired.
Things like interval workouts are great, but they only work to an extent. There's something to be said about putting your body in the "zone" (as far as heart rates and muscle groups are concerned) because when you're done thoroughly working out with an entire muscle group, and you'll see much better progress over time. This, of course, is my personal experience and quite anecdotal. YMMV.
1. No underwriter worth their salt would ever agree to such a clause.
2. There is only so much you can model; a large part of it is market sentiment (especially for something like FB), which is quite hard to predict or gauge.
3. Being underpriced and volatile is better than being overpriced in the long run. If you're underpriced, your valuation will go up, and there is a greater demand for the unsold equity at a much higher premium. Being overpriced hurts that, and while profitable to the company in the short term, could affect the overall valuation in the long term.
Having read several obviously flawed interpretations of what companies like Bain Capital do, I was happy to read what Jellomizer had written because he's directionally accurate.
However, as someone who works in M&A, I can tell you that your comments are not even false, they are just plain stupid.
Step 1: Buy original company, generally in a hostile takeover (e.g. "leveraged buyout.".
Wrong. The vast majority of LBOs are actually facilitated by investors and shareholders who would rather not see the company fail. More often than not, those are the people who bring in outside help to fix the company, and hopefully get back some of their investment. The hostile takeover is immensely rare, and happens more often in Hollywood than in real life. Furthermore, most founders are happy to take investor money but do not accept the responsibility of having to pay it back. So, when crap hits the fan, the founders get replaced and the investors make the decisions. After all, they did get equity in exchange for cash. There is nothing hostile about it - it is simple business.
Step 2: Sell off company assets and transfer all monies to "parent company" (corporate raider), leaving nothing but debt in original company.
Actually, most PE firms try to fix the company that they buy, and bring in experts to restructure the company towards profitability. The companies whose assets get sold off were probably on the brink of failure and bankruptcy anyway, and as buyers, the PE firm pretty much owns the assets. If they see no way to fix the company, they would rather not bleed anymore and sell the assets. That is not wrong in any way.
Step 3: Leave remaining debt in original company, spin it back off into "independent" status, and let the debt be taken care of by bankruptcy court.
This almost never happens, mostly because of laws around these things. Secondly, it's not as simple as that because the PE firm has already invested some money into the company. More often than not, the investors bring in a firm to fix the company, and tend to portray the company to be better than it actually is. After all the documents are signed, the firms realize that the company is simply not redeemable, and they cut their losses and move on. The firms also invest time, money, and resources into evaluating the potential for a company to turn profitable. In instances where this isn't possible, the firms pull out, and the investors are saddled with more debt. But to blame it squarely on the folks who are brought in to turn the company to profitability is silly. How else would you compensate a firm brought in to fix a firm, but could not (more often than not because of long standing historic and legacy mistakes)? Should they do this work for free?
It's abuse of bankruptcy proceedings, really. And Romney made his millions off of this type of scam.
It's good business, plain and simple. You bring in someone to fix a company, pay them, and if they fix it, investors and fixers are happy; if they don't, they send you a check and move on. If you don't want them to fix a company, then don't bring them on board. Plain and simple.
I'm in touch with pretty much all of my good friends from college, almost after a decade after graduation. Your assumption is silly -- if you made good friends during your college years, you will still be able to call upon them later in life. But friendship, like any relationship, requires a degree of effort to cultivate and maintain.
College networking is what happens afterwards -- a decade after graduation, when you and your friends need to make deals, switch jobs, recommend someone, or just connect. That is the true value of networking.
For instance, Rabindranath Tagore and Pablo Neruda were both obligatory reading in Indian and Chilean schools, much before they won the Nobel. The same goes for Shaw, and a few others.
In a good many cases, the strength of the work in itself stands proof of the author's caliber, and the Nobel only strengthens it. In other cases, the Nobel brings to light what is otherwise a hidden gem.
One need not be exclusive of the other. There are several good authors who have both going for them. Off the cuff, Bertrand Russell, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, John Steinback, G.B. Shaw, Orhan Pamuk and Gabriel Garcia Marquez come to mind. And if you're in the mood for more serious writing, Sartre, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Neruda, and Naipaul come to mind.
Impact on cultural works today is not something the Nobel committee could have predicted half a decade ago. At that time, justifiably so, Tolkien's work was just mediocre writing.
If you only measure fiction by its cultural impact, then Isaac Asimov and Clarke should be up there, simply because of the quality and impact of their creations. However, it is a *Nobel* prize, and one for good literature -- while Asimov and Clarke were great (and prolific) writers, the quality of their writing in and of itself was nothing spectacular. In fact, this analogy could be extended to other domains, as well. The Nobel in physical sciences or the Fields medal are not given to what has the most impact, but rather what was the hardest nut to crack, and how well someone cracked it. In literature, while there isn't necessarily a problem to solve, the quality of writing and one's style go a long way in determining your qualification.
It's possible that that isn't the basis or purpose of the Nobel Price; but I would argue that people nearly a century later considering your work valuable is a pretty good measure of someone's work being good.
A work being popular for long periods of time is a very poor measure. By that standard, Tintin, Asterix, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or even Archie's have been around for over half a century.
In contrast, I have never heard the names of several others on the list, and likely would not unless I were specifically in a course studying literature.
I have not studied literature, at least not in an academic setting. However, I do enjoy reading, and I've read several of the pulp fiction authors and the ivory tower ones. And for the most part, I have to say that the quality of writing and the styles of the good authors are significantly better than the not-so-good ones, across the board. There's a certain degree of expertise and style there that's missing in the other authors. The difference is between Katy Perry and Joshua Bell. Now, is Katy Perry a bad artist because her music isn't "high end"? Of course not. However, her music lacks the rigor and technical depth that Bell's music has. And while both she and her band and Bell leading St. Martin in the Fields are musicians, they are nowhere near the same caliber.
Now, arguably, putting Tolkien into that category is a disservice to the man, but I am sad to say that he chose to emulate past epics in his writing, and did a poor job of it. He was great at creating worlds, he was an outstanding linguist, and he did a fantastic job of tying everything together. However, his writing itself left a lot to be desired. And that is what you're evaluated on, for a Nobel.
Ivo Andric was, and continues to be, quite popular. In fact, his work influenced both Serbian nationalism to a great extent (and unfortunately, even played a role in the Bosnian conflict and in heightening anti-muslim sentiments in the region).
Who was it that said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance"?
If we only went by applicability of our degrees, then by all means, things such as pure math will fall on the wayside. Never mind the fact that Fourier analysis was once considered pure math, and is now applied across the board in DSP.
Humanities and social sciences are the study of our civilization and of us. They are just as important as anything else in understanding the world around us.
Myopic outlooks like yours are the reason people end up not learning from their past mistakes, and why people are forced to do things that are distasteful because someone deemed them "unworthy". The whole "my tax should not be used for foo bar" view is, frankly, idiotic. There's always something that someone doesn't like that the taxes are used for. But that's the whole idea behind taxation -- it is for the good of us *all*.
And nothing is better for the good of us all than a well-educated and happy population that has been taught to think for itself.
I do not care what you study -- be it art, history, engineering, biology, or math -- just do your very best, and be sure you're passionate about it. At the end of the day, that is infinitely more valuable than doing something for the sake of doing it.
Well, as a frequent flyer, your odds against are unfavorably stacked against you.
As someone who flies a few hundred thousand miles on two different airlines every year, I would absolutely sign up for one of these courses. In the past several years as a frequent-flyer, I've been through several "oh-shit" moments. More so when you fly international in some parts of Eastern Europe (although domestic air travel in the US is just as bad as traveling in some of the less developed parts of the world -- some of those ERJs are scary, and very poorly maintained).
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But being fit for a marathon is very different than being strong, or even being fit as a sprint runner.
Marathon runners are usually very lean, and perhaps even gaunt. In contrast, sprint runners look more "average", if you will. And some of the strongest men look nothing like they you'd expect to be.
I think most people want to work out for aesthetic reasons, so that's a whole different ball game.
Fortunately, I did none of those. We found an empty studio at the gym, and did Insanity for an hour. Like I said, good health.
That was my point, i.e., concentrating on one muscle group and acting macho while ignoring others altogether (i.e. flabby biceps).
Their lifestyle is not the same as yours. We lead a much more sedentary lifestyle, and we consume a lot more in terms of raw quantity (and with increasing frequency). The idea behind wheat belly can be extended to carbs in general -- wheat, rice, corn etc. And I've found that cutting carbs and calories is the biggest factor in getting in shape, and lowering your bf%. You can skip everything else, but if you're maintaining a caloric deficit consistently, you'll lose weight.
I was at 19% body fat, and once I started cutting carbs and working out, I just started burning fat that much more quickly. The journey from 19% bf to 15% bf was a nightmare, but the journey from 15% bf to 12% bf was much easier. And the journey from 12% to under 10% was much, much harder, only because it requires an insane amount of discipline.
Unfortunately, the holidays wreaked havoc and I'm back in the 15% range, but I am amazed at how just simple things with your diet help a lot. Complex carbs and protein for breakfast (think oatmeal and eggs), salad with fruit for lunch, a couple of protein shakes in the afternoon, and salad for dinner. No cheat days. Watch your calories carefully (I use the LiveStrong MyPlate), and maintain a reasonable protein intake. You'll see progress in no time.
I would actually say that diet is infinitely more important than exercise. There's a reason it's said that six packs are made in the kitchen.
Someone who eats healthy and does not work out is often in better shape than someone who eats junk and "works out" for half hour a day. Most of those people just use their momentum to do some crazy exercises with piss poor forms, and eat unhealthy crap afterwards because they've worked out (think middle aged man with flabby biceps and a beer gut trying to bench press, when he probably has 30% body fat).
Of course it's boring when you start out. It's like everything else. When you start programming, you don't start writing game engines -- you start with the basics.
When you start working out, you start with the basics, such as cardio and working your basic muscle groups. But over time, you will get in good enough shape that you can start doing interesting things.
In fact, even if you just played a fast-moving sport regularly, you'll see a great improvement (think soccer or tennis, not baseball or golf).
One of the best hobbies I picked up was rock climbing. It's intense, and works all your muscle groups. And you work your legs, your upper body, and your core. Over time, you just get better and better, and you realize that your gym time actually helps you perform better at your choice sport.
Personally, I find that I can run more without tiring, that I am just stronger and have more stamina, for all activities. ;-) Plus, girls love washboard abs.
You know, I used to feel the same way (i.e. macros are more important, and as long as you got your nutrients, the source doesn't really matter).
But a while ago, I changed my lifestyle -- vegetarian, gave up alcohol, coffee, and most processed foods, and just started eating healthier foods in general.
I've seen a drastic difference in not just my fitness levels, but also my stamina. I'm having the flu right now, and yet, my buddies and I just had an intense workout out for over an hour at the gym, and I didn't even feel tired.
Things like interval workouts are great, but they only work to an extent. There's something to be said about putting your body in the "zone" (as far as heart rates and muscle groups are concerned) because when you're done thoroughly working out with an entire muscle group, and you'll see much better progress over time. This, of course, is my personal experience and quite anecdotal. YMMV.
To be fair, most people listening to Pink Floyd are probably high as fuck to even care if it's Floyd or a bullhorn being played.
A few points:
1. No underwriter worth their salt would ever agree to such a clause.
2. There is only so much you can model; a large part of it is market sentiment (especially for something like FB), which is quite hard to predict or gauge.
3. Being underpriced and volatile is better than being overpriced in the long run. If you're underpriced, your valuation will go up, and there is a greater demand for the unsold equity at a much higher premium. Being overpriced hurts that, and while profitable to the company in the short term, could affect the overall valuation in the long term.
Having read several obviously flawed interpretations of what companies like Bain Capital do, I was happy to read what Jellomizer had written because he's directionally accurate.
However, as someone who works in M&A, I can tell you that your comments are not even false, they are just plain stupid.
Wrong. The vast majority of LBOs are actually facilitated by investors and shareholders who would rather not see the company fail. More often than not, those are the people who bring in outside help to fix the company, and hopefully get back some of their investment. The hostile takeover is immensely rare, and happens more often in Hollywood than in real life. Furthermore, most founders are happy to take investor money but do not accept the responsibility of having to pay it back. So, when crap hits the fan, the founders get replaced and the investors make the decisions. After all, they did get equity in exchange for cash. There is nothing hostile about it - it is simple business.
Actually, most PE firms try to fix the company that they buy, and bring in experts to restructure the company towards profitability. The companies whose assets get sold off were probably on the brink of failure and bankruptcy anyway, and as buyers, the PE firm pretty much owns the assets. If they see no way to fix the company, they would rather not bleed anymore and sell the assets. That is not wrong in any way.
This almost never happens, mostly because of laws around these things. Secondly, it's not as simple as that because the PE firm has already invested some money into the company. More often than not, the investors bring in a firm to fix the company, and tend to portray the company to be better than it actually is. After all the documents are signed, the firms realize that the company is simply not redeemable, and they cut their losses and move on. The firms also invest time, money, and resources into evaluating the potential for a company to turn profitable. In instances where this isn't possible, the firms pull out, and the investors are saddled with more debt. But to blame it squarely on the folks who are brought in to turn the company to profitability is silly. How else would you compensate a firm brought in to fix a firm, but could not (more often than not because of long standing historic and legacy mistakes)? Should they do this work for free?
It's good business, plain and simple. You bring in someone to fix a company, pay them, and if they fix it, investors and fixers are happy; if they don't, they send you a check and move on. If you don't want them to fix a company, then don't bring them on board. Plain and simple.
I'm in touch with pretty much all of my good friends from college, almost after a decade after graduation. Your assumption is silly -- if you made good friends during your college years, you will still be able to call upon them later in life. But friendship, like any relationship, requires a degree of effort to cultivate and maintain.
College networking is what happens afterwards -- a decade after graduation, when you and your friends need to make deals, switch jobs, recommend someone, or just connect. That is the true value of networking.
Both, I would think.
For instance, Rabindranath Tagore and Pablo Neruda were both obligatory reading in Indian and Chilean schools, much before they won the Nobel. The same goes for Shaw, and a few others.
In a good many cases, the strength of the work in itself stands proof of the author's caliber, and the Nobel only strengthens it. In other cases, the Nobel brings to light what is otherwise a hidden gem.
One need not be exclusive of the other. There are several good authors who have both going for them. Off the cuff, Bertrand Russell, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, John Steinback, G.B. Shaw, Orhan Pamuk and Gabriel Garcia Marquez come to mind. And if you're in the mood for more serious writing, Sartre, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Neruda, and Naipaul come to mind.
That's a good recommendation. In fact, most of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writings are quite awesome, even if translated (from Spanish).
I'd also include My Name is Red and Snow by Orhan Pamuk, another Nobel winner, whose works were translated (from Turkish).
Impact on cultural works today is not something the Nobel committee could have predicted half a decade ago. At that time, justifiably so, Tolkien's work was just mediocre writing.
If you only measure fiction by its cultural impact, then Isaac Asimov and Clarke should be up there, simply because of the quality and impact of their creations. However, it is a *Nobel* prize, and one for good literature -- while Asimov and Clarke were great (and prolific) writers, the quality of their writing in and of itself was nothing spectacular. In fact, this analogy could be extended to other domains, as well. The Nobel in physical sciences or the Fields medal are not given to what has the most impact, but rather what was the hardest nut to crack, and how well someone cracked it. In literature, while there isn't necessarily a problem to solve, the quality of writing and one's style go a long way in determining your qualification.
A work being popular for long periods of time is a very poor measure. By that standard, Tintin, Asterix, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or even Archie's have been around for over half a century.
I have not studied literature, at least not in an academic setting. However, I do enjoy reading, and I've read several of the pulp fiction authors and the ivory tower ones. And for the most part, I have to say that the quality of writing and the styles of the good authors are significantly better than the not-so-good ones, across the board. There's a certain degree of expertise and style there that's missing in the other authors. The difference is between Katy Perry and Joshua Bell. Now, is Katy Perry a bad artist because her music isn't "high end"? Of course not. However, her music lacks the rigor and technical depth that Bell's music has. And while both she and her band and Bell leading St. Martin in the Fields are musicians, they are nowhere near the same caliber.
Now, arguably, putting Tolkien into that category is a disservice to the man, but I am sad to say that he chose to emulate past epics in his writing, and did a poor job of it. He was great at creating worlds, he was an outstanding linguist, and he did a fantastic job of tying everything together. However, his writing itself left a lot to be desired. And that is what you're evaluated on, for a Nobel.
Some (not all, of course) are indeed quite readable. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude comes to mind.
That's a very anglo-centric comment.
Ivo Andric was, and continues to be, quite popular. In fact, his work influenced both Serbian nationalism to a great extent (and unfortunately, even played a role in the Bosnian conflict and in heightening anti-muslim sentiments in the region).
I'd strongly recommend that you read his The Bridge on the Drina. Amazing masterpiece.
Do not confuse popularity with quality. After all, Twilight probably gets read more than Solzhenitsyn's works.
To quote Taleb:
Now, that is not to say that Tolkien's work was not good. But from a literary perspective, it was (and is) indeed quite mediocre.
They came for the spammers, and I cheered them on.
I know they are homeless, but even they don't deserve that. :-/
Who was it that said, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance"?
If we only went by applicability of our degrees, then by all means, things such as pure math will fall on the wayside. Never mind the fact that Fourier analysis was once considered pure math, and is now applied across the board in DSP.
Humanities and social sciences are the study of our civilization and of us. They are just as important as anything else in understanding the world around us.
Myopic outlooks like yours are the reason people end up not learning from their past mistakes, and why people are forced to do things that are distasteful because someone deemed them "unworthy". The whole "my tax should not be used for foo bar" view is, frankly, idiotic. There's always something that someone doesn't like that the taxes are used for. But that's the whole idea behind taxation -- it is for the good of us *all*.
And nothing is better for the good of us all than a well-educated and happy population that has been taught to think for itself.
I do not care what you study -- be it art, history, engineering, biology, or math -- just do your very best, and be sure you're passionate about it. At the end of the day, that is infinitely more valuable than doing something for the sake of doing it.
That's unfortunate, because that implies you stopped dreaming up custom Lego parts when you grew up.
Anyway, as an adult, I continue to dream up custom Lego parts, and even design some of them. And I wouldn't change it for anything.
Well, as a frequent flyer, your odds against are unfavorably stacked against you.
As someone who flies a few hundred thousand miles on two different airlines every year, I would absolutely sign up for one of these courses. In the past several years as a frequent-flyer, I've been through several "oh-shit" moments. More so when you fly international in some parts of Eastern Europe (although domestic air travel in the US is just as bad as traveling in some of the less developed parts of the world -- some of those ERJs are scary, and very poorly maintained).
"It's dead, Jim".