The Metrics of Fitness: What Makes Someone Athletic?

Lately I’ve been thinking about what it takes to be athletic. What are the measurements, skills, and abilities that make someone so? Should you be able to jump high? Run far? Or land a ball on a target from 100 paces?

Even with the help of stodgy dictionary definitions, the question of what makes somebody athletic is a broad one. The interpretations are varied but there are common factors that can generally be agreed upon. This article outlines the research and thought that I’ve put into the subject, and attempts to find an answer that covers all bases. After all, how can you land a ball on a target when you don’t know what the target looks like?

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Marcel Proust: Lessons from an Oppressable Author

Sometimes I think the world is against me — and I’m a white male, age 21 to 49. What if I were, say, sickly, or homosexual, or part of an oft-persecuted religious group, or even French!

Marcel Proust was all those things.

Yet, Proust’s seven volume story À la recherche du temps perdu was called the “greatest fiction to date”. Despite being an obvious target for persecution, he became of the most celebrated authors of the 20th century. How’s he do it?

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Why Setting Goals Isn’t Enough

My father grew up a dirt farmer in Eastern Europe. The periods between wars were never long; soon his rural corner of the world was conquered by fascist forces. He was issued a new name, papers, and expected to speak a new language. A few years later, communist forces claimed the area. He was issued army boots and religious beliefs at the barrel of a gun.

He’d had enough.

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Different Approaches to Building Muscle and Burning Fat

Recently I challenged myself to put on 10 lbs of muscle in 3 months. I managed to do it. Unfortunately, with those 10 lbs came another 8 lbs of fat. When I started burning the fat with aerobic exercise I found my muscle gains eroded too. “I’m taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back,” I thought.

This was a problem that needed mitigation so I did some research on the subject. Here’s what I learned about winning the tug of war between fat and muscle.

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Fudge Factor: The Deception of Seeming Fit

When a fitness program/product/book/DVD/diet/etc. claims extraordinary results, it sets off our collective BS detectors. Yet many people eagerly shell out their money anyway. Why?

Purveyors of fitness don’t sell health, they sell hope. They sell the Hail Mary, the chance that a miracle just might happen. These dreams become so much more believable when there’s “evidence” to back them up. Fortunately for the purveyors, the measurement of fitness is a confusing, inaccurate science.

I call the techniques they use the “fudge factor.” They’re technicalities, temporary solutions, visual tricks and mismeasurements used to make someone seem fit, but with no real or lasting effect. Here are some of the grifters’ scams, exposed.

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How to Hate Life and Be Happy

Are you ready? Here is the secret to being happy…

42.

A human pursuing happiness is like a cat trying to catch the red dot from a laser pointer. It’s constantly moving, changing, erratic, and even when it stays still long enough you can’t actually grab it.

Why? Because happiness is just a word. It is the interpretation of that word the makes all the difference. And that interpretation is different from person to person, second to second. The question of happiness is unclear, so the answer might as well be arbitrary. 42.

So to balance out the wealth of cookie cutter advice (e.g. “get a dog”), let’s clarify the happiness question by looking at one single aspect: satisfaction. Or more accurately, how to be dissatisfied with life, yet still feel authentic when you smile.

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Facial Fatness: Visual Comparisons of Chubby Cheeks and Manorexia

According to World Health Organization specifications, I’ve qualified as both “Overweight” and “Underweight” at different points in my life. Both situations dramatically changed how I looked. This was especially noticeable by my face.

When I really got the hang of losing weight and could do so without much effort, I started noticing the aesthetic downsides of having very low body fat. I couldn’t find any decent comparisons of facial appearance versus body fat percentage, so I decided to swallow my pride and share my experiences on the subject. Here goes, pictures and all.

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The Post Hoc Fallacy of Motivation

Today I want to tear a whole page of excuses from your personal phrase book.

Do you know what a post hoc fallacy is? It is an incorrect assumption made because one thing happens after another. For example, one might think winter itself creates flowers, because flowers grow after winter. A number of things are responsible for spring flowers, but winter is the least of them.

Motivation suffers from a post hoc fallacy. Many people assume motivation is required to get things done. This is not true. Thinking like this leaves us functionally impotent.

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Personal Observations of Wealth in Switzerland

I was sorting the mail like I usually do. Bill, bill, flyer, flyer… and a thick manila envelope; its size and strange markings signalling its importance. Inside it was the news that I would be relocating to Switzerland in the next few weeks. “Oh crap,” I thought, “I better start packing.”

Now that I am living in Confederatio Helvetica I have had the opportunity to observe wealth close up. Here’s how one of the highest per-capita ranked nations in the world lives, and what financial lessons we can take from it.

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Noprobo Update Numéro Cinq

Now that I’m settled in the land of cheese and chocolate and numbered accounts, I can put some more time into Noprobo. I started by improving the look of the site, which used to be about as polished as 30 grit sandpaper.

Also, I have a few articles that will be featured outside Noprobo. Look for my writing in great blogs and publications everywhere.

And finally, I will be posting my Challenges on YouTube. Look out 2006, here I come!