Generally, activities that are prohibitively difficult, functionally pointless, demonstrate an excess of leisure time, and confer in-group social status for those who are especially competent. Concretely, dancing, circus skills and rock climbing seem to draw a suspiciously nerdy and educated crowd.
There are numerous serious lifting forums on the web that will critique your beginner cleans (for free) out of the goodness their hearts. You just need to film it and upload the video. So do this with lighter weights and see what people say., make the adjustments and ask again. Also, definitely start with cleans--they are a lot safer than snatches and much easier to master.
As someone who has been in this situation, pullup negatives have worked for me. I would also add regular jumping pullups, without the negatives. As you do more, your jumping abilities will decrease and youll start to rely more on your arms/back, thus building those muscles. Most gyms also have an assisted pullup machine.
On a related note, am I the only person who struggles with the search system on Less Wrong? There have been a few times where it takes me unusually long to find the article I am looking for, even if I remember a direct quote or concept from that article and use that in my search.
Is there a way to only search for articles, or only search for comments, or only search for articles written by a specific person? This might help solve my problem.
Is it possible that she could suggest to the Cryonics Institute that they could set up an account in her name and we could donate directly to that account, cutting out the middleman but still directly contributing to this girl?
Also, I think that if it was a scam choosing cryonics is probably a bad choice since plenty of people even in an atheist forum seem to be against it, and thus its not as likely to generate as much sympathy. I think she could have said "I want to go on a safari in Africa" or some sort of trip that is moderately expensive (just like the skydiving comments claim) and received more funding.
Is it possible that she could suggest to the Cryonics Institute that they could set up an account in her name and we could donate directly to that account, cutting out the middleman but still directly contributing to this girl?
This comment on CI's Facebook page indicates that she and CI are in the process of setting that up.
When that is established, I plan to donate $500. (If anyone sees that it is set up, and I haven't followed up yet, respond to this comment.)
(ETA: There is now a fund set up by the Society for Venturism, and I have made my donation th...
While Planned Parenthood clearly could be biased, they state (noteably without a reference) that " Women typically pay between $15 and $50 a month in co-pays for birth control pills — $180 to $600 a year." Even $180 is pretty expensive.
They also claim that " More than one-third of all women voters have struggled to pay for prescription birth control at some point in their lives, and have as a result used birth control inconsistently."
Finally, "On average, a woman spends 30 years of her life trying to avoid pregnancy. That means 30 years of paying for birth control."
People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).
If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the over...
I would make a list of specific fears; even though you said your fears were general, I'd bet that you probably have some fears that pop into your head. For example, list of all the fears you have about applying for a job. Then, if you have a close friend or family member, show them the list and ask them to evaluate the fears for you. That might help you to identify the unlikelyhood of something terrible happening; their advice might help you realize that a lot of your fears are unfounded or highly unlikely. And it might help you to figure out which fear...
This reminds me of an episode of The West Wing, where President Bartlett is inspired by Kennedy’s To the Moon speech, and decides that he wants to make a similar dramatic statement. In his case, it was to have a cure cancer in ten years. In my mind, curing cancer is similar, in intent at least, to universal healthcare—essentially, using medicine to help more people live longer, healthier lives. However, I think that curing a disease a disease or providing everyone with basic healthcare, while extremely beneficial to society, is not quite as inspirationa...
As much as you don't think school size matters, from personal experience, it can matter a lot. As you are interested in the sciences, I would recommend not attending one of the smaller colleges, even if they are top ranked (Haverford, Swarthmore, Amherst etc). If you look at their course curriculum, they don't have the number of students or resources to have a wide variety of upper level courses.
A larger research university, while it might have lower admissions standards, would have a much more diverse set of classes to choose from and more research op...
It is encouraging avoidant behavior, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Given a job you don't want to do at work? See if someone will trade with you; they might not mind it so much. Assigned a task for what you consider a bad reason, like covering someone's a**? Come up with a more productive solution and try to convince your boss. Trying to "get out of something" isn't negative; sometimes it just means convinving others to use common sense or pooling your resources (time, effort) with someone else.
The Marine Corps has two maxims that I find useful in beating akrasia:
-If you can’t get out of it, get into it.
-False motivation is still motivation.
If you have to do something, you might as well find a way to make it fun (even if its a stupid way). Being ridiculously overenthusiastic about whatever it is you don't want to do is often enough to make the activity enjoyable. In the Marine Corps, this usually amounts to Marines yelling silly sounds at the top of their lungs or doing things as fast as they can or in a overly exaggerated manner, but I can attest to the fact that the maxims work well in the my rest of life too.
You are correct in that my number was wrong . I think the percentage of males increased (or females decreased) because 52% was the number that was always thrown around when I was in college (I went to a women's college so yes, it was thrown around quite a lot).
My number was about females in the US, not worldwide.
Maybe you could claim that men don't look down on men who date bimbos...But then again as Laurie6 pointed out, theres that pesky other 50.6% of the population that you are in fact including when you say we.
And based on personal experience, many women look down on men who date bimbos just as much they look down on men who date teenagers.
Isn't it also not "hot and sunny" in the evening? Couldn't you run right before sundown, or in the dark with reflectors on streets with lights?
I am just asking because I had the same problem, until I realized that I just liked the idea of working out in the morning, not actually working out in the morning. I wanted to be one of those people who works out at the crack of dawn. By accepting that I am just not one of those people, and working out at lunch and in the evening, I am working out a lot more than when I kept telling myself that "t...
The study you quoted only seems to address if signing helped the child learn spoken word labels about certain toys.
The (possible) benefit of signing is that the child can communicate with you about whether they are hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, have a wet diaper, etc.--not about whether the child can name different toys. The study doesn't address whether or not sign language reduces frusteration in children or whether children can learn signs for how they feel faster or slower than they can learn the same spoken words.
I think that is a great setup for a home gym.
If you can afford it, I would also throw a kettlebell or some "under the door" pullup bars in there.
Or, on a separate note, a foam roller to help with muscle tightness and flexibility. I think its the best piece of athletic equipment I have ever bought. These are amazing and well worth it.
There is a reason boxers jump rope.
If you can, I would learn to do double unders...and then do a tabata of double unders. That should be a good workout.
I would consider regular jumping rope it in the same category doing intervals in running/swimming/biking, so that is how I would treat the workouts (at least, until you can do 5 mins without stopping). So while you are learning to do double unders, I would maybe just do 5-6 sets of regular jumping to a certain number so that the last 3 sets are very challenging. One or two sets won't cut it.
From my experience as a female lifter who trains with other females, females do not need to progress more slowly to get long term gains. 5 lb increases per week on a deadlift and every other week on the other exercises is very, very reasonable (possibly too reasonable) in non-skill based moves like these. Even females should be able to experience a few months of lifting heavier each time if they follow the weight increase guidelines here.
However, smaller females (less than 110lbs) or those who have never really worked out might need to start with a lig...
Long post--my apologies.
Background:
I have been trying for a while now to follow the paleo (or caveman) diet. I think the argument for the diet seems legitimate enough (or, I should say, I am not smart enough in those areas to disprove their argument). Additionally, there seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence in favor of the diet, especially from people with auto-immune diseases, which I have. So for those two reasons, I have been trying to make it a permanent lifestyle change; what ends up happening is that I struggle through one week and rebound into...
I have noticed the same thing about television, in particular with certain programs motivating me to go exercise.
I also noticed, however, that I had to be careful about when I watched TV, because the effect was so strong. Watching The Biggest Loser or youtube Crossfit videos (highly recommended) would get me so excited to workout that it started affecting my bedtime--namely that I wouldn't be able to go to sleep because I was so excited.
I found that I need to watch those programs at least three hours prior to my bedtime in order to be able to fall asleep. The end result is that I now only watch them on weekends or my lunch break.
The Giver trilogy is age appropriate and well-written dystopian children's novel. I remember very distinctly that this was my first exposure to what seemed like a plausible future world. (I read this in 4th grade so it might be too easy. )
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would also be good; I read this in 6th grade and it was book that sparked my interest in sci-fi.
Hi, I’m Brigid. I’ve been reading through the Sequences for a few weeks now, and am just about to start the Quantum Section (about which I am very excited). I found out about this site from an email the SIAI sent out. I’m an Signals Intelligence officer in the Marine Corps and am slated to get out of the military in a few months. I’m not too sure what I am going to do yet though; as gung-ho as I originally was about intel, I’m not sure I want to stay in that specific field. I was a physics and political science major in college, with a minor in women’...
1) Being compared to a poet in a forum that emphasizes logic is not a compliment; rather, it seems to be polite critique that implies that you present your ideas in a purposefully (and needlessly) confusing manner. 2) Your actual argument appears to be “actually doing something is better than just wishing you did something.” If you have somewhere interesting to go with this, very well, I’d be interested to hear it. But so far, it’s appears to be a cliché thought hidden in superfluous verbiage. 3) I am also new here, and I can readily identify that your initial post was nowhere near the standards of the articles under the Discussion tab, let alone the standards of the Main tab.
I grew up a practicing Quaker. While some Friends "pray" during Meeting (what we call church), others practice mindful meditation. So while I regularly practice what I believe qualifies as mindful meditation, I haven't been formerly trained. And also, what has worked for me in helping me learn how to focus, might not work for you; it has, however, worked for some of my friends, so it could at least help someone who reads this. In addition to daily meditation attempts, which are important even they are only for 5 minutes, it might be easier i...
While having a B.S. in physics will likely be sufficient to enter all those graduate fields, it doesn't (as was stated above somewhere) qualify you for a whole lot outside of applying to graduate programs--or impressing people in fields of mostly liberal arts majors. So be absolutely sure you are comfortable with going directly into a gradate program after college. There are very few "cool" jobs you can get with just the bachelors. Out of my graduating physics class, all but one went on to graduate programs. That one individual took a job doing something for a patent office.
Removing the less competent officers is obviously a good call, but how does that call get made? How is it different than what is currently being done?
I disagree with the logic that being given stronger incentives will help senior officers win wars. What kind of incentives/disincentives could be offered? Increasing monetary rewards or job promotions could lead to ethical violations, while at the same time not necessarily helping our performance.
Fear of losing their job? I would guess that the most common reason for a senior officer gets kicked out is... (read more)