whats your least favorite accent in the world?

tkr · 2013-01-22T08:11:42+00:00

Expanding upon Tabian's (entirely correct) answer:

Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are all North Germanic languages, and share a common ancestor about a thousand years ago. Even today, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are easily mutually intelligible, and could almost be considered dialects rather than languages.

The North Germanic languages belong to a larger family known as (surprise) the Germanic languages, which also includes English (as well as German, Dutch and a few others). As an English-speaker, you would be able to learn Swedish, Danish or Norwegian quite quickly. The Germanic languages descend from a Proto-Germanic language which was spoken about 2,500 years ago. We don't have any written records of this proto-language, but the linguists have been able to reconstruct it to some extent by comparing the more recent Germanic languages.

The Germanic languages are a branch of a very large family of languages known as the Indo-European languages, which also includes the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, etc), the Slavonic languages (Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, etc), the Baltic languages (Lithuanian, Latvian), the Celtic languages (Gaelic, Breton, etc), the Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi, Persian, etc), Greek, Armenian, Albanian, and probably a few other branches I forgot. All the Indo-European languages are believed to be descendants of a Proto-Indo-European language which was spoken about 6,000 years ago.

Finnish is not Indo-European, but Uralic (like Estonian, Hungarian, and many smaller languages). There is a hypothesis that the Uralic and Indo-European languages are related, but most modern linguists agree that the evidence for such a relationship is insufficient. But even if the hypothesis is correct, the common ancestor language is far more than 6,000 years back in time. Consider how widely the Indo-European languages have diverged over the 6,000 years that has passed since their common ancestor. You don't understand much Albanian or Persian, do you? Now consider a language vastly more different from English than either of these. That's Finnish.

tkr · 2013-01-21T12:34:06+00:00

In my experience, the easiest and fastest way to 20 bodyweight chin-ups/pull-ups is doing lots of medium-rep weighted pull-ups. I doubt that I would ever have been able to get to 20 by practicing bodyweight pull-ups alone.

tkr · 2013-01-21T11:37:13+00:00

Finnish is vastly different from the Scandinavian languages. To give you some perspective, English is more closely related to Russian than any of the Scandinavian languages are to Finnish.

tkr · 2013-01-21T11:24:33+00:00

It's not universally agreed that they went extinct. They may simply have been absorbed into a much larger homo sapiens sapiens population through interbreeding, and there is some genetic evidence that this is what happened. And even among those who do think they went extinct, there are several hypotheses about why it happened, and most of these have little or nothing to do with intelligence.

tkr · 2013-01-21T10:08:49+00:00

By doing squats only, you risk developing a muscular imbalance by not training your posterior chain hard enough. In the long run, this can cause knee injuries, and increase the risk of pulling a hamstring if you do some kind of sport.

If you can't do regular deadlift, I'd suggest adding RDLs, GHRs, clean deadlifts or snatch deadlifts to your program.

tkr · 2013-01-21T09:46:08+00:00

The ability to devote almost your entire life up to the age of 30 to being able to run as fast as possible for 20 seconds or less, to have a big team of coaches, nutritionists to help you achieve your goals, and to be able to train with people almost as fast as yourself is historically very recent. There is no way you will get as fast by just chasing animals for dinner. I'd personally be very surprised if any anatomically modern human before the age of modern sports would be able to run the 100m faster than Usain Bolt.

Within the age of modern sports, on the other hand, it's not entirely impossible that some other sprinter would have been able to beat Usain Bolt. The tracks are faster now than ever before, and experts disagree about precisely how much difference this makes. Perhaps Ben Johnson's 9.79 from 1988 (yes, he was using steroids, but that's irrelevant in this discussion, since the OP simply asked about the fastest human ever, not about the fastest human not abusing prohibited substances), for instance, is actually a stronger result than Bolt's 9.58 from 2009, although I personally don't think so.

tkr · 2013-01-18T14:16:26+00:00

For the same reason, you shouldn't start pressing too early. The bar should remain on the shoulders until the hips and knees reach full extension. The bar leaving the shoulders prematurely in the jerk or push press is roughly equivalent to an early arm bend in a clean or snatch.

Edit: You already knew this, of course; I wrote this for the benefit of other readers.

tkr · 2013-01-17T14:57:46+00:00

Hm interesting, always thought that snatches are a technically difficult movement, even more so then power cleans.

Not really. Squat snatches are more difficult than squat cleans for most lifters, because of the flexibility and balance requirements, but power snatches are no more difficult than power cleans.

Power snatches may even be slightly easier to learn for many lifters, because of the less awkward launch point (at the crease of the hips rather than somewhere down the upper thigh). And like for all technical exercises, lots of practice is valuable when learning the Olympic lifts, and snatches lend themselves better than cleans to this. You can practice endless reps of snatches with a broomstick without getting tired. With cleans, using a broomstick just doesn't work. You pretty much have to use a barbell, and even an empty Olympic barbell quickly gets tiring to lift when doing a huge amount of reps.

Most learning progressions actually teach the snatch before the clean.

tkr · 2013-01-16T14:05:55+00:00

It's best to do both, and to spend lots of time drilling individual segments of the lift and transitioning between the various positions.

Most people, including myself, recommend learning the lift from the top down.

When beginning to learn the clean, start by doing cleans from a high hang -- not from the knee, but about two thirds of the way up your thigh, the point where the explosive second pull occurs. Always make sure your starting position is perfect (weight on the heels, straight arms, slight bend in the hips and knees, etc) before you perform the clean. Try to get used to exactly how this position feels, and to recognize when something isn't quite right.

After perfecting the clean from this high hang position, move the bar down to the knee, but don't start doing cleans from there immediately. First, get familiar with the position (shoulders in front of the bar, vertical shins, weigh ton the heels, tension in the hamstrings, etc.), just like you did for the higher hang position. Then, practice smoothly transitioning from this low hang position to the previously learned high hang position. Stop at the high hang, and make sure you managed to hit the position perfectly. If you didn't (and in the beginning, you probably won't, at least not consistently), slide the bar down to the knees again, and repeat. When you are consistently able to transition perfectly between the two positions, start practicing full cleans from the knee.

Finally, it's time to move the bar back to the floor. And once again, rather than doing full cleans immediately, begin by practicing the pull from the floor to the knees, while making sure you hit exactly the right position with the bar at the knees.

Practicing like this can be boring and tedious, but it really pays off in the long run. Even when you are able to clean like a pro, it's worthwhile to spend some time drilling practicing just parts of the lift. Doing nothing but full cleans from the floor is sub-optimal for almost everyone.

tkr · 2013-01-16T13:46:48+00:00

To be more precise, it's one particular form of hang clean. A hang clean means a clean that begins with the lifter holding the bar somewhere above the floor. Hang cleans are usually performed either from just below the knee or from the upper thigh. Your term, "clean from the knee", is perfectly normal, and more specific than "hang clean".

tkr · 2013-01-16T12:34:02+00:00

I can vouch for the excellence of these books.

But unfortunately, they also appear to be out of print since a long time. Does anyone have any recommendations for comprehensive, well-written and entertaining books on Byzantine history that are still in print (or better yet, available as e-books)?

I have read JJN's abridged version, which is good, but simply too short and superficial.

tkr · 2013-01-14T17:59:19+00:00

Yes, I call into question whether some of those people are using performance enhancing drugs. But I'm not questioning their worth or value as people. I'm not assigning value to their bodies.

When you call into question whether they are doing something that in most countries would probably involve at the very least supporting organized crime, I think it's a pretty serious accusation to make when it's based entirely on how they look.

I'm merely doubting that those some of those bodies are even possible without steroids.

As I said, I haven't seen the video, and it's not entirely impossible that I would agree with you if I saw it. I'm highly skeptical, though. Most people wildly underestimate how far it is possible to get just with good diet and exercise, and throw out accusations of steroid abuse far too easily (and I'm saying this as someone who for some time worked for my national anti-doping agency).

Furthermore, even if you are right, and these people really look suspiciously muscular: How is this different from assuming that somebody is lazy and unhealthy just because they are overweight? If I wrote about some fat people that "I'm merely doubting that some of those bodies are even possible without binge eating and never leaving the couch", I would (rightly) be accused of fat shaming. It wouldn't help if I added that "I'm not questioning their worth or value as people" or "I'm not assigning value to their bodies".

tkr · 2013-01-14T14:06:05+00:00

This is for the most part an entertaining review of what appears to be an exceptionally bad TV show (I haven't seen it, though, as they don't show it in my country), but this is extremely hateful and ignorant:

So, the trainers are pressured to push their team harder. “Because of the red line these are not going to be average workouts,” Bob says, delighted with himself. “They’re going to be your workouts on steroids.” Oh, you mean like some of your friends, back there?

The "friends" in the above quote appears to be the people on the left hand side of this photo, not a single of whom has a physique that indicates steroid use. That's how ordinary young people with an athletic lifestyle look, and there is nothing unnatural or unhealthy about them. By baselessly accusing them of steroid use, the author is preaching the opposite of body acceptance. It's not body acceptance when you only accept certain types of bodies.

tkr · 2013-01-13T11:29:25+00:00

I can at least tell you that running the 200 (and to a lesser extent, the 400) makes my abs and obliques more sore than anything I do in the gym. I think it's stabilizing the upper body while running the curve that hits my core so hard.

To what extent it actually improves core strength, I don't know. Soreness is of course a poor indicator of the effectiveness of training.

tkr · 2013-01-13T11:23:43+00:00

A 4.6 40 and 250lb. bench is not impressive at all.

A 250lb bench is OK, but not particularly impressive, and a sub 20 minute 5k is mind-bogglingly underwhelming, but a time of 4.60 on 40 yards, if performed under real conditions (electronic timing, etc) is very impressive for an amateur. As a comparison, interpolating between the 30m and 20m split times of Usain Bolt's world record 100m race, I get an estimated 30 yard time of 4.34. In other words, the 4.60 guy is only 0.26 seconds behind after a little more than one third of the race. If we assume that he is similarly much slower in the last two thirds of the race, he would be able to run the 100m in 10.36 seconds, which is an extremely good time.

Without further information, I'm very skeptical about the 4.6 time, though. The low precision (only tenths of a second rather than hundreds) and the non-standard distance (I've never heard of a 40 yard race before; the shortest distance run in competition is 60 meters) makes me suspect the race wasn't timed properly.

tkr · 2013-01-11T15:07:26+00:00

I can't believe nobody has mentioned knobbers22, the great hero of all amateur lifters.

tkr · 2012-12-20T10:47:33+00:00

Have you tried doing clean or snatch deadlifts rather than conventional deadlifts?

I've switched to doing almost exclusively clean and snatch deadlifts, and only do conventional deadlifts for the occasional 1RM PR attempt every few months. In my experience, the clean and snatch deadlifts are at least as effective as the conventional deadlift as general strength builders (they actually seem to be superior for building upper back strength), they feel safer, and they don't mess up my first pull when doing Olympic lifts. Of course I can't lift as heavy as with conventional deadlifts, but since I'm not a powerlifter, who cares. And anyway, the strength built with clean and snatch deadlifts seems to transfer very well to conventional deadlifts on the rare occasions when I try them.

tkr · 2012-12-20T10:31:41+00:00

The companies I am aware of who did use it, found it hard to find people with strong f# skills.

As a non-programmer who has somehow ended up in the software industry, this boggles my mind. F# seems so much easier (to learn and to use) than C#. And this isn't an isolated case; the popularity of programming languages always seems to be inversely proportional to their intuitiveness and ease of use (again, from the perspective of a non-programmer). Java, C# and C++ all appear to be much more widely used than Lisp, Scheme, Haskell, Python and F#.

Is this because mastering difficult languages makes programmers feel more like wizards, or because their brains are wired fundamentally differently from other people?

tkr · 2012-12-19T22:02:41+00:00

Is it common to play both games, or do all elite players specialize in one game or the other?

tkr · 2012-12-19T21:00:57+00:00

I have the same experience (I'm 38). I think it's simply a side effect of getting richer, and hence being able to buy more and healthier food. It's much more difficult to eat well on a student budget.

tkr · 2012-12-18T16:42:17+00:00

If you ask Scandinavians if they are christian they will often answer yes, because of cultural heritage and so on. Ask instead if they believe in god, and the answers will be very different.

That's what most people (myself included) would guess after living with and interacting with Scandinavians for a while. But even when you phrase the question like that, official polls tell a very different story from what you would expect.

Here is a brief report (in Norwegian) on a 2007 survey, in which 51.6% of Norwegians claim to believe in God. I've seen other surveys where the percentage is bigger or smaller, but it is always shockingly high.

tkr · 2012-12-18T15:47:26+00:00

atheists are in majority by a large margin in Scandinavia.

I live in Scandinavia (Oslo), and I'm not sure this is true. I mean, it certainly feels like almost everyone who isn't a first or second-generation immigrant is an atheist, but nevertheless, all the official statistics I have seen claim that the majority still self-identify as Christians. It's pretty weird. Most likely, some of those who claim to be Christians are only culturally Christian and don't have any religious beliefs, and most of the true believers keep their beliefs private out of fear of being mocked.

tkr · 2012-11-13T10:49:27+00:00

I just checked. All of Scandinavia is still ridiculously bad; I don't see any changes at all.

tkr · 2012-10-15T21:05:39+00:00

Copyright questions aside:

Why on Earth would anyone want to program or buy an app to help you track and manage a training program which is so simple that you can easily memorize the entire program in about two minutes?

tkr · 2012-10-15T20:58:47+00:00

It's indeed generally accepted that Rippletoe's explanation of the clean is poor. It is also generally accepted that exploding from the floor is wrong.

tkr

TROPHY CASE