Sport is fun, but does it make you smarter?
{ Helmut Smits, Football stadium, 2002 | fruit crate boxes, fruits, wood, stands, halogen work lights, grass carpet }
sport category
Every time I think about the Poom Poom
{ Kellie Everts, bodybuilding pioneer, photographed by Jean-Paul Goude, Playboy, May 1977 | Enlarge: 1/2/3 }
Pump it up loud New York City
A Wall Street broker accused of throwing a hedge-fund manager into a wall during a cycling class has been acquitted.
A Manhattan Criminal Court jury found 44-year-old Christopher Carter not guilty of assault against fellow health club member Stuart Sugarman.
Carter had complained about the 48-year-old Sugarman’s loud hollering and grunting during the high-impact spin class and asked him to quiet down. Sugarman says he refused. He says Carter lifted his exercise bike and hurled him into a wall, damaging a disc in his neck.
Both men weigh about 200 pounds.
{ AP/WTOP | Continue reading }
On Aug. 15, 2007, Mr. Carter was two bikes away from Stuart Sugarman, in a spinning class at the gym, an Equinox sports club. Mr. Sugarman, a senior partner at an investment firm, was grunting, groaning and shouting, issuing exclamations like “You go girl!”
I was like oh shit dude he’s gunu ollie the gap
A Fredericton man who refused to pay a fine for skateboarding on city streets has been taken into custody and will be sent to jail.
Lee Breen, 25, was fined in the summer of 2007 after receiving several warnings. After not paying the initial $50 fine, it was increased to $100. A judge then ordered him in April to pay the fine or be sent to jail for five days. (…)
Skateboarding on streets is a safety issue, said Wayne Knorr, spokesman for the City of Fredericton (Canada).
“When you put individuals like that into traffic, you create safety problems, and when you are backing up traffic and preventing them from making their turns, then you are creating a nuisance along the street,” Knorr said.
But Breen said he takes precautions while skateboarding by wearing a helmet, avoiding sidewalks and making hand signals.
When the proper precautions are taken, riding a skateboard is no more dangerous than riding a bike in the city, which is allowed, Breen said.
The ollie is an aerial skateboarding trick, invented by Alan “Ollie” Gelfand in 1976 and later adapted to flat ground by Rodney Mullen. The ollie serves as a basis for many other skateboarding tricks. The trick is also known as the “no hands aerial,” because when performing an ollie, the skateboarder does not grab the board at all, and no accessories are attached to the skateboard.
To the fuckin’ airport
The people of the Balkan states are best known for their indomitable spirit and their adoption of pop culture trends 20 years after they’ve expired in America. The sum of these two qualities coalesced on September 10, 2006 when Krunoslav Budiselic set the world record for the greatest distance moonwalked in one hour. Krunoslav managed to cover 5.255 km (3.265 miles) moonwalking at the Athletic Stadium Mladost, in Zagreb, Croatia on that fateful day.
{ The 8 least impressive Guinness world records | Cracked | Continue reading }
illustration { Groggie }
Triple decker
new york craigslist > manhattan > missed connections
Girl with skateboard, green bookbag and suitcase on downtown 3 train - m4w
Date: 2008-03-22, 2:02PM EDTI got on at 34th street and you sat opposite me a little bit further down. I just wanted to say you were absolutely beautiful and had the most amazing eyes I have ever seen. I had the black northface jacket and messenger bag. You got off at bergen street…maybe you’ll read this and respond or at least get a smile.
I haven’t a clue what’s going on, but your taste in champagne is excellent
Luck accounts for far more than we think. But all success, in life and investing, not derived from luck—derives from rational judgment and decision making under conditions of uncertainty.
We prefer action over inaction. When there’s an economic downturn, officials are more likely to decide to ‘do something’—even if the consequences of action might make things worse than inaction. They want to avoid the criticism of having ‘done nothing’.
Entrepreneurs and investors with a chosen process (strategy) and disappointing outcomes (results) are often at a crossroads and must choose ‘stay the course’ or ‘switch strategies’. If staying the course works, they may save their role or their company. If it doesn’t they’re more likely to be canned for not ‘doing something’. It’s the same reason most investors sell their stocks as soon as prices move against them, focusing on outcomes instead of determining if the facts have changed and if their process is still sound.
In soccer, during a penalty shot, there’s a split second from when the ball is kicked to when the goalie chooses to leap left or right to make a save. Goalies rarely stand still in the middle to make a save. As with investors, there’s a bias to action.
Goalkeepers are more likely to leap left or right than stand still. With tenths of a second to respond the goalie must size up the kicker and choose to jump and which way, without complete information (that is: seeing the kicked ball in trajectory). 80% of all kicks get past goalies. That’s an interesting number when you consider a similar percentage of fund managers underperforms the market.
The scientists studying the odds of goalies stopping kicks concluded that a goalie’s best strategy was to stay in the center (33% of the time) versus 14% to the left and 13% to the right. Based on today’s data, the goalies only stood still 6% of the time. Of course strategy can be a complex adaptive system and if kickers or their coaches read this and they know that goalies are more likely to adopt this new strategy and stand in the center, then the kickers are better off kicking left or right, unless they think the goalies think they think that. Ad infinitum.
{ Josh Wolfe’s newsletter, March 07, 2008 }
