John's blog

Assorted links

John — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:05:18 +0000

Brown fat and weight loss (why take a pill? just do polar bear swims)
Mobile phone data reveals human reproductive strategies
Testosterone cuts female cooperation
On soccer, boredom, chaos, and beauty
% of deadbeat moms higher than deadbeat dads
Peter Thiel gives $900k to Ron Paul PAC

The mind tricks of Bill Belichick

John — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:52:51 +0000

From the same mind who knows how to motivate men, Belichick is at it again.

INDIANAPOLIS -- For what is thought to be the first time in Super Bowl history, the New England Patriots simulated game conditions for Sunday by taking a 31-minute "halftime" break during Wednesday's practice.

After practicing for an hour, the Patriots went inside the locker room for 30 minutes as they will during halftime of Super Bowl XLVI before returning to the field to finish out the second half of the practice.

"We were trying to simulate the best we can," Bill Belichick said Thursday in a pool report. "It's not perfect but it's the best we could do. Practice, take a break, come back out and restart."

Belichick gave them a realistic half-time pep talk.

"Even when the players came in at halftime of the practice, Belichick spoke to them as if it were halftime of the Super Bowl."

He even tried to simulate home-field advantage.

In addition to simulating a halftime break at practice, the Patriots brought photos from their team facility and put them up at the team hotel for a "home" feeling the week before the Super Bowl.

Belichick is re-designing his players' habitat to produce better outcomes. That's exactly the type of stuff we do here at Hunter-Gatherer.com.

Here's the full article.

Sh*t barefoot runners say

John — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:56:57 +0000

Funny.

Thanks to Jon for the link.

Bill Belichick knows how to motivate men

John — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:00:32 +0000

We live in a country that has bought into the cult of self-esteem. Everyone gets a participation trophy, everyone is unique snowflake. This is a terrible way to motivate men. Men thrive in contexts where there is an surfeit of respect, where respect must be earned through accomplishment.

In the run-up to the Super Bowl, ESPN ran an article on Bill Belichik, head coach of the New England Patriots, and how he motivates his players. Does he do it with self-esteem? Not exactly. His film sessions are legendary for cutting players down to size.

The Belistrator is an equal-opportunity humiliator. He doesn't care if you are a young safety or a first-ballot Hall of Famer; if you mess up, he's going to hold you accountable.

And then he's going to degrade you.

Former linebacker Don Davis was a popular and revered figure in New England's locker room. He was a pastor who coordinated Bible study groups for the players and proved to be a tireless worker on the field and in the weight room. He even earned the offseason conditioning award.

"So there's this one play that made Don look really bad," Vrabel recalled. "Bill showed it a few times then said, 'Offseason award winner, my ass. You look like a cow on ice.' Tedy [Bruschi] and I were in the back laughing our butts off.

"Of course, it's only funny until it happens to you."

Belichick's current and former players and coaches say his vicious film critiques have been part of his motivational arsenal for as long as they can remember...

"It was very, very effective," said Brad Seely, the former Patriots and current San Francisco 49ers special teams coach.

Belichick uses humor and humiliation in a social context to keep his players hungry. He denies respect to athletes who have been given respect (and adulation) their entire athletic careers. A lot of players can't deal with the loss of respect.

After Patriots rookies are handed their playbooks, if they are fortunate, a veteran will pull them aside and prep them for the devastating beatdown that each of them invariably will experience.

Most learn to take it; some never can. Those players do not last in the Patriots' organization.

"The idea is to take it personally," Bruschi said. "Bill wants you to do that. You get angry, and you get embarrassed. But then you get to the point where you want to fix it, and fix it badly."

...

Deion Branch said if you are looking for positive feedback to soothe your ego, New England is the wrong place to play. The idea, he said, is to push you to the brink, then reel you back in so "you can prove Bill wrong."

"He never compliments you," linebacker Rob Ninkovich said. "He'll throw you a little something once in a while, but it's never, 'Good job.' It's more like, 'Well, you did a little better with this.'"

This, from the most intellectual coach in football.

How else is Belichick supposed to motivate a guy like Tom Brady, who already has three Super Bowl rings, wealth, social status, and Giselle? By denying him what everyone else gives him: respect.

Past Patriots veterans fondly remember the time Tom Brady uncharacteristically threw a weak, fluttering pass. As they left the stadium, Brady announced, "Bring the popcorn. I'll be the star of tomorrow's show." Sure enough, when the lights were dimmed and the film began rolling, there was Brady in technicolor, tossing a wounded duck up for grabs -- over and over again.

In that instance, the coach let the picture tell the story. Then he clicked on the lights and announced, "I've seen better passes thrown at Foxborough High School."

The Brady lowlights have been frequent and biting through the years. Belichick stresses the need to never leave points on the board and whenever his quarterback does, he's treated to his own personal film festival. The clips include bad reads, interceptions and poorly timed bombs, such as one in 2009, when Brady overthrew Randy Moss as he streaked toward the end zone.

"As you can see," the Belistrator pointed out, "Randy is wide open. The defense let him go. Not that we can hit him, though. Right, Tom?"

Picking on Ihedigbo is one thing; embarrassing the face of the franchise would seem to be another matter entirely.

It isn't.

"The message was always clear," Bruschi said. "No one was off limits. That's why you had to respect it."

I'm not saying this should be an exact model for other situations. The NFL is highly competitive, all male, high testosterone, and winning requires enormous levels of teamwork from egotistical individuals who regularly change loyalties (teams).

But in a broader social context, if we teach young men that simply being alive is a ticket to self-esteem (and if sex is more or less free), don't be surprised if they aren't motivated to accomplish much.

Full article here.

Cannibalism in ancient Mexico

John — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:56:15 +0000

I came across this National Geographic article on cannibalism in ancient Mexico. It's not too often that you come across an article with a subtitle like this: "Eating humans "crucial" to spiritual life of the Xiximes people". Too funny.

Here's an excerpt on Xiximes spirituality:

Most of the time the Xiximes would prey on lone men from other villages working in the fields. Other times, the Xiximes would engage small groups in forest battles, according to the historical record.

The warriors would bring the dead victims back to the village, where Xiximes would rip the bodies apart at the joints, taking care not to break the bones. In cases when carrying a whole body was impractical, the head and hands would be removed and brought back to the village, according to INAH's research.

Body parts were cooked in pans until the bones emerged clean. The flesh was then cooked with beans and corn and eaten in a type of soup—part of an all-night village ritual, complete with singing and dancing, according to missionaries' reports.

After the feast, the bones were stored for months in treasure houses. Then, in the run-up to the annual planting season, the Xiximes would hang the bones from roofs and trees—enticements to the spirits to help the crops along.

"For these practices," Punzo said, "they were called by Jesuits the wildest and most barbarian people of the New World."

These people clearly weren't aware of all the antinutrients in beans and corn. There's more here.

More evidence on benefits of barefoot running

John — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:36:32 +0000

Dan Lieberman recently published two new papers on running. Here's a good Wired article summarizing the findings. I should note that these papers aren't about barefoot running so much as forefoot and rearfoot striking, plus minimalist footwear in the first paper.

I was a data point in the first study, Effects of Footwear and Strike Type on Running Economy. It was fun. They hooked me up to a breathing tube to measure my oxygen usage, which took a little getting used to. I had to run with a forefoot strike in VFFs as well as conventional sneakers, and then do the same with a rear-foot strike. Let me tell you, it's seriously unpleasant to run with a rearfoot strike in minimal shoes.

Here are the results and conslusions:

RESULTS: After controlling for stride frequency and shoe mass, runners were 2.41% more economical in the minimal shoe condition when forefoot striking and 3.32% more economical in the minimal shoe condition when rearfoot striking (p<0.05). In contrast, forefoot and rearfoot striking did not differ significantly in cost for either minimal or standard shoe running. Arch strain was not measured in shoes condition but was significantly greater during forefoot than rearfoot striking when barefoot. Plantarflexor force output was significantly higher in forefoot than rearfoot striking, and in barefoot than shod running. Achilles tendon-triceps surae strain and knee flexion were also lower in barefoot than standard shoe running.

CONCLUSIONS: Minimally shod runners are modestly but significantly more economical than traditionally shod runners regardless of strike type, after controlling for shoe mass and stride frequency. The likely cause of this difference is more elastic energy storage and release in the lower extremity during minimal shoe running."

The second study is even more compelling: Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners: a retrospective study. Lieberman has been collecting data on the Harvard cross country team for years.

RESULTS: Of the 52 runners studied, 36 (59%) primarily used a rearfoot strike and 16 (31%) primarily used a forefoot strike. Approximately 74% of runners experienced a moderate or severe injury each year, but those who habitually rearfoot strike had approximately twice the rate of repetitive stress injuries than individuals who habitually forefoot strike. Traumatic injury rates were not significantly different between the two groups. A generalized linear model showed that strike type, sex, race distance, and average miles per week each correlate significantly (p<0.01) with repetitive injury rates.

CONCLUSIONS: Competitive cross country runners on a college team incur high injury rates, but runners who habitually rearfoot strike have significantly higher rates of repetitive stress injury than those who mostly forefoot strike. This study does not test the causal bases for this general difference. One hypothesis, which requires further research, is that the absence of a marked impact peak in the ground reaction force during a forefoot strike compared to a rearfoot strike may contribute to lower rates of injuries in habitual forefoot strikers.

A 2X difference in injury rates? That's HUGE. It's only a matter of time until all collegiate cross country programs teach their athletes how to run properly, with a forefoot strike.

Are monogamous societies superior to polygamous societies?

John — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:39:01 +0000

The funny thing about studying wild human origins is when you come to appreciate civilization even more.

Razib Kahn over at Gene Expression has a post called "Monogamous societies superior to polygamous societies". Go check it out. It's about a new paper called The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage. Here is the abstract (my bolding, and I'm going to add paragraph breaks to make it easier to read):

The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage), and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as absolute wealth differences have expanded.

Here, we develop and explore the hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneﬁcial effects—promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conﬂict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide.

These predictions are tested using converging lines of evidence from across the human sciences.

Here's the full text. You can see my pasts posts on polygamy here.

Thanks to Chris Masterjohn for the link.

Gluten-free Djokovic wins Australian Open (again)

John — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:07:33 +0000

This was one of the most epic matches in tennis history.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Novak Djokovic ripped off his shirt and let out a primal scream, flexing his torso the way a prize fighter would after a desperate, last-round knockout.

This was the final act in Djokovic's 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 (5), 7-5 victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final -- a sweat-drenched, sneaker-squeaking 5 hour, 53-minute endurance contest that ended at 1:37 a.m. Monday morning in Melbourne.

Djokovic overcame a break in the fifth set to win his fifth Grand Slam tournament and third in a row. None, though, quite like this.

This one involved tears, sweat and, yes, even a little blood. It was the longest Grand Slam singles final in the history of pro tennis and it came against Nadal, the player who built a career on his tenacity -- on outlasting opponents in matches like these.

Conditioning matters. Here's the article.

Here's a five-minute recap of the match.

The Debutante Hunters

John — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:43:39 +0000

This film about some Southern belles who hunt just won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. Here's the full thing, it's about 10 minutes long.

I love everything about these women.

Thanks to Joe for the link.

Can hunting save endangered species?

John — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:52:19 +0000

A number of African endangered species are now thriving in Texas -- for hunting. Of course, this drives animal rights activists wild -- who as you'll see, don't use logic, and would rather see species die out than be hunted. By lobbying federal bureaucracies, these ideological radicals are getting rule changes to disallow hunting of certain species without a federal permit, which will be difficult to obtain and which inevitably will lead to the decline of these endangered animals.

60 Minutes reports:

Let's me be as clear as day: radical animal rights activists are the enemy.

Link via Alex Tabarrok.