Matt Metzgar

The Cheerleader and The Jock

I absolutely love papers like this one(pdf), which shows how female mate choice is influenced by male sports participation.  The paper seeks to validate the common idea that male athletes are more successful at mating than non-athletes.  The study finds this to be true, but it takes things a step further.  It goes on to show that male athletes who are successful in team sports do even better than male athletes in solo sports.

Why so?  The authors believe that team sports showcase other qualities besides pure athletic ability, like leadership, teamwork, and role acceptance.  It is thought that these characteristics would carry over to real-life, producing men who are better providers and parents.  Interesting!

The paper also briefly mentions how this may drive the crazy behavior you see among the parents of some young athletes.  If better athletic performance increases mating opportunities, then in an evolutionary sense the parents actually benefit (in terms of inclusive fitness) if they can propel their male sons to greater athletic heights.  Of course, all this is not really going on at the conscious level, but it is being driven by underlying evolutionary mechanisms.

Strangest Workout of the Year

I've been meaning to post about this funny incident I had at the gym recently.  I was doing some squats and I ended up working in with a few athletes from the local university.  I think they are on the basketball team, though I'm not sure.

They had brought along a friend who was obviously new to lifting - he wasn't in shape and didn't really seem to know what was going on.  When it was his turn to squat, one guy loaded up the bar with weight for him, then said, "don't fall down," and walked away.  That was the sum of his guidance.

Of course, this new guy almost bit the dust on the first rep.  I thought I'd have to step in and bail this guy out, because his friends weren't even paying attention to what was happening.  The new guy managed a few reps with minimal depth and then racked the bar.

I don't think these friends will win any "personal trainer of the year" awards!

More Than A Website

Sometimes I wonder how far you can go with a website.  I enjoy blogging and hopefully others enjoy the site, but it seems limited at times.  For myself, I really only check a few other websites on a regular basis.  So I shouldn't somehow expect that everyone is going to always drop what they're doing and race to my website.

Part of the issue is content.  You can post information, and that's all well and good, but that doesn't always drive interest.  I can provide lots of information about eating Paleo and exercising, but again I'm just not sure if that's the highest thing on a reader's priorities list.

So what do people want the most?  Inspiration?  Motivation?  Pictures and videos are always more exciting than just plain text, so that can help things.  But it seems like there should be a way to turn a website into something bigger, something more valuable.  How to do this, I haven't quite figured out yet.

Investing

I have been reading up on the subject of investing.  I think the subject is interesting, and I have been trying to learn more about it.  I have read a few books on "value investing", and they immediately clicked with me.  This school of thought started with Benjamin Graham, and continued on with Warren Buffett and others.

The first thing I learned is that if you don't know how to play the game, you're better off just putting your money in an index fund like Vanguard and hitting the snooze button for a few decades.  It's boring, but it's the right strategy if you don't know what you're doing.

For the more ambitious, value investing lays out the principles of buying good stocks at cheap prices and then holding them for the long-term.  Again, this isn't necessarily exciting, but academic studies shows it beats the other strategies over the long run.

I think a lot of the short-term stock trading is just gambling.  People like to gamble, and the stock market gives people another way to do it.  I read stories about people who blew their whole savings on a stock tip from some self-proclaimed expert.  I am just in awe of this. 

You would have to pry a dollar from my cold, dead hand to get it into a stock chosen by one of these "expert investors".  Most of these guys appear to be crooks who are just peddling books and nonsense, or trying to make money off of commissions.  I'll take my chances with thinking for myself.

Editorial Control

I see other blogs that get bogged down by comments.  I moderate comments mostly due to spam issues, but also due to the occassional comment that I think has no value for me or the readers.  For some reason, bloggers get sucked into the idea that they have to publish every comment or please every reader.  This is a long-term path to servitude, not to publishing and shaping original thoughts.

Most comments here are useful and appreciated.  But an editorial process does make things better in my opinion.

American Beauty

I am in Washington DC for business.  As it turns out, today is part of the national cherry blossom festival here in the city.  The flowers are all in bloom around the monuments - it is fantastic.  I have to say it's one of the most beautiful things I've seen in some time.

Whoever laid out the monuments and green space of Washington did it right.  I saw the new World War II memorial, and I thought it was very well done.  Being around so much history certainly helps you put things in perspective. 

The Capitol

Washington Monument

Q Street, Washington DC

Hooked

I'll say one thing for sure, and that is that lifting weights is a habit I will never lose.  I will never be the biggest guy in the gym, but I have been lifting consistently now for almost twenty years.  There is really a zero chance I will ever stop.

Clarence Bass has been a huge role model for me in this respect.  The guy is 70 and is still in phenomenal shape.  And I would bet my house that he will never stop lifting either.

In my mind, there's no reason to ever stop working out.  If you quit subjecting your body to stress, it will only decay more rapidly.  Many of the traditional conceptions about physical aging are false.  You can look at the generation of bodybuilders from the 1960s and find that many of them are still active and still in good shape.  Physical aging can be greatly slowed by the best medicine available: exercise.