Chris Woodhead= Cnut

[nomadthethird]

definition of fast twitch muscle fibers

essentially - slow twitch muscles are for aerobic, fast twitch are for sprinting, lifting weights, anything requires short sharp bursts of intense activity, which is what most sports are, aside from distance running/cycling/etc.

as far as that bit about sodium, yeh I really dunno. the bit about muscles doesn't really explain why they'd have more (or more effective) fast twitch muscles, just that on average they do.



this I don't know about. surely there are detrimental effects of living under stress but I wouldn't be surprised if affluent people - at least in certain countries, like the States - actually have a higher rate of heart disease. overly rich diet, sedentary lifestyle, etc.

Interesting... so essentially some striated muscles are meant to respond more quickly on the electrochemical level--or twitch more frequently? Which means they can be useful for different tasks.

But it would explain why people with more muscles survived the ships--people with more muscle tissue would have had more protein to live on through the harsh conditions (because their body would've started eating their muscles), and this would have left them better off immune-wise and starvation-wise.

And yeah, there was a time when richer meant more heart disease, but these days its generally recognized that obesity and related problems hit impoverished people harder, because impoverished people are more likely to eat cheap, refined carbohydrates. Obesity is also more lethal in poorer folks, I'm pretty sure.

Edit: I forgot about cardiac muscle tissue, too. I was counting that as smooth but it's not.

 

[nomadthethird]

This is way off topic but now I'm interested...so if you repeat a certain task enough, like say sprinting, does that end up changing the density of fast twitch fibers?

these are sports medicine questions

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Repairing the foundations is tiresome, and ppl fail to realise that the discussion is only interesting IFF you temporarily let them stand.

right, there you are shoring up the foundations while we hammer away with our contrariness. only no one's asked for utter objectivity or perfect equality or any other impossible thing. people have merely challenged any assertion that we live in a meritocracy - US or UK - where intelligence is rewarded more than who you're born to.

frankly I think this is another copout - "well of course all this is pointless cos you won't accept certain assumptions" - which aren't what anyone's talking about.

 

[nomadthethird]

Part of what I'm getting at here is that "character" is somewhat out of fashion as a discrete attribute that people are suppose to have to varying degrees. Can we imagine "intelligence" going out of fashion in the same way?

I can. But I can also imagine the assumption that the thoughts of brains are a sort of discrete entity within a discrete entity going out of fashion. Maybe it has already begun to...

 

[josef k.]

people have merely challenged any assertion that we live in a meritocracy - US or UK - where intelligence is rewarded more than who you're born to.

Intelligence is definitely not distributed hierarchically from the top to the bottom. On the other hand, the opposite also isn't true. Not even in the high-cultural spheres are the most intelligent people the most celebrated, rewarded, or prominent. Quite the reverse in fact. Moreover, there are certain crowd-pleasing operations which self-consciousness renders extremely difficult, if not impossible.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

This is way off topic but now I'm interested...so if you repeat a certain task enough, like say sprinting, does that end up changing the density of fast twitch fibers?

I don't claim a great understanding but - I dunno about increasing the density. you definitely increase the performance of the muscles that you're exercising if you do it consistently. I think the density may be the part you're born with tho don't quote me on that.

even further off-topic, an interesting (at least to me) note on repetitive tasks - in my experience in martial arts this is pretty much how you learn everything. I mean, sure, the teacher explains a technique & demonstrates it but to actually learn it you have to go & do it. & there's a certain physical intelligence/intuition - like for me at least I can never just think thru a technique. & if you watch people who've been doing it for a long time you can tell by the way they move, like a kind of built-in, I wouldn't say poise, but like posture & balance & so on that have become ingrained over yrs & yrs of practice.

 

[nomadthethird]

http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/49/2/260

I don't know if I agree with this person but it's sort of interesting to think about...

 

[nomadthethird]

even further off-topic, an interesting (at least to me) note on repetitive tasks - in my experience in martial arts this is pretty much how you learn everything. I mean, sure, the teacher explains a technique & demonstrates it but to actually learn it you have to go & do it. & there's a certain physical intelligence/intuition - like for me at least I can never just think thru a technique. & if you watch people who've been doing it for a long time you can tell by the way they move, like a kind of built-in, I wouldn't say poise, but like posture & balance & so on that have become ingrained over yrs & yrs of practice.

"muscle memory" it's the same with playing an instrument

 

[josef k.]

Possibly relevant, while we are on this diversion.

http://www.slate.com/id/2218650/

 

[Mr. Tea]

Also, European slave traders would naturally have bought the biggest, strongest-looking slaves on sale. Or maybe the slave-capturing parties would only have taken the stronger captives, or killed off the weaker ones before taking them to the market. Sorry if someone's already mentioned this point, I've clearly missed several pages.

Not that it's immediately relevant to Chris Woodhead...

 

[don_quixote]

you have to be thinking about survival in the conditions on the ships and in labour camps as well.

 

[Mr. Tea]

you have to be thinking about survival in the conditions on the ships and in labour camps as well.

Yes, there's that too. Several hundred years of selection pressure.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

"muscle memory" it's the same with playing an instrument

not quite tho. muscle memory is definitely a part, esp repeating techniques to improve form. but there's also a kind of physical intelligence. athletes have this too - learning unnatural, often complicated series of movements. I'm sure there's an interesting discussion to be had here but this isn't the right thread & I doubt anyone else cares anyway.

 

[vimothy]

My mate who went to medical school at Liverpool uni (redbrick) knew people who wouldn't associate with anyone from John Moores (the former poly) because they felt it was beneath them.

One thing that definitely comes through in the data is that status -- of programme, but most of all, of institution -- is very important, and a huge source of stress for the students. They all want to go to a red brick university, even if they don't understand why.

 

[swears]

One thing that definitely comes through in the data is that status -- of programme, but most of all, of institution -- is very important, and a huge source of stress for the students. They all want to go to a red brick university, even if they don't understand why.

Yeah, I was guilty of this myself. I was a few points short of doing English at Liverpool, but would have easily been accepted at John Moores. But because everybody goes to uni now it seemed a bit pointless. You wanna go to the old-school uni, opened before the days when 40% of students went. There were kids in my sixth form who got waaay worse A-levels than me and went to do American studies or communications or basket-weaving or some bollocks at a former poly and now they have exciting careers in call-centres.

 

[vimothy]

I think that the students undoubtedly "get it" on some level, even if they can't enunciate it coherently. And the post-92 universities are very different from the red brick ones, not only in status, but also in institutional culture, student diversity, programme delivery, etc. It's hard to know whether it would be better to do financial mathematics at MMU, or yoghurt weaving at Manchester. Certainly, it's hard for certain students – a certain type of student – to know. But that's all part of "the game". Knowing the right answer is part of the qualification you end up with.

 

[crackerjack]

It's hard to know whether it would be better to do financial mathematics at MMU, or yoghurt weaving at Manchester.

The yoghurt weaving every time. Does the poly even do financial mathematics? Surely their students would all have to pass Maths GCE first

 

[vimothy]

Both of those programmes are made up. Which one is more believable? But wait, I see that you have already answered...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, I was guilty of this myself. I was a few points short of doing English at Liverpool, but would have easily been accepted at John Moores. But because everybody goes to uni now it seemed a bit pointless. You wanna go to the old-school uni, opened before the days when 40% of students went. There were kids in my sixth form who got waaay worse A-levels than me and went to do American studies or communications or basket-weaving or some bollocks at a former poly and now they have exciting careers in call-centres.

Maybe in the long run it kind of pales next to the Iraq war and the erosion of civil liberties, but I think one of the current government's most misguided ideas was its massive drive to get as many people into university as possible. I mean, what's the fucking point? Apart from the fact that it works wonders on unemployment figures, obviously. Just a huge waste of time and money for a lot of the people concerned (to say nothing of the taxpayer).

My brother didn't go and he's already earning more money than I probably ever will.

 

[swears]

My idea of the typical ex-poly student at the time was a not-so-bright middle class kid who felt entitled to go to uni no matter how shit their grades were and spent three years getting pissed and merely playing the role of someone in worthwhile higher education. All the while getting fleeced for thousands of pounds only to go on to work in a job paying less than if they'd three years of work experience instead.

Slightly exaggerated and unfair, really. Typical grammar school attitude.