Now this charlatan has written a book on how to “become superhuman”.  I won’t even link it because as far as I’m concerned I’m already giving him more attention than he deserves.  In any case, in this book about half of it is devoted to developing super-human levels of strength.  To that end, he posted a video with his new year’s resolutions for 2010.  In it, he says that one of his resolutions is to attain a 500lb deadlift.  Here is a clip I cut from the video.

Now a 500lb deadlift is far from superhuman strength but it is definitely a formidable level of strength and a worthy goal.  Tim states that he had previously pulled 475 for a triple on a trap bar, so by my estimation his barbell deadlift 1RM would have been somewhere between 425 and 450.  In other words, far less than a year away from a 500lb 1RM.

Here we are a year later…..and there is no evidence that I have seen that he has accomplished this goal.  I’ve combed through his twitter as well as his blog.

But he released a book on attaining super-human strength?

But he can’t reach his goal of a far-less-than-superhuman 500lb deadlift?

What does this say about the rest of the content of the book?

And before you think I am full of shit and jealous of his success as an author, here is a 520lb deadlift from July by yours truly.  I have since taken that to 550, and have pulled 500 for a triple.   Does that make me any more qualified to tell you how to run your body?  No.

Do you want to listen to a guy who can’t even reach his own goals, but writes a book about how you’re supposed to?

P.S.  If Tim wants to provide evidence to the contrary, I’m all ears.  It will just serve to remove ONE reason he is a fraud and a charlatan.

The unstoppable march of technology has made it possible for the vast majority of the people sitting in their cars, parked on the freeway sipping their latte to do the exact same job without going to the office. Between video conferencing, collaboration tools, wikis, email, Skype the “office” is an obsolete relic.

The advantages to reducing commuting to those people who must necessarily commute to perform their job would be tremendous.

1) Fewer cars on the road, everyone would get to their destination more quickly. Less time stuck in traffic = enormous increase in work output. This would be instantly reflected in the GDP.

2) Fewer cars leaving their garages would mean more cars available for car-sharing programs like Relay Rides. Suddenly, the household with 3 cars (1 for mom, 1 for dad, 1 for the high school junior) only needs 1 or 2 cars at most. And one of them can be shared out to someone who can give up their car completely.

3) There is a a growing mountain of evidence that commuting is measurably bad for your health. Nearly 50% of Americans commute. Call it 120million people. If even 20% of them (it seems likely that a much, much higher percentage of commuting is unnecessary) would stop commuting, you’d instantly make almost 30 million Americans more healthy.

4) Consider the ancillary benefits of people not spending 2 hours a day in their car. Less time in the car, fewer stops at Burger King for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. More time at home to cook good meals for themselves and their families. Finally that extra hour in the day to get a quick workout in. Or another hour to spend with the kids. In some families it might be the only hour they get with their children.

What are the downsides? There aren’t any.

Reading this article on the BP mess I noticed a blatant confusion of causation and association.

“These individuals are working out in the heat of the sun. These are long days. They start early in the morning, and they stop early in the evening,” he said. “So the fact that they were leaving the location late in the afternoon was not unusual. It’s not associated with the president arriving.”

Wrong, Dougie. The fact that your workers were leaving is ABSOLUTELY ASSOCIATED with the President leaving, by virtue of the fact that it happened at the same time or we wouldn’t even be talking about it.

Whether or not the President leaving was the CAUSATION is up you to know.

That world hasn’t materialized, leaving us with just the “game” aspect of Foursquare. Put simply, it just isn’t fun. Sure I was the mayor of my favorite spots. Coincidentally, none of which had mayor offers leaving me with almost no incentive to care whether or not I was the mayor. About a month or two ago I just stopped caring about checking in completely.

I think a lot of people are having the same experience. Here’s the thing though: Foursquare is a lead gen dream come true.

Near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis there is a Punch Pizza right next to a fantastic new bakery and coffee shop called Rustica.  When I say fantastic coffee shop, I don’t take that lightly.  They easily have the best espresso in Minneapolis.  When you checkin to Punch Pizza on Foursquare, you should get an offer from Rustica.  ”Have an espresso on us when you buy a Punch pizza”.  That isn’t happening.  Which is to say, the people who should be using Foursquare are not.

Another example: hellllllo customer acquisition.  Hi, @completelydark, can I offer you a coupon to try Galactic Pizza?

All of these services run into a chicken-and-egg situation.  Without users, Foursquare doesn’t get very far.  Without checkin locations and offers, Foursquare doesn’t get very far.  Except Foursquare is focusing way too much on acquiring users and not enough on getting offers out there to give people an incentive to check-in.

Foursquare should be taking a page out of Yelp’s playbook and creating a massive sales force to get 4sq into the hands of small business owners where it can add dollars to everyone’s bottom line.

You should not go to Elite Retreat if you have “ideas” that you haven’t started on because you think you need one or more things before you get going.

You should go to Elite Retreat if you’re good at absoring diverse information and synthesizing it into something you can use for yourself or your business.

You should not go to Elite Retreat if you are hoping that someone is going to reveal a pearl that will change your business overnight.

You should go to Elite Retreat if you enjoy meeting other entrepreneurs and hearing and seeing what other people are out there doing.

You should not go to Elite Retreat if you think that your business exists in isolation (revenue or not) and that relationships don’t matter in the web 2.0 world.

You should go to Elite Retreat if you would even consider hiring one of the experts to do some consulting for your business.  If you can recognize the value that an expert consultant can immediately deliver, and you would consider paying money to have one of these guys examine your business and provide feedback then the Elite Retreat is more than a bargain.

You should not go to Elite Retreat if you think you are smarter than everyone else and have nothing to learn.

You should go to Elite Retreat if your business could benefit from the relationships you have the opportunity to cultivate with other like-minded entrepreneurs.

You should not go to Elite Retreat if your idea of working is the 4 Hour Work Week or doing as little as possible related to your business in a given day.

You should also not go to Elite Retreat if NYC is your favorite city in the world and you love going to conferences there so you can partake in all the different things NYC has to offer.  Unless you come early or stay late, you’re not going to see much of NYC because you’re going to be spending 2.2 full days with some of the brightest people you will ever get a chance to meet.

Sure enough, IRC usage is on a downard trend. So where have people gone? Facebook? Twitter? Other networks? I don’t see any of the “new” things replacing IRC for instant mass-communication..but yet it does seem that people have gone away.

Starbucks
Classic Coffee Cake: 420 cals
Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte: 380

PF Chang’s
Kung Pao Chicken: 1228 Calories

Pizza Hut
Tuscani Pasta: 2480 calories

Burger King
Whopper: 670 calories
Medium Fries: 360 calories
Medium Coke: 200 calories

1 in 8 Americans were hungry last year

US diabetes rate doubles in 10 years

According to the CDC 57% of American adults are overweight.

By DEFINITION if you are fat you are in a constant state of caloric surplus. You are eating too much. This isn’t that hard of a problem to solve, and there is no better time than now. Reducing portion sizes across the board would:

1) Decrease consumption, and therefore, obesity.
2) Decrease waste.
3) Reduce price pressure on food that is causing food panics worldwide and price increases closer to home.
4) Increase food availability to poor both here and abroad.

There are a lot of tough problems to solve out there, but this isn’t one of them. Think about it people.

I have a friend going through some trying times and that mantra just keeps coming back to me. Adversity forces you to step back and look at things from a different angle. You never know what could happen when you’re forced to make a change.

Don’t fight it, embrace it. You never know.

I’m trying to wrap up a bunch of Fighters features before going to Cancun, and I decided that it might be a good idea to pass up my season tickets for tomorrow night’s NHL playoff game 2 of the Wild vs Colorado. I went on the Wild/Ticketmaster exchange and listed the tickets for sale. Seems that the tickets are in high demand, so I bumped the asking price up to $170/each from the $97/ea face value. Now when you sell tickets on the “Ticketmaster Exchange” you only get credit for 90% of the price you posted them at. I always accepted this 10% haircut because I figured what the hell they are doing all the dirty work.

Out of curiosity I started looking through the exchange to see what tickets at my level were selling at. The first amazing thing is that tickets as low as mine (row 5, lower level) are selling for ~$250. The second, and most amazing thing is that Ticketmaster is selling my tickets at $195.50 + fees! Holy shit.

Not only are these pricks taking a 10% cut from MY asking price, but they’re jacking it up an additional 15% without telling you the seller, or the buyer. If my college dropout math is correct, thats a 21% commission for brokering a ticket sale. Wow.

It’s nice to be Ticketmaster I guess.