Author: Serkadis

Filed under: New York Auto Show, Hybrid, Performance, Geneva Motor Show, Chevrolet, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, Volkswagen, Ferrari, Diesel

The votes from 59 international journalists have been counted and the finalists for World Car of the Year have been named. The Detroit News is reporting that the Toyota Prius, Volkswagen Polo and the Mercedes-Benz E-Class have made the final cut, and the three vehicles will go toe-to-toe on April 1st (no foolin’) at the start of the New York Auto Show, which is where the World COTY award is announced.

On the performance vehicle front, the Audi R8 V10, Porsche 911 GT3 and Ferrari California are jockeying for the big prize. We feel sorry for the judges who have to choose from among these three junkers, but we’re sure they’ll somehow make it fun for themselves.

Design finalists are the Citroen C3 Picasso, Kia Soul and Chevrolet Camaro, and from the green category we have the previously mentioned Prius, the Honda Insight and Volkswagen‘s BlueMotion diesel offerings. Check back on these pages to see the winners of the individual categories when they are announced in New York on April Fool’s Day.

[Source: The Detroit News]

Final three World Car of the Year finalists announced originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember Greece and the rest of the PIIGS?

Snooze.

As we declared this morning, that story is over (for now).

The Dow was up over triple digits today.

Yeehaw!

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Greek Crisis Is Over! (For Now)
• The Recovery Is Official Now: Consumer Credit Grew In January
• Good News: Unemployment Holds Steady At 9.7%

The Center for Responsive Politics has joined the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law and the Sunlight Foundation in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to keep transparency in mind as it considers the case John Doe #1 v. Sam Reed.

The petitioners in the case seek to invalidate the Washington State Open Records Act in a manner that allows limits on the disclosure of ballot initiative petition signatures.

The Center for Responsive Politics and its partner organizations, in an amicus curiae brief to the court, argue that “the curtain of privacy that is appropriate to the voting booth should not be drawn to hide the workings of money in politics from public scrutiny and from political accountability.”

Said Sheila Krumholz, the Center’s executive director: “Transparency is crucial to the public’s understanding of the government it elects, the policies it adopts and the political influence-makers that surround it. We urge the Court to be thoughtful in considering this critical element of the case before it.” 

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Chevrolet, GM

Racing improves the breed. How many times have you heard some automaker PR flack spout that line in order to justify a motorsports program? When it comes to NASCAR, which is still the most popular form of racing in the United States, it’s clearly a complete fallacy. Open wheel racing, be it at Indianapolis or Monaco, largely falls into the same bucket. There is, however, one form of motorsports where there truly is a feedback loop: sports car racing like the kind on display in the American Le Mans Series.

One example is staring you in the face every time you look at the nose of a contemporary Corvette. When the C6 Corvette debuted, many fans complained about the styling, including the front air intake and the departure of the long running pop-up headlamps. The C6 brought a new larger central air intake and exposed, flush lighting. The design was influenced directly by the C5.R racing program and its need for better air-flow to the engine and brakes of the racecar. Learn more about the connection between Corvette production and racing after the jump.

Continue reading How a Corvette C6.R comes to life: Autoblog tours Pratt & Miller shop

How a Corvette C6.R comes to life: Autoblog tours Pratt & Miller shop originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We keep seeing cases where companies think that a trademark gives them a total monopoly over the trademark. That, of course, is not true. Not only is a trademark only supposed to be limited to cases of confusion or (in more recent construction) dilution, it’s also only supposed to be applied in areas of commerce that compete. In other words, it’s perfectly fine to use the same mark in totally different business areas. But, of course, some companies simply refuse to believe that (Monster Cable is famous for ignoring this, for example). But, thankfully, judges are quite aware of this. Brian points out that a judge has dismissed a trademark lawsuit brought by Trek Bicycle Corp. (makers of, you guessed it, bicycles) against a small northern California winery called Trek Winery. In this case, the lawsuit was dismissed for jurisdictional problems, in that the case was brought in Wisconsin (where the bicycle company is based), despite the vast majority of the winery’s business being in California. But, still, the judge questioned whether or not there could actually be any confusion at all in Wisconsin. Apparently, the bicycle company cited three orders to Wisconsin — two of the orders went to relatives of the winery’s owners and one order went to a spouse of an employee of the bike company (and that single order was just a test to confirm that the winery would deliver to Wisconsin). Those are hardly quantities that would threaten the bike company’s business.

Of course, this does mean that a lawsuit could be filed again in Northern California, but again, you have to wonder who’s confusing a bicycle with a bottle of wine? Separately, another article on the lawsuit notes that the producers of Star Trek were originally concerned about the wine, but eventually decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.

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Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Ford

We don’t know why Karl Geiger is fascinated with American performance cars, but we’re sure glad he is. The 2010 Shelby GT500 is the latest muscle car to go under the German tuner’s knife, and the results are nothing less than impressive. Thanks to a larger Whipple supercharger, larger throttle valves, upgraded fuel injection system and ported cylinder heads, the 5.4-liter V8 produces an incredible 799 horsepower and 697 pound-feet torque. Geiger claims a top speed of 220 miles per hour, but with the Mustang‘s aerodynamics we would peg that number as more theoretical than anything.

To cope with extra horsepower, Gieger has also fitted the GT500 with a three-disc carbon clutch and reinforced the six-speed transmission. Handling improvements have been made through a “racing chassis” (we’re not sure what that means), a panhard rod with polyurethane bushings and adjustable lower control arms. Finally massive 15-inch, six-piston front brakes help haul the Shelby down from inevitable high speed runs. You can see the full press release after the jump, and high-res images courtesy of Gieger can be found in the gallery below.

[Source: GeigerCars.de]

Continue reading Geiger Cars takes on the 2010 Shelby GT500 with impressive results

Geiger Cars takes on the 2010 Shelby GT500 with impressive results originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alright, we’re declaring it. The economy has begun its recovery.

For the first time since the recession began, total consumer credit grew in January.

The first row shows total consumer credit. The second row is revolving, and the third row is nonrevolving. As you can see, revolving consumer credit is still waning.

Here’s a chart showing total credit on a sequential basis.

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See Also:

• WHOOSH: Consumer Credit Drops For 11th Straight Month
• Consumer Credit Plunges Record 8.5% In November
• Consumer Credit Falls For Ninth Straight Month

Cliff Asness co-founded AQR Capital Management. As portfolio manager of the AQR Managed Futures Strategy Fund (AQMIX), he tells us what this fund is all about, why it’s ranked at the top for “absolute return” funds, and how it offers diversification.

1. At its core, what does this fund do and how does it do it?
The fund attempts to identify and profit from trends in many global markets across four major asset classes: commodities, currencies, equities, and fixed income. At a basic level, managed futures is a strategy that trades futures contracts long and short across a very broad range of instruments. One of my colleagues likes to use the visual of Eddie Murphy screaming in the futures pit in the movie “Trading Places” to describe the strategy, even though that’s a fairly misleading visual of how futures are traded in today’s electronic marketplace, and we don’t have access to Clarence Beeks.

Managed futures is a strategy that has been around pretty much as long as futures markets have been around. Historically, it’s been a strategy pursued primarily by futures traders and in the last 10-20 years by hedge funds. The trading strategy employed by most managed futures funds boils down to some type of trend-following strategy, which is also known as momentum investing. Simply put, momentum investing is buying securities that are improving and selling securities that are deteriorating. There has been a mountain of research since the early 1990s showing that momentum “works”–meaning that price momentum has significant predictive power. Beyond this empirical evidence, there has also been considerable behavioral finance research to explain why trends tend to persist. I’ll mention three key reasons:

    1. Anchoring and adjustment. This refers to the observation that people adjust their expectations more gradually than they should. This initial underreaction to news gives the trend follower an opportunity to buy at a price before the price has fully adjusted.

    2. Central banks. These institutions like stable exchange rates and interest rates, and that causes them to generally trade against price moves. As they make what should happen instantly happen slowly over an extended period, you can seek to profit from the initial trend.

    3. People tend to chase performance. We don’t need to look any further than our own industry to see this. Mutual funds that have had strong performance tend to attract strong asset inflows. Once an initial trend develops, the trend can persist simply from the buying or selling pressure coming from performance-chasing. This herding activity can often lead to prices even moving past fundamental value, creating longer-lasting trends.

In this fund, we look at trends over two different time horizons and try to determine when things have gone too far. We look over 1. short-term trends, 2. long-term trends, and 3. at whether or not a trend has become overextended. It’s important to know whether a trend has become overextended, either in the short term potentially because of large flow imbalances or during a longer time period such as when bubbles evolve, as it means the trend has a higher probability of reversing. We use all three categories of trend signals to form an aggregate view on each of the more than 50 assets we trade in the fund.

2. What makes it superior to the many other “absolute return” funds that have launched in the past year?
“Superior” is too strong a word. It can be tough to assess whether a managed futures fund is better than an equity market neutral fund or a global macro fund as each can provide diversification from traditional asset allocation in different ways. As a category, managed futures has historically shown a tendency to do well in strong up markets and strong down markets. The downside is that they tend to do only so-so or even lose money in markets that go sideways or are “trendless.” In the recent 2008 bear market, managed futures hedge funds were one of the few asset classes to have positive returns on average, which is one of the reasons for the current interest in the category.

Within the managed futures category, there currently aren’t that many existing funds to compare our fund with, although we expect more to emerge as investors demand for these types of strategies grows. The current relevant comparison in the mutual fund space is against other managed futures funds that replicate indexes such as the S&P Diversified Trend Index or Commodity Trends Index. While these indexes certainly provide exposure to trend following which we think can be a benefit to any traditional asset allocation, there are some subtle points we believe we do better. To start, these indexes include far fewer instruments than our fund, for example they don’t include equities and have very little or no fixed-income exposure. In comparison, we actively trade many more instruments in many more markets as we have found that these trends occur everywhere, so why limit yourself to fewer markets? Another advantage comes from using several different trend and contrarian signals as opposed to using a single indicator. Both the long and short term really do matter to whether a trend is going to continue, and we really believe you can avoid some ugly reversals if you measure whether a trend is overextended.

The indexes also have more of a binary implementation. What I mean by this is that regardless of the conviction you may have of an asset’s trend continuing, the index invests the same amount whereas we are able to actively scale positions up and down based on our conviction in a trend. Additionally, we evaluate the portfolio daily and trade using portfolio optimization techniques to handle the appropriate trade-off between expected return, expected transaction costs, and risk.

Finally, as with most indexes, there is no method of risk control, but instead the amount of risk you take depends largely on the volatility level that the markets give you. We dynamically adjust our positions in each asset and the fund as a whole depending on our forecast of volatility for each instrument, generally taking smaller positions when the market has been acting more volatile. In addition, we have a drawdown control system, which aims to minimize the size of potential drawdowns when the market environment for the strategy has been poor, and an exposure control system to try to keep the fund from taking too concentrated of a bet or taking too much overall risk in one theme.

3. A skeptic may say that you’re bringing a fund like this to market after one of the worst market downturns. Can you speak about the timing of the fund’s launch and why it may have merit even if equity returns during the next decade are stronger than those of the past decade?
Well, if you are saying that we are responding to investor demand, then we’ll plead guilty as charged. Equities have underperformed for decades now, and investors are looking for other ways to make money that isn’t predominantly driven by economic growth. We are looking to offer an array of alternative investments as tools for investors to try to build more resilient portfolios. It’s also important to know that, historically, managed futures has done well in both bull and bear markets as my colleagues find in their cool paper that really demystifies the asset class.

That said, like any investment style, it won’t make money all the time, but we do think it can help investors reduce their overall portfolio risk which can enable them to ride out the tough times and reap potential rewards when the equity markets do ultimately recover. The reason to be in truly diversifying alternatives is exactly because you don’t know if or when equities will do well. By launching this fund we are not forecasting that equities continue to do poorly, rather we’re acknowledging that nobody knows which way the equity market is heading.

4. The trend of hedge fund managers launching mutual funds is a relatively new phenomenon. Can you explain why you made the decision to offer mutual funds and how they might differ from the hedge funds you manage?
Our decision to enter the mutual fund world has been a long time coming and a part of our strategic business initiative to diversify our business model; it’s not a response to any one event. For instance, we started this process well before the credit crisis. The typical hedge fund company can be very profitable with fees commonly set at 2&20 (2% management fee and 20% of net profits), but it can also be an unstable business. Since the start of AQR, echoing something we did at Goldman Sachs, our plan has always been to be an asset management firm, not just a hedge fund. So, we not only manage institutional absolute return funds but also institutional long-only funds and now mutual funds, as well. Compared with the institutional world where absolute-return hedge funds abound, there are very few alternative mutual funds available. We believe there is pent-up demand for low cost truly diversifying absolute-return funds in mutual fund format, and the response we have seen from advisors seems to validate our position.

One minor difference between a private fund and mutual funds is that certain rules for mutual funds limit the amount of commodities and fixed income one can invest in, so the amount of risk we target needs to be lower overall in the mutual fund. We target an average of 10% annualized volatility in the mutual fund. The other major difference between a private vehicle and a mutual fund is liquidity. Typically, a private hedge fund will have quarterly liquidity whereas a mutual fund is subject to daily liquidity.

5. Given the performance-based fee structure of hedge funds versus the more limited fee structure of mutual funds, how do you guard against the potential conflict of favoring the vehicle (hedge funds) that offers your firm the potential for larger revenues?
As a registered investment adviser registered with fiduciary responsibility to all our clients, we exercise due care that the investment opportunities are allocated fairly among all our client accounts. Our compliance team monitors that trade allocations comply with our policies on fair allocation.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Is the DVD Market Spinning Down?
• Helping the Kids Without Cracking the Nest Egg
• Invest Where Buffett Can’t

We can debate whether today’s jobs number was good or not, but this much is clear, compared to other recessions, the job losses, and lack of job gains, are truly unprecedented (via FelixSalmon and Catherine Rampell)

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See Also:

• Glenn Beck Shows His Audience The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever
• The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever
• The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever

Wow. The RIAA is getting seriously desperate these days. In the past, at least, its arguments made a little bit of sense, if you didn’t understand the details or have the data. But these days, they’re really reaching. We’ve already covered Mitch Bainwol’s bizarre attempt to link Chinese hackers breaking into Google with copyright law — despite the two being totally unconnected. And, now, the RIAA is claiming that P2P file sharers are “undermining” humanitarian efforts in Haiti. Now that’s quite a claim, and you would think the RIAA would have some evidence to back it up, but (of course), it doesn’t. It’s just making stuff up.

The claim is based on the fact that some musicians quickly put out a “Hope for Haiti Now” digital only album, with the proceeds going to help Haiti. It apparently did quite well, topping the Billboard sales charts. Considering there were tons of ways to donate to Haiti, this was basically a way to get some free music with your donation. Fair enough. But the RIAA noticed that the tracks also appeared on file sharing sites. This is hardly a surprise, nor is it meaningful. But, according to the RIAA’s interpretation, this somehow “undermines” humanitarian efforts:

The album is now widely available on illicit BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and more. The posting highlights a truly ugly side of P2P piracy — the undermining of humanitarian fundraising efforts via online theft of the “Hope for Haiti Now” compilation. So much for the notion that illegal downloading (“sharing”) is an effort to help advance the plight of artists.

So much wrong in so few words. First of all, the album is “available” on the internet. The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and those other sites aren’t hosting the album at all. They may be pointing to it, but so is Google. Is that also an “illicit” site? It’s amusing, but the blog post the RIAA links to, in an effort to back up this claim, highlights how he found out about it being available via a Google search. But notice what the RIAA did here? Rather than focus on where the file actually is, it blames The Pirate Bay, even though their own source actually used Google to find it, and the files aren’t hosted by The Pirate Bay. That’s called being disingenuous, at best.

Next, how does this “undermine” anything? If someone wanted to donate to Haiti, there were countless ways to do so. If someone donated a bunch of money directly to the Red Cross, and then chose to get those songs via an unauthorized copy, is that really undermining humanitarian efforts? And for those who downloaded an unauthorized copy and didn’t donate anywhere, does anyone at the RIAA seriously believe they would have bought the album otherwise? I recognize that the RIAA thinks music powers everything, but no one bought the album because it was the best way to donate to Haiti.

And that last sentence is a total non sequitur. What does humanitarian aid have to do with advancing the plight of artists? And who said that file sharing was “an effort to help advance the plight of artists” in the first place? No one. The RIAA is just setting up bizarre totally unrelated strawmen to knock down.

But the much bigger issue is that the whole premise of the RIAA post appears to be wrong. It turns out that, while the albums are available via these unauthorized means, almost no one is downloading them. MusicAlly saw the RIAA’s blog post, and figured it would check in to see just how much downloading was going on to undermine those Haitian humanitarian efforts… and discovered that very, very, very few people are downloading the album. Considering the sales of the album topped the charts, a comparison was done between downloads of this album and Lady Gaga’s hit album, and they found that the charity album is barely noticeable:

Source: MusicAlly.com

At its peak on 24th January, Hope For Haiti Now was being downloaded 2,680 times a day according to BigChampagne — compare that to The Fame Monster’s 63,845 downloads the same day. Meanwhile, by 23rd February, Hope For Haiti Now’s daily downloads had dwindled to 820, compared to 47,971 for the Gaga album.

In other words, despite the claims of the RIAA, file sharers certainly weren’t “undermining” anything. They certainly weren’t particularly interested in downloading this album at all. Looks like the RIAA has been caught making up arguments that have no relation to fact, yet again.

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Nearly every day I get emails from readers about P90X and CrossFit. Most are favorable, some not so much, but mostly, people just want to know if these fitness programs fit within the context of the Primal Blueprint Fitness methodology. In this article I’ll explore what’s great about P90X and CrossFit, and then I’ll voice my nit-picky criticisms and explain how I think both can be improved upon.

It’s often said that any movement is better than no movement, that simply getting up and being active is better than sitting on the couch and stewing with guilt and self-reproach. For the most part, I agree with this assessment. It’s imperative that everyone be active, even if it’s just taking nightly walks or using the treadmill at the gym. But “just any old movement” isn’t ideal. Ideally, we should be performing movements that support, enable, and enhance quality of life. Our exercises should make us stronger, faster, and more capable of accomplishing just about any physical feat the world throws at us. They should be enjoyable (pleasure-giving), brief (without sacrificing effectiveness), sustainable (lifelong), immediately accessible (to young, old, and untrained), and infinitely scalable (from beginners to elites). A fitness program, then, should meet these benchmarks.

Do P90x and CrossFit qualify as good fitness programs?

Absolutely, yes; they’re better than 95% of the other stuff out there. They both include high-intensity interval training, full body resistance work, endurance development, and mobility. They’re very clearly laid out for trainees who need structure to make progress. Buy the DVDs and you get the full P90X package; log onto CrossFit every day and you get access to the daily workouts free of charge. Tony Horton (of P90X) is one of my best friends, and I’m the guy who showed him the beauty of interval workouts. I also designed the P90X recovery drink, which, I’m told, is more addictive than crack (too sweet for me). The PB eating plan works perfectly with CrossFit, which is probably why we have so many supporters from that camp. All in all, there is definite kinship between the PB and the other two programs. There are many mutually shared interests, directions, and focuses. There’s a lot of crossover. Both programs get people up and moving – and amidst our culture of sedentarism and sloth, I can’t get upset with that.

P90X promises a beach-ready body: defined upper body, ripped abdominals, reduced body fat. For many people, it delivers on each. If you’re interested in building muscular endurance (not necessarily raw strength), or if you’re a former athlete with a good amount of muscle underneath a couple years’ worth of flab, P90X might be right for you. If you want an ass-kicking workout that leaves you panting and heaving and sore all over the next day, P90X will provide it. You’ll certainly be able to do more push-ups and pull-ups by the end of it.

CrossFit promises to forge hybrid gymnasts, powerlifters, and runners – all around athletes who can perform Olympic lifts, complex gymnastic moves, then get up and run a 10k (and make a respectable finish). CrossFit generally doesn’t produce elite, specified athletes, but it produces guys and girls who are stronger, faster, and more powerful than almost everyone else. Some people think that’s a criticism of CrossFit, while I think it’s one of its strengths.

As I noted above, I get a ton of reader emails about both CrossFit and P90X; in the Primal world, they’re probably the two most popular programs out there. Some people are pleased with their results. They get stronger, fitter, healthier, and better-looking by following them. But others aren’t so happy. These other readers talk about being burnt out, overworked, overtrained, or even injured. As much as I admire both programs and their creators, I think both could be improved upon.

Now, is it the program, or is it the user? Who do we blame?

As usual, there’s a little from column A, a little from column B. Assigning the totality of blame to either CrossFit/P90X or the trainee is silly. Acknowledging both the limitations of the programs and of the users is the far better option. CrossFit isn’t a perfect fit for every possible trainee, nor is P90X guaranteed to work for absolutely everyone who tries it – and that’s totally fine. But it also means that neither CrossFit nor P90X are ideal paths to fitness. In my book, remember, a fitness program should be lifelong and accessible to everyone. (Note that accessible doesn’t mean one size fits all.)

It’s commonplace for online discussions of fitness to descend into screaming matches laced with profanity and hyperbole, buttressed by rigid ideological stances that refuse to budge. This won’t be that.

You’ve heard why I like CrossFit and P90X – and I do like them, believe me – but this is where we diverge:

Sustainability

A program you can’t keep doing is hardly a program worth doing. Fitness should be a lifelong endeavor. It’s not just for the young bucks with limber limbs and supple, indestructible ligaments. It’s for the oldsters, the washed up athletes, the wide-eyed beginners, the moms, the dads. As it’s actually practiced, I think P90X is probably too much to do as a lifelong program. It isn’t even advertised as such, to Tony’s credit; it’s billed as a crash program designed to get you lean in 90 days (which it does well). To anyone currently doing P90X – do you expect to be repeating the cycles into your twilight years? Over an hour a day, six days a week? I just don’t think I’d have the stomach for that for very long.

Overtraining

I harp on the overtraining issue all the time. Next to inadequate or nonexistent training, overtraining is the biggest issue plaguing most trainees. If you don’t give your body enough downtime to recuperate, you’ll find it very difficult to get stronger/faster/quicker/more powerful. You may see some improvement over doing nothing at all, but you could just as easily undo any progress. Both CrossFit and P90X prescribe near daily high intensity training. Certain individuals relish the workload and even thrive on it. Some people can bounce back from a day’s workout and be ready to demolish their body all over again the next day. I think the 3 on, 1 off CrossFit schedule and the 6-days-a-week P90X schedule have their place in a training regimen, but they can easily lead to overtraining – especially if you go 100%. Intensity is important in training, but I worry that six days a week of over an hour of daily high intensity training will venture into diminishing returns territory for many trainees.

Injury avoidance

I hate injuries. I hate downtime. I work out in order to fuel the fun stuff – the Ultimate Frisbee, the hikes, the paddleboarding. As such, if my fitness efforts result in an injury that prevents me from playing, those fitness efforts are counterproductive. I love CrossFit, but people do get injured. Either they don’t have their forms locked in, or they’re going too hard for too long, but injuries do occur. CrossFitters will plainly admit that there is an inherent danger to going all out, day in and day out, and that’s actually part of the appeal. But at my age, I’m not interested in pushing my limits. Judging from plenty of reader emails, there are other people that feel the same way. If you’re a relative newbie and decide to do CrossFit, don’t just launch into the complex Olympic lifts, especially at high reps. I’ve seen overeager beginners do this, and they often mess themselves up.

The Need for Glycogen Replacement

Because my business background is in supplement design, I was brought on the P90X team (7+ years ago) to create a recovery drink that fit their demographic and the recovery requirements to allow someone to go hard nearly every day for 90 days. Simply put, if you’re doing P90X as prescribed, your body is going to need to replenish depleted glycogen. I am no longer associated with the company that markets P90X (although my likeness is shown on all the in-home products talking about replenishing glycogen) and, of course, my own ideas about how much we ought to be working out are different from P90X. If you work according to the PB, you don’t need to replenish glycogen with post-workout feedings of sugar. And you shouldn’t.

So, what makes my upcoming Primal Blueprint Fitness program better?

I suppose the honest answer is that we’ll have to wait and see. I announced my plans to launch Primal Blueprint Fitness later this year just this Wednesday. It won’t be until the program is in the hands of users and they’ve had a chance to incorporate it into their lifestyle that we’ll be able to make a fair assessment. That said, PBF is being designed to be a comprehensive, full-body fitness program that focuses on brevity without skimping on intensity. Primal Blueprint Fitness is CrossFit for the rest of us; it’s P90X without the massive time commitment. It’s about getting the best results with the least amount of input. See, I’m interested in helping as many people as I can, so I’ve designed it with everyone in mind. I’m sick of watching people hobble around with canes or old injuries. I want to see seniors bounding up stairs. I want to see people get six packs without actively trying to. More than anything, I want people to get stronger, fitter, and healthier. The athletes can scale things up and increase weights or reps, while the less advanced can just use bodyweight, but everyone will be doing the same movements that our bodies are designed to perform. Best of all, you’ll be able to follow this program for life, under any circumstance fortune throws at you. You get injured? There are workarounds. Growing older? You can simply scale things down. Out of town and away from equipment? Use your bodyweight. Beginners can instantly jump in. You get plenty of rest, coupled with plenty of intensity, for the best results with no overtraining. You get plenty of instruction on the more complex movements, to avoid injury. And, of course, it’s designed specifically with the PB eating plan in mind.

While you await the release of PBF follow the Primal Blueprint Fitness principles, use the specific workouts listed here on MDA as a guide, and if you’re looking to make your P90X and CrossFit workouts more Primal break things up with more rest, more play, and more low-level aerobic activity.

I greatly admire CrossFit and P90X, and they’ve produced some excellent athletes. If you’re a CrossFitter or P90Xer and it’s working for you, keep at it! I just think that a lot of people could benefit from a slightly different approach – a fitness program geared toward sustainability, functionality, and overall health. Fitness based on Primal movements, on the precise activities that comprised Grok’s day-to-day existence, distilled down to maximize effectiveness and minimize time commitment. Stay tuned!

Let me know what you think. What are your experiences with P90X and CrossFit? Are you ready to give Primal Blueprint Fitness a try? Thanks for reading and Grok on!

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Related posts:

1. CrossFit
2. CrossFit Radio Appearance
3. My Life with Primal Blueprint Fitness and CrossFit

Published March 5, 2010
Dori O’Neal, Tri-City Herald staff writer

Ready for a good tragedy, complete with blood and guts?

Columbia Basin College has what you need when Shakespeare’s MacBeth opens March 5 in the CBC theater.

For those non-Shakespearean types, MacBeth is about a shady nobleman and war captain who stumbles upon three ugly witches who promise him the title of King.

Being the ambitious sort, MacBeth likes the ring of “King” and shares the witches’ promise with his equally ambitious wife. She, in turn, sets in motion a scheme of lies and murder to retrieve the promise on her husband’s behalf.

But evil rarely wins as the greedy couple get their due.

“The crown and the bloodshed to gain it begin to wear heavily on MacBeth and his wife, and we watch as their ill-gotten gains drive them to madness and more bloodshed, as their country descends into chaos,” said Ginny Quinley, CBC’s drama teacher.

“The only hope of redemption lies in the rightful heir to the throne, Malcolm, and the unfailingly honest and loyal nobleman, MacDuff.”

Ryan Clements plays MacBeth and Melissa Barcroft is his rapacious wife. The witches are portrayed by Bri Wenger, Avril Martinez and Cady Rutherford. Skylar Kovach is Malcolm and Michael Burmudez is MacDuff.

CBC student Stephanie Fanning directed this 60-minute version of the Shakespeare original.

Curtain time is 7:30 p.m. March 5-6. The play has a PG rating. Tickets are $10.

Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.

Tal y como hemos podido ver en las diferentes televisiones del país, la escudería antes conocida como Campos Meta, ahora Hispania Racing Team F1 ha presentado su monoplaza con el correrá en esta temporada 2010.

La presentación se realizó en Murcia, la sede oficial de la escudería española. Finalmente los dos pilotos oficiales del equipo serán Bruno Senna y Karun Chandhok. Por otra parte, debemos recordar que este monoplaza hará uso de un motor Cosworth.

Related posts:

1. Bruno Senna podría sustituir a Jaime Alguersuari
2. Bruno Senna no cobrará nada por correr en Campos Meta
3. Pedro de La Rosa y Bruno Senna ya podrían haber confirmado su fichaje por Campos Meta

Article Tags: BBC, Video Link, You could not make it up

If you had any doubts about how green James Cameron was then look no further video link from the BBC

See also YouTube: Beautiful but Dangerous Avatar by Ann McElhinney

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Despite the original Portal appearing on Sony’s home video game console, Valve’s Doug Lombardi has said that the same won’t hold true with the sequel.

It is all but impossible to know with any certainty what today’s jobs numbers are signaling. The huge snow storms of February put a lot of noise in the data, making it hard to figure out what would have happened in a normal month or even a normal February. That means it’s hard to know what we should read into the numbers about the direction of the economy.

There are a few standout numbers. To begin with, the headline unemployment number and payroll number were slightly better than expected. The consensus was looking for unemployment at 9.8% and a 50,000 payroll drop. Instead we got just 9.7% unemployment and 36,000 jobs lost. The fact that we beat consensus despite the snowstorms may provide a psychological boost to investors as well as businesses trying to figure out whether to position themselves for more recession or a turn into recovery.

Construction lost 64,000 jobs. As we noted last month, we consider the continued loss of construction jobs a sign that the real economy is undergoing a healthy transition away from the bubble. The big danger with all our new subsidies to housing was that it would thwart the ongoing liquidation of human and financial capital allocated to housing, producing another round of malinvestment. In short, the continued loss of construction jobs is hopeful sign that we aren’t creating an artificial recovery by re-inflating the housing bubble.

Unfortunately, the snow storms make it hard to tell how seriously to take this liquidation. It’s hard to build homes when you are buried under several feet of snow. So we cannot totally dismiss the dangers of a bubblicious recovery.

The unexpected loss of government jobs is also a hopeful sign. Growth of government jobs can make employment numbers a head fake. They don’t reflect actual strength in the economy. Like bubbly construction jobs, government jobs are real jobs. Government workers buy cars, homes, services, consumer goods and services. So government hiring can provide a temporary boost to the economy. But their rise and fall depends on policy decisions rather than underlying economic conditions, which means that they are useless as an indicator of the health of the economy.

The rise in the number of people who are long-term unemployed is terribly unfortunate for those people. But it also indicates an economy in transition away from the bubble economy. During the economic bubble that popped, there was a massive amount of misallocated capital. Too many people gained jobs, connections, skills, experience, and personal attachment to jobs that were not economically feasible outside of the bubble. The loss of those jobs and the unemployment of those people is not the growth of a human “output gap” but the liquidation of misallocated human resources. These people will have to find new skills in jobs that have yet to be created, if we’re to have a healthy recovery. Just putting people back in jobs we don’t need would be a sign that we were once again blowing up the bubble.

The rise in temporary service jobs is a sign of recovery. In a healthy recovery following an economic bubble, businesses stung by the collapse of long term projects begin to recover from liquidation by engaging in short term spending. This includes making short-term investments and hiring temporary workers. A quick reversal to full-time hiring or investment in long-term projects is a sign of a renewed bubble, foreshadowing a future collapse, rather than a healthy recovery. The small growth in manufacturing, 1000 jobs, is also a signal of a healthy economic recovery.

Over the next several months, thousands of individuals will face the end of their federal unemployment benefits. The typical interpretation of this reads these people as becoming the hopelessly jobless. Expect to see a lot of specualtion about whether the unemployment numbers are concealing the actual number of jobless people. That speculation is half-right. What’s really happening, however, is that resources locked out of the jobs market start to re-enter the market. As long as unemployment benefits continue to pay people not to learn new skills or accept lower wage jobs, the recovery will remain anemic. The misallocation of human capital will remain stuck in place.

Of course, if the economy is not recovering, the loss of unemployment benefits can be devastating. We need to create new jobs in new businesses to soak up those now entering the jobs market. This is a tough task, especially since as many as 400,000 workers could be re-entering the jobs market. But it’s a two-way street: employers who know that they will not face a labor crunch can more easily expand operations as the workforce expands due to the end of unemployment benefits.

So that’s the challenge face: can we create enough non-bubble, non-government jobs to soak up the increasing number of job seekers? Or will we panic and try to re-inflate the bubble, forestalling the necessary reckoning with actual economic conditions and guaranteeing another, most likely worse, economic crash in the not so far off future?   

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See Also:

• OMG! TrimTabs Doesn’t Think Today’s Jobs Report Was Wildly Off The Mark

Goldman Sachs aggregated the stock holdings listed in 487 hedge funds’ Q4 2009 13f reports to come up with a list of 50 “VIP” List of the most important stocks for hedge funds.

It’s basically a more exhaustive version of our 12 Huge Bets Hedge Funds Are Making Right Now.

From MarketFolly:

Here are the top 20:

1. Apple (AAPL): 67 hedge funds hold it as a top ten holding

2. Pfizer (PFE): 45

3. Bank of America (BAC): 37

4. Google (GOOG): 37

5. JPMorgan Chase (JPM): 36

6. Microsoft (MSFT): 36

7. Mastercard (MA): 29

8. DirecTV (DTV): 27

9. Wells Fargo (WFC): 27

10. CVS Caremark (CVS): 24

11. Citigroup (C): 23

12. Hewlett Packard (HPQ): 23

13. Monsanto (MON): 23

14. Visa (V): 23

15. Cisco Systems (CSCO): 21

16. Walmart (WMT): 21

17. Oracle (ORCL): 18

18. Qualcomm (QCOM): 18

19. Exxon Mobil (XOM): 18

20. Ebay (EBAY): 17

For #s 21- 50, check out Marketfolly.

Marketfolly also points out that the surprises here are the new additions to the list, stocks that hedge funds only recently started investing in. They are:

Wells Fargo (WFC), Mead Johnson (MJN), Merck (MRK), Liberty Media (LSTZA), Amazon (AMZN), Apache (APA), IBM (IBM), Lear (LEA), Crown Castle (CCI), SBA Communications (SBAC), US Bancorp (USB), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), Target (TGT), American Tower (AMT), and Freeport McMoran (FCX).

And don’t miss the 60-second guide to what hedge funds are buying and selling right now.