Search found 222 matches

by Kulak
Tue Dec 06, 2011 6:45 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Do you drink milk?
Replies: 96
Views: 7172

Re: Do you drink milk?

Question: do you drink milk? Esselstyn forbids any dairy consumption, Ornish permits very little dairy and only if it is skim(although of late his dietary interventions suggest no dairy at all, ie. the diets prescribed to Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs). Just curious, since it is the actual topic. I don't regularly drink it but don't exactly regard it as poison either. I actually got banhammered from the board of a well-known guru for vilifying Campbell and The China Study -- in particular, his use of rat studies to "prove" that casein "turns on cancer like a switch." One thing that does piss me off is the widespread notion that kids need to drink cow's milk by the gallon and that depriving them of it is tantamount to chil...
by Kulak
Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:18 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: MF global customer compared to Etrade customer???
Replies: 22
Views: 2129

Re: MF global customer compared to Etrade customer???

LH: You've got to brush up on your fallacies. You misused both "ad hominem" and "begging the question," AND I think "straw man" also, depending on what you meant there.
by Kulak
Mon Dec 05, 2011 10:35 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Do you drink milk?
Replies: 96
Views: 7172

Re: Do you drink milk?

stoptothink wrote:And how exactly does it being low glycemic matter?
Like Victoria, I interpreted your post above as claiming that milk raises blood glucose as well as insulin. If that's not what you meant by "You have to also keep in mind the effect of dairy proteins on blood glucose levels," you might want to clarify. (Did you mean that milk drives BG down?)
by Kulak
Mon Dec 05, 2011 10:15 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Do you drink milk?
Replies: 96
Views: 7172

Re: Do you drink milk?

VictoriaF wrote:But this is the first time I encounter a notion that milk protein raises blood glucose levels similarly to white bread. Do you have any references for this? This is not a "challenge," just a curiosity about a new for me fact.
No he doesn't, because he's (once again) full of crap. Milk is insulinemic but not highly glycemic (source), which makes perfect sense if you consider what it's made of.
by Kulak
Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:52 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Deleted
Replies: 72
Views: 5723

Re: stocks vs bonds for the very long run

Jeremy Siegel makes the very persuasive (to me) argument that while there's no theoretical reason why, say, gold couldn't go to $5000 or the Dow to 36,000, the past 30 years' bond returns cannot repeat because you can't go from 16% to 2% yield on the 10yr twice. If you missed it, you missed it. Now, he used the phrase "absolutely mathematically impossible"and I think, strictly speaking, that's not true: if yields go from 2% down to 0.25% by 2040, that would do it. (Anyone want to take that bet?) But practically speaking there's a ceiling on bond appreciation, and we're more or less there now.
by Kulak
Fri Dec 02, 2011 6:03 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Looking to reallocate: DCA or no DCA?
Replies: 11
Views: 792

Re: Looking to reallocate: DCA or no DCA?

Hi there,

DCAing in this case would be either irrational or a form of market-timing. If you want to time the market, then do so explicitly. Otherwise, pick an AA you can live with and go all-in. If you're not comfortable doing that, pick a more conservative AA.

Good luck.
by Kulak
Fri Dec 02, 2011 4:35 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: What does "left the workforce" mean?
Replies: 82
Views: 8345

Re: What does "left the workforce" mean?

rrosenkoetter wrote:How does some 45 year decide he's going to stop looking for work? How does he feed himself?
Image

You don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do sh#t.
by Kulak
Wed Nov 30, 2011 3:40 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a diet
Replies: 37
Views: 2193

Re: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a

SPG8, here's a sample: The original Ornish heart disease reversal study published in the Lancet: link Esselstyn paper #1, J. Family Practice: link Esselstyn paper #2, Am. J. Cardiology: link Ornish diet working even in subjects in heart failure (LVEF <40%), J. Cardiovascular Nurs.: link Ornish diet reducing PSAs and inhibiting the growth of prostate cancer, J. Urology: link What the longest-lived people in recorded history ate: link , link Chinese centenarians on basically the same diet: link There is much more if you go where these articles lead you and read the lay books by their authors. Here 's an old thread with some other points a propos of the low-carb debate. I don't claim any expertise, however. I want to clarify that this is not ...
by Kulak
Wed Nov 30, 2011 9:56 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Central banks to the rescue?
Replies: 22
Views: 2153

Re: Central banks to the rescue?

bobcat2 wrote:Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate, and purge the rottenness from the economy, lower the high cost of living, and spur hard work and efficient enterprise. - Andrew Mellon
What could be sounder advice than this? :roll:
Without all the sarcasm and eye-rolling, what is your point? That they practiced laissez-faire in the '30s and that's what caused the Depression? Seriously?
by Kulak
Tue Nov 29, 2011 6:09 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a diet
Replies: 37
Views: 2193

Re: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a

The thing that bothers me a lot is that we are bombarded with high-sugar/high-glycemic-index food offers in the name of good family, business and social relationships . At business meetings bagels are served for breakfast, or croissants if a meeting is "nice." Hard candy is spread around tables. Cookies are provided during the breaks. Dinners feature pasta and french fries. Abstaining is relatively easy when you don't see and smell this stuff; but in a meeting you are a "captive audience." As one who tries to follow a starch-based, low-fat diet, I have the very same complaint but about the fat content. E.g., the croissants you mention are (according to CalorieCount) 50% fat, 42% carb, 8% protein. McDonald's fries: 50% c...
by Kulak
Tue Nov 29, 2011 5:59 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a diet
Replies: 37
Views: 2193

Re: Gene expression as a way to measure health effects of a

It's amazing how quick diet researchers are to leap from a few theoretically interesting findings to dispensing lifestyle advice that has no basis in their research. I'd disregard any guru who warns you to cut back on carrots , for God's sake. A lot of these physiological studies remind me of the proverbial engineer who "proved" that bumblebees can't fly. The facts remain that a high-carb, low-fat, low-protein diet has been shown in peer-reviewed research to arrest/reverse heart disease (and prostate cancer too), and that it's also the documented diet of several of the healthiest populations on record, including the Okinawans, Chinese centenarians, Tarahumara, Kitavans, etc. The low-carb camp AFAIK has yet to produce a disease rev...
by Kulak
Tue Nov 29, 2011 1:16 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What are the stupidest things you wasted your $ on
Replies: 75
Views: 7830

Re: What are the stupidest things you wasted your $ on

Performance mods for a car when I was in my early 20s, including the time wasted. I think I win the thread, unless somebody had a fullblown drug addiction.
by Kulak
Tue Nov 29, 2011 12:16 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: How Long Can You Wait for a Bull Market?
Replies: 90
Views: 8521

Re: How Long Can You Wait for a Bull Market?

I would guess that most people don't start saving aggressively until age 45 or latter. If it takes 20 years for stocks to do better than bonds, than many many people will find that stocks were not a good investment. I guess it is all just dumb luck. Great point, and it's even worse than that, because it matters not when you start saving aggressively but when your net worth reaches a critical mass where returns dwarf contributions -- probably 20 years after you started saving aggressively. For most people, that means you basically need the bull market to hit between ages 60 and 70 or you're screwed. The problem with going all bonds and saving more, as you suggest, is that I'll never get there on a 2% real return. It's simply not worth sacri...
by Kulak
Wed Nov 23, 2011 9:50 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: SCV tilt, if enough people do it, it will not work
Replies: 115
Views: 7069

Re: SCV tilt, if enough people do it, it will not work

Tell me if this is right: For value, at least, the market can't really wipe out the risk premium because value stocks are by definition the 1/3 or so that today are underpriced based on earnings, book, dividends, or some other measure. Or, at least, if the premium is wiped out you'll know it in advance because the dispersion of stock prices will already (today) be much tighter for a given dispersion of fundamentals. (Maybe you're right and this is why people often complain that value fund X isn't "valuey" enough?)

Cap-weighting, OTOH, has the big flaw (IMO) that it automatically performance-chases, and strategies that screen on fundamentals at least avoid doing that.
by Kulak
Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:03 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Another paying off the house thread
Replies: 21
Views: 2161

Re: Another paying off the house thread

Toons wrote:If your house was paid off would you take out a "15 year fixed @ 3.625%" to invest in "taxable holdings" :D
Precisely.

OTOH, I'm not convinced that a mortgage* + stock ownership = a leveraged position in stocks. If I rent and own stocks, am I leveraging?

*and I suppose this would extend to car loans and other debt also?
by Kulak
Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:50 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Watering down juice & milk
Replies: 71
Views: 7338

Re: Watering down juice & milk

I'm aware of Willett, and frankly I question even his credibility, since right on HSPH's website you can find "incomplete protein" myth . IMHO, sadly, there's no such thing as credentials in nutrition, because it isn't (yet?) a single-paradigm science. You can find PhDs and MDs recommending everything from Ornish to Atkins with absolute conviction. There are professors at top schools claiming variously that fructose is poison (Lustig @ UCSF), or that animal protein is poison (Campbell @ Cornell), or that L-arginine is a miracle supplement for heart disease (Ignarro, Nobel Laureate), or whatever. We're all stuck "waid"ing (there, you can edit out that one too) through the papers -- speaking of which... From your first lin...
by Kulak
Thu Oct 27, 2011 1:29 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Watering down juice & milk
Replies: 71
Views: 7338

Re: Watering down juice & milk

TRC wrote:My Doctor ... said there are a lot of beneficial fats in whole milk
stoptothink wrote:And your doctor is right. Especially for young children, that fat is essential for normal development.
stoptothink wrote:I personally do not advocate milk consumption at all
Huh??

stoptothink wrote:It is a fact that dietary fat consumption has no effect on blood glucose levels
True but irrelevant to your Taubes-esque conclusion, "fat does not make you fat." Surely I don't have to define non sequitur for someone who has written a "docteral" dissertation. (Your implicit assumption is that something must affect glucose levels to make you fat.)
by Kulak
Thu Oct 27, 2011 12:28 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Should I convert all to Roth?
Replies: 8
Views: 1144

Re: Should I convert all to Roth?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but putting more than a small proportion of your tax-advantaged money in Roth seems like a losing strategy for a simple reason. You often read that if your tax rates now and in retirement will be the same, then trad vs. Roth makes no difference. But that's not true: on the contribution side you're deferring taxes (or not) at your marginal rate, but on the distribution side, you're paying taxes (or not) at your overall rate. Thus, if you were forced to choose one or the other for 100% of your tax-advantaged savings, an all-traditional IRA/401k portfolio would beat the crap out of an all-Roth, after taxes. (This ignores the fact that Roth effectively lets you contribute more by having the same nominal contributi...
by Kulak
Thu Oct 27, 2011 12:09 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Watering down juice & milk
Replies: 71
Views: 7338

Re: Watering down juice & milk

I want to respond to stoptothink 's nonsense claims in this thread. He/she needs to read a good nutrition textbook and PubMed papers instead of (I can only assume) Gary Taubes and Weston Price Foundation-related authors. Especially for young children, [cow's milk] fat is essential for normal development. Ah, so that explains the abnormal development of billions of lactose intolerant Asians and Africans who drink no milk at all. For the record, there are exactly two essential fats: LA (omega-6) and ALA (omega-3). Long-chain omega-3 (DHA+EPA), while technically not essential, has a lot of evidence attesting to its benefits. The saturated or monounsaturated fats in milk are not essential for anything. Here's the fatty acid profile of whole mil...
by Kulak
Thu Oct 20, 2011 2:36 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Landlord on Craigslist
Replies: 17
Views: 2459

Re: Landlord on Craigslist

theghetto wrote:... let them know you are only interested in showing the property if they have a qualifying income and serious inquiries only.

I can't tell you the number of times I showed the property on my lunch break or after work where the person was "starting work next week" or is "temporarily laid off" etc.
I'm a renter. Out of curiosity, how good a deal could a tenant cut if he offered to pay you the full year's rent (assuming a 1-year lease) up front?
by Kulak
Wed Oct 19, 2011 1:53 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Trinity Study Authors update their results
Replies: 506
Views: 113430

Re:

People will drop out at SWRs too low. If you tell someone they can only take $30,000 on his $1M and must pay taxes on ALL dividends and interest on the full $1M OUT OF THE $30,000, they'll just give up and quit. Even at 4% it's a bitter pill for all but those of us in the know. That doesn't mean that 4% is safe, but perhaps it is "safe enough" versus the "I'll never have enough so fark it" alternative. Exactly how I feel. Not just low SWRs, but low expected stock returns also. I'm miles ahead of my age cohorts, yet I still wonder if it's worth depriving myself for what might end up being a 3% lifetime CAGR and a 2.5% SWR. And then consider the (probably 15-20%) lifetime risk of non-financial failure modes (gulag, hyperi...
by Kulak
Wed Oct 19, 2011 10:59 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Is stock picking a dying art?
Replies: 38
Views: 3273

Re: Thank you active investors

However, if every active investor threw in the towel to join the index investors, the ensuing gross misallocations of capital would, over the long run, probably result in a much lower market return than otherwise would have occurred. Economic growth would probably be much lower too. So, index fund investors, as well as all the beneficiaries of higher economic growth, owe a debt of gratitude to active investors. It seems to me that an Econ 101-type model would predict an equilibrium in the number of investors/managers chasing alpha: If there are too few, then the inefficiencies become exploitable again and new investors come in to capture the alpha; if it gets too crowded, the "marginal" investors give up in frustration and revert...
by Kulak
Wed Oct 12, 2011 4:22 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Recommendations for meaningful books?
Replies: 46
Views: 3747

I bet you'll get better answers if you share some of your personality and what you're seeking, such as:

What's your educational and reading background?
What do you currently believe (faith, politics, etc.)?
What books have you liked and disliked?

Do you want to read beautiful prose?
Build practical skills?
Give your mind/imagination a workout?
Fill in educational gaps?
Challenge your preconceptions?
Etc.

I can think of books in all these categories for myself, but that doesn't mean they'd resonate with you.
by Kulak
Mon Oct 10, 2011 1:13 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: rowing machine?
Replies: 39
Views: 6083

I used to row a Concept2 at the gym, and it's a great piece of equipment, but I opted to buy a WaterRower and I really like it. It's quieter, and the WHOOOSH of the water is hypnotic and makes me kind-of imagine I'm out rowing a real watercraft. Also, it's very compact when stood on end; I doubt there's any piece of cardio equipment with a smaller footprint.

I've found the best entertainment/distraction to be a lecture/audiobook playing on nearby speakers (not headphones).
by Kulak
Fri Oct 07, 2011 4:45 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: The Amish largely untouched by U.S. financial crisis
Replies: 60
Views: 8856

Re: The Amish largely untouched by U.S. financial crisis

You can enforce speech, and modern society does it in spades. We really haven't come very far in hundreds of years in that respect. I'd argue we've become even worse in the past 15 years or so. You talked about a community that enforces a belief system. Our society absolutely enforces a belief system completely aside from the legal system and does so with some pretty drastic consequences. Yeah, but that "aside from the legal system" is a pretty damn big distinction. I, for one, believe certain things that run afoul of what has become the explicit culture in the last 40 years. Some of these things are criminal to publish or even utter in many European and British commonwealth countries. Here, if I said them to the wrong person, I ...
by Kulak
Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:50 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: how much for you to retire today?
Replies: 81
Views: 10378

What's the 90% SWR for a 60+ year retirement?
by Kulak
Wed Oct 05, 2011 11:49 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Why not 100/100 asset allocation
Replies: 234
Views: 24456

yobria wrote:What, specifically, do you think happened in Japan, that could not happen globally?
1. Global stock indices aren't priced at 100x earnings.
2. The entire globe isn't in the greatest RE bubble in human history. (Imperial palace grounds in Tokyo valued higher than all of California, as often mentioned.)

Those differences seem relevant.
by Kulak
Mon Oct 03, 2011 6:13 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Why not 100/100 asset allocation
Replies: 234
Views: 24456

I hold 100% equities because I'm pessimistic. I believe the safety of US Treasuries is an illusion and that investors who hold them are going to be wiped out sometime in my lifetime by either overt default or de facto default by high/runaway inflation. I also think people hugely underestimate political risk -- failure modes that have nothing to do with financial markets and will make this whole "saving for retirement" video game irrelevant. Barring those grim scenarios, I'm still driven by pessimism. Since there's a threshold effect here -- below a certain net worth, I will have to keep working -- to have any hope of retiring before age 120, I need a real return (4-5%+) that probably won't be delivered by any asset mix, even 100% ...
by Kulak
Fri Aug 12, 2011 4:30 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Favorite malapropisms
Replies: 64
Views: 9383

Just heard a guy at work accusing someone of having an "alterior" motive. :)
by Kulak
Thu Aug 11, 2011 4:09 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Favorite malapropisms
Replies: 64
Views: 9383

sandstorm wrote:Warren Harding spoke of adhesion to a treaty.
I had to stop and think about whether that one's actually incorrect usage -- one does "adhere" to a treaty, so logically, why is "adhesion" barred?

A related one I hear sometimes from prole types is the verb adhede: "You gotta heat it up first to get it to adhede to it." :D

Question, though: If you create a non-word by misapplying a rule like that (vs. misusing a real word), is it still a malapropism or is it called something else?
by Kulak
Wed Aug 10, 2011 5:29 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: How did rebalancing work out for Japanese investors?
Replies: 39
Views: 5152

It seems a priori obvious to me that if the market mean-reverts there's a rebalancing bonus; if it's a random walk there's no bonus; and if it trends (up or down) there's a negative bonus. Is that not true?
by Kulak
Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:25 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: The higher education bubble
Replies: 27
Views: 4431

Valuethinker wrote:I think I read that Kenyan-Americans have the highest level of postgraduate education of any American ethnic group (maybe only first generation)?
Yep, racial discrimination in your favor is a good thing. And it makes a moving story, so long as we ignore the marginal white candidate who actually earned it, whose life's dreams were ruined.
by Kulak
Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:18 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: The higher education bubble
Replies: 27
Views: 4431

LMAO @
But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.”
by Kulak
Mon Apr 11, 2011 10:55 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Murder Mystery Authors
Replies: 117
Views: 16783

Cornell Woolrich is another 'founding father' of noir like Chandler and Hammett.
by Kulak
Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:09 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Buying a vacation home
Replies: 19
Views: 5510

Better question: How many nights do you need to stay in a place before it becomes even remotely cost-effective to buy (after all expenses are considered: transaction costs on both ends, interest, taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance/damage, landscaping, furnishing, cleaning...) vs. just staying in hotels? I'll bet it's many hundreds.

Edit: And be sure to account for your time at a reasonable hourly rate.
by Kulak
Wed Apr 06, 2011 11:36 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: singularity
Replies: 49
Views: 5578

tadamsmar wrote:It's a common pattern in history for the masters to slowly put their servants in charge.
This sounds provocative. Please elaborate or recommend a book.
by Kulak
Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:28 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

What's wrong with olive oil ?! The way you introduced it, one may think it's a rat poison. Sorry, "rat hole" is an English idiom that means (in one sense at least) a tangential topic that you can debate endlessly. Maybe I should've said "red herring" -- wait, we're talking about fish now? :D Anyway, here are some points: - Extremely energy-dense at 120 kcal/tbps (4000 kcal/lb -- Jet A aviation fuel is 4650 kcal/lb) - Lousy source of EFAs -- mostly oleic acid and the little essential fat it contains is skewed 13:1 omega-6 : omega-3 - Lousy source of micronutrients -- a little vit E and that's pretty much it - In a 5-year study of African green monkeys, the ones fed a monounsaturated diet had better lipids (lower LDL:HDL ...
by Kulak
Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:48 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

The Holt study that produced the data you referenced has been criticized... Good points. There is much to be said for CRAN - calorie restricted adequate nutrition - diets - whether vegan, paleo, or otherwise. Agreed. The diet of almost everyone in developed countries today is ridiculously bad -- basically suicide by food. So my advice to anyone is to first do the things that aren't controversial (roughly in order): 1. Eliminate hydrogenated oils. 2. Eliminate anything deep-fried. 3. Eliminate soda and other sugary drinks. 4. Minimize refined/concentrated fat (plant or animal) -- including "healthy" olive oil but that's another rat hole. 5. Minimize refined sugar. 6. Minimize refined starch. 7. Greatly increase raw and cooked non-...
by Kulak
Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:48 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

I already did. You still haven't read my posts in this thread.

I'm done.
by Kulak
Tue Mar 29, 2011 4:37 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

@Kevin: Clearly you didn't even read my posts. I said the very same thing above, with the citation. @CaliJim: Nobody's advocating a "simple carb" based junk-food diet. I was attacking the claim that protein blunts the insulin response from carbs. The Zone Diet-esque notion of food combining to "keep insulin in a healthy range" is false. It doesn't work that way. Carbs stimulate insulin, and protein also stimulates insulin. Speaking of satiety, that has been studied too. The most satiating food per calorie was boiled potatoes -- ahead of beef, fish, eggs, and cheese. Oatmeal also beat every "protein" food except fish. In direct contradiction of low-carb claims, combining carbs with fat worsened satiety , with t...
by Kulak
Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:36 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

Kevin, what you're claiming about insulin isn't true. The low-carb gurus you've read just assumed it to be true before it had been tested experimentally. Combining protein with carbs increases insulin. From the study I cited: The relation between protein contents and [insulin secretion] was negative but not significant (r = -0.24, n = 38 ). [...] On average, the protein-rich foods stimulated a large amount of insulin secretion relative to their glycemic response, followed by the bakery products, snack foods, fruit, carbohydrate-rich foods, and breakfast cereals. [...] In contrast, pasta, oatmeal porridge, and All-Bran cereal produced relatively low insulin responses, despite their high carbohydrate contents . Carbohydrate was quantitatively...
by Kulak
Mon Mar 28, 2011 5:13 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: How to hedge against rising interest rates?
Replies: 36
Views: 7777

Sorry to bounce this thread, but I'm curious about it myself and don't feel the question was answered.

How would one bet that interest rates will rise unexpectedly?

- Not asking how to merely preserve wealth in the event (go to ash/ultra-short, lock in FRM). What's the closest thing to a "call option" on interest rates?
- Citing particular funds designed to this is OK, but please explain how such funds work.
- Would different strategies apply to short- and long-term rates?
- Please don't answer "stay the course, etc." because I get all that. This is a purely academic question.

Thanks
by Kulak
Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:07 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Question to those that ride motorcycles
Replies: 67
Views: 8225

Sorry. Just imagine your wife at a stop light, and someone is driving up behind her in a SUV, and they're texting, not paying attention to the road. Wham, your wife is dead. Statistically that almost never happens. As far as accident "modes" go, the one to fear is that a car in an intersection will make an unprotected left turn in front of you and you'll T-bone the car. Next most likely IIRC is a car pulling out of a side street/driveway in front of you. To the OP: MSF courses are a must. Much of motorcycle operation and safety is unintuitive or counterintuitive. They'll make you a better car driver to boot. Track days are even better if you have a bike that corners. You'll learn more in one day at the track than from thousands o...
by Kulak
Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:20 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: 401K Law
Replies: 39
Views: 11421

I'd complain even if it's within the lawful limit. That's ridiculous. I've had two jobs with 401(k) plans, and in both cases the contributions posted next business day like clockwork.

If they intentionally delay to earn interest on the float, that's a form of stealing in my opinion.
by Kulak
Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:13 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

For those tuning in who aren't very familiar with this debate, and since the low-carbers seem to be dominating the discussion, I want to point out a few things. - The native populations with the best longevity all eat high-carb, low-fat/protein diets. This includes the pre-WWII Okinawans, the Chinese centenarians, the Kitavans, and others. Low-carbers like to point to a couple small populations living in extreme conditions that ate very high-fat diets yet did not die of heart attacks: the Masai of sub-Saharan Africa and the Inuit. Both these peoples have terrible longevity (die in their 50s). The Masai have extensive atherosclerosis, though, strangely, not heart attacks. The Inuit eat >300g protein a day and have horrible osteoporosis and o...
by Kulak
Mon Mar 21, 2011 2:33 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Low carb or low fat
Replies: 127
Views: 20438

This is only true if the Calories in do not change the behavior of the system, i.e. the human body. However, different macronutrient compositions have different hormonal effects on the body. You can get more information here: http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/book-excerpt-why-we-get-fat agreed hormonal status is the biggest determinant of body composition as apposed to calories consumed. if you eat 4000 calories of butter every day you will lose fat because your insulin level will drop that's why diabetics starve without insulin. Here is a diet plan that is easy to understand but hard to follow this is from my website I made in 06 http://www.simplefit.org/ideal-meal.html That is complete nonsense and one of the core fallacies of low-carb. The...
by Kulak
Fri Mar 18, 2011 11:30 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: The two-fund portfolio
Replies: 38
Views: 9295

Is there something particular in your question that you want to address which hasn't been discussed in the "ultimate slice & dice" thread [link added]? If I understand the gist of this very long thread and TrevH's charts, it is: yes, on the equity side, compared to World Stock (he used 50-50 TSM and int'l large-blend), you can earn an extra ~2% of CAGR for the same volatility by going to a 4-fund slice & dice -- clearly worth it. The caveat being that it's based on only 1970-2009. So I conclude that both World Stock and Total Bond have inadequacies, and the "sweet spot" is something like: - Equity: TrevH's 4 funds (25% each large-blend, small-value, int'l large-value, int'l small(-value?)) - Fixed-income: 50% in...
by Kulak
Thu Mar 17, 2011 11:49 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Ethical Question
Replies: 37
Views: 5736

Fine, I'll bite. Fixing it or not isn't a dilemma, but I can kind of see an argument that accepting the full $1000 is unethical. You're entitled to be made whole, of course. But suppose the damage doesn't reduce the value of the car by $1000 -- that is, given the value of the car, you and 95% of the "population" of owners, had you done the damage yourself, would just drive it that way. And suppose potential buyers would discount only it by $500 on average. So in sscritic's terms you now have a $7500 car and a $1000 check. I guess the question to ask yourself is, "Am I profiting from this?" If yes, one solution might be to give the surplus back to the other driver to offset his (presumably) higher premiums. I drove very c...
by Kulak
Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:48 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: How many hours a week do you work?
Replies: 83
Views: 981366

Day job is salaried and usually just 40 hours (though on-call 24/7). I have an easy night job that pays on an hourly basis 85% of what my day job pays. I've managed to cut it back to only 16 scheduled hours. It funds my retirement and can immediately convert to full-time (with medical) if I looose my day job. So it functions as an 'option' on a job, which in today's market I deem valuable. The downside is, it disrupts my sleep and social life in disproportion to the number of hours worked.