Primal Ninja - Latest Comments

Re: Book Review: Naturally Selected – The Evolutionary Science of Leadership

Sean Rogers — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:35:41 -0000

I need a little more time to dig through that book to give a more substantive reply. With that said, the section on followership does suggest that our tendency to follow is an inborn trait, rather than one nurtured within a culture. I find the argument for why followership is part of our traits to be pretty strong. Vugt gives three primary benefits to followership in an ancestral setting: group cohesion, copying others to aid with survival (determining what foods are safe and such), and following to learn how to lead in the future. The only thing I caught in the book that relates to the nurture argument is the idea that groups or leaders that have extreme tasks required to "buy in" to be a follower tend to survive longer. I need to re-read the chapter on corruption later, as I vaguely remember more talk about authoritarianism in that section that might be useful.

Okay, a little more substantive than I was expecting at first. :)

Re: Book Review: Naturally Selected – The Evolutionary Science of Leadership

Andrew — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:39:22 -0000

On the follower question, I've always been interested to see how Bob Altemeyer's work on authoritarianism and authoritarian followers fits in with the evolutionary angle. He seems to lean more toward 'nurture' arguments, but I'm not sure that conclusion is... eh hem... authoritative.

Re: Training Game #2

Soter — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:34:44 -0000

Heh, sounds like fun. Though you'd have to make point B like a tree branch or something, and A the top of a building. :p

Re: Barefoot Training and Parkour

Sean Rogers — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:41:09 -0000

Thanks, and Disqus is indeed great. Now to actually use it more.

Re: Barefoot Training and Parkour

JCPistell — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:38:27 -0000

Great post and I dig the new layout. Also, yay for disqus :)

Re: Translations of Georges Hébert’s Practical Guide of Physical Education (1912)

Sean Rogers — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:14:53 -0000

Yeah, from my conversations with Pilou (who did this translation) the books written in the 40s are very hard to come by, at least in any digital form. Definitely not in any of the collections at my local university.

Re: Translations of Georges Hébert’s Practical Guide of Physical Education (1912)

Andrew — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:23:28 -0000

I've been experimenting with combining Google Translate with Google Books specifically for Hebert's work. It does a reasonable job on the 1912 stuff, but (as far as I can tell) the later works aren't available as the free versions required to apply Google Translate to them.