Thursday, January 30, 2025

Top 10 of the 2025 ACSM Worldwide Fitness Trends (Fitness and Training)

Fitness is essential to nearly all aspects of a person's life and it is of popular interest. Like any industry the fitness industry has trends and those trends include new technology and focus on certain goals. 

Many of the gym buffs are looking for a new quick answer to something that often takes many years of sustained effort. There are no substitutes to eating right, movement, resistance and recovery. 

Some of the apps are great but keep in mind they only record the effort you invest into fitness.

Top 10 of the 2025 ACSM Worldwide Fitness Trends

1. Wearable Technology

2. Mobile Exercise Applications

3. Fitness Programs for Older Adults

4. Exercise for Weight Loss

5. Traditional Strength Training

6. High Intensity Interval Training

7. Data-driven Training Technology

8. Exercise for Mental Health

9. Functional Fitness Training

10. Health/Wellness Coaching

As a licensed fitness trainer I can help. Looking to pick up a client or two to work remote and/or onsite depending on location. If interested in a fitness and/or nutrition plan send me a message to the right. I like to do it it helps me stay in shape.

The Economic Value of Beaches (Art and Economics)

Original painting
no words
In The Economic Value of America's Beaches there are some interesting stats on return on beach investment. There are places where beaches have encouraged increased economic activity like tourism, dining, and aquatic products. 

You can read The economic value of America’s beaches.

-Beach tourism 240 million

-3.4 billion visits per year

$3,000 in economic output, $1,400 in direct spending, and $200 in taxes for every $1 spent 

-$36 billion in taxes is generated from beaches.

Let us also consider that beaches also provide soft benefits such as a healthy outdoor lifestyle, family connection, community engagement, and appreciation for the outdoors. 

In case your wondering about the painting. It is a hobby and while I don't consider myself particularly skilled at it I do like to find a purpose for it.  Original Painting and what it looks like on a cup. You can purchase if interested. More or less this is for fun. 

Houston, J. (Spring 2024). The economic value of America’s beaches. Shore & Beach, 92 (4) https://asbpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/92_2_houston_color.pdf


Cup and Products



Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Peter Lynch Investing in "Understandable" Stocks (Stock Strategy and Investing)

Stock investing is a pursuit that hopes to increase wealth through investing assets in companies and businesses that we believe will grow. Thus, each investor seeks to create value by understanding stocks and coming up with a strategy. Rubbing a rabbit’s foot might work well for some but when you are dealing with a lot of money, or company assets, you think of a system or strategy.

Thus, my pursuit is to find a strategy and see if it works. So far it has been working and reached a 90% growth rate but then receded to about 76%. I'm not a big investor, a very small one, but the little egg is growing. It’s the inner workings of the process I'm more worried about.  The portfolio appears to become more stable.

(As a disclaimer I’m not a financial analyst and not your stockbroker so you should contact them. This is just a discussion.)

What I like about this article is that it discusses the ways companies can increase earnings which includes reducing costs, raising prices, expanding into new markets, selling more in current markets, revitalize or close operations. 

If a company has a plan they will be willfully moving into one of those directions. Hopefully not closing but certainly a merger is one option. Thus, looking at the financials and their ability to capitalize on their current position, based in market trends, and with their own resources is a good place to start.

The following Peter Lynch "Understandable" Stocks have a few key points.

-Look for smaller, moderately growing, reasonably priced stocks.

-Pick stocks one by one in a bottom-up approach. 

-Familiarize yourself with the company

-Categorize companies to you understand them.

Peter Lynch Investing in "Understandable" Stocks

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Military Veterans, Culture and Perspective in College (Research Study)

As college students there are some benefits and challenges experienced by military students that may not be faced by everyone. Understanding some of those challenges and benefits does help us to think about the best ways to help veterans become successful so they can continue to serve their nation, its underlining principles and its people. They have strengths that often far exceed other types of students and we can enhance them.

(As a side note: A fully developed person does have multiple skills and some of those skills are fostereed in the military. Strength and intelligence, power and mercy, diligence with purpose, so on and so forth. One would need to be challenged to understand them at a deeper level.)

Transforming the "average" student into an exceptional societal contributor is a part of the next step in human capital development (not fully developed in our market and sometimes opposed). Average students, military students, and those who want to advance their skills to become contributors should be able to find quality schools that understand their needs.

Helping military students see themselves as future leaders by drawing on their existing strengths and experiences is helpful.

Some of the things I think of off the top of my head are ways to better socialized and connect the worlds of academia and military student perspective (see below) as well as offering activities that help draw military students (and veterans) into the coursework and examples.

Business and military leadership does share some similarities at their root.

Key findings from the Study (Benbow, et. al, 2024):

-Transfers and commuter students were similar with other students.

-More likely to be first generation college students and have cognitive, mobility and/or sensor impairments.

-Lower high school grades but higher first-year college grades.

-Decreased sense of belonging

-Less financial stress than other students.

-Less satisfied than non-miliary students.


 A Quantitative Comparison of Student Service Members/ Veterans and Non-Military Students: Undergraduate Characteristics and Perspectives. 

Benbow, et. al. (Sept. 2024) A Quantitative Comparison of Student Service Members/ Veterans and Non-Military Students: Undergraduate Characteristics and Perspectives. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11536329/

Sunday, January 26, 2025

The U.S. Appears to Have a Positive Investment Outlook for 2025

The economy and investment projections look pretty good for the US in 2025. US based large caps are outperforming many other nations (This is where you can ask why and look into it). The sentiment and prospects for investing in the US seem positive and with some policy adjustments we likely can further enhance that influx of capital and find places to settle headquarters moving back (For some companies that might be a first step. Fo existing companies they might consider reinvesting back in U.S. based companies). New FDI investment on top of recent technology innovations (AI productivity gains) mixed with recent infrastructure development means we are also likely going to see radical environmental change. Money, technology, human capital, and the market need to all come together at the right time could create a transactional cocktail that enhances the possibility/probabilities of growth. 

(Let us do some theory exploration. As a side note some believe we are in a type of Digital Era/Information Age that is an upgraded economic platform based on rapid development of the Internet over the past few decades with forced COVID adaptations  that has fundamentally changed us from industrial economic models of the past to the digital models of the future. We will become much more data rich letting us see patterns we couldn't see before. For example, continuing the line of research on economic clusters such clusters might include dashboards and other data markers to help see what an economic ecosystem looks like. Going down that same strain of thought there are likely going to be many smaller transactions locally and fewer but larger ones to regional or even global supply lines. I'm curious if we took some of that investment upswing and strategically pack invested it to create a new industry to fill some market gap to see what rapid innovation could occur ðŸ¤”In theory anyway is possible. Theory is theory but there is some support for it.)

Anway, the report I read is pretty good stuff. 

Northern Trust Global Investment Outlook 2025


Friday, January 24, 2025

Working in Smoke (Firefighting and Art)

As much as possible I want to stay up on the latest research in firefighting and outcomes. The research helps understand a few mitigation strategies.  It doesn't take much to have a shift in the wind and smoke roll right over you. Most of the time people are not using respirators outdoors (There are some fairly cheap masks that can be used to minimize light inhalation issues.).  Many of the injuries last year were from smoke inhilation which can happen in forest fires and grass fires. Putting on heavy gear may not always be feasible out in the woods or outdoors so something small and portable would help. 

This report discusses some of the mitigation strategies.

Forest Firefighting Painting
The painting I did last year
shows the chaos of fires from
an impressionist standpoint.

Working in Smoke: Wildfire Impacts on the Health of Firefighters and Outdoor Workers and Mitigation Strategies

Working on gathering about $40k in grants for fire related equipment and $50k for a possible training program and training equipment I'm thinking of putting together. Of course all things are dependent on financing. If you have some corporate dollars and want to do something good for people send me a message to the right and I will put you in contact with a great fire department.

Navarro K. Working in Smoke:: Wildfire Impacts on the Health of Firefighters and Outdoor Workers and Mitigation Strategies. Clin Chest Med. 2020 Dec;41(4):763-769. doi: 10.1016/j.ccm.2020.08.017. PMID: 33153693; PMCID: PMC9008597.


Human Rights and Corruption Approach Doesn't Work Well (Hypothetical Discussion on Hate and Corruption)

We have been exploring a hypothetical philosophical discussion on hate and corruption and the allowance of such poor behaviors to protect co...