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Middle-aged prodigies: Seven poster children over 40
- MicahWedemeyer 15y agoEach "page" in this multi-page article is literally 1 image, about 50 words of text, and 3 ads. The article content is fine, but there is no reason it has to be spread across 7 different pages. Publishers chasing pageview and ad impression counts make the web a shitty place.
- tnuc 15y agoThere is an article you can read. You just need to sign up. And then they send you spam to make you think "I'm sure I ticked the no email box".
- dailo10 15y agoAnd if you don't want to register, you can use bugmenot to sign in.
- unicron 15y agoI viewed the comments just to write what you have. It's like reading CNet. Someone should write an app that turns shitty articles across lots of pages into one page!
- philwelch 15y agoSafari Reader has that feature, but I'm not sure how it works on slideshows as I use Chrome.
- fuzzix 15y agoYep, sorry about that, didn't realise the clickthrough article forced signup either. Delete?
- philwelch 15y agoIt's much better with Adblock Plus enabled, then you just get the big image and the text.
- alevans4 15y agoAgreed. I don't know why people run without Adblock.
- surement 15y agoBecause I don't use Firefox and the Chrome version says it will access any file on my computer if I install it, which I find unnecessary.
- jaredsohn 15y agoIt doesn't say that. It says it requires access to: " * Your data on all websites * Your tabs and browsing history " The reason for the first is that it needs to be able to modify every page you are looking at to block the ads. The reason for the second is that it needs access to the Tab API (to get the name/URL of a webpage you view, presumably to make use of white/black lists.)
- dredmorbius 15y agoWhich is a huge part of what makes various "privacy policy" terms so damned useless. There is a ton of software on my computer that "has access" to my "data" and "network traffic": the kernel, network stack, clients, filesystem drivers, etc. What they don't do is go tattling all this crap back to some mothership (or at least they'd better damned well not be). Where Android / iPhone apps and Chrome extensions start freaking the living crap out of me is where they say they "require" this access ... and I don't (short of setting up some network traffic instrumentation) know off-hand whether this is staying local to the app or getting broadcast to the world. Or some big brotherly subset of the world.
- 15y ago
- username3 15y agoSome people prefer pressing next instead of scrolling.
- monkeypizza 15y agoAutopager set up an infinite scroll for me, while I was reading the first one...
- Drbble 15y agoHow old is Edward Kmett? He has been a major force in Haskell (fancy type/algorithm stuff) in the past few years, but did not start his contributions around age 20 like many top Haskellers of the past 15 years (folks who were not on the original committee).
- toddnessa 15y agoThis article was encouraging. Being over 40 myself, I am very appreciative of this post and was worth waiting for the page reloads to view all of it. I know that those at younger ages have more mobility as they often have no families or real roots established yet. While this is a benefit to them, I am grateful for those who value the contributions that those a couple of decades older or more can make.
- Androsynth 15y agoThe first thing I thought of when reading this is the 10000 hour rule. These people didn't come out of nowhere. Most of them appear to have been honing their craft for a while prior to becoming famous/wealthy (or at least getting practice in a similar field). Malcolm Gladwell's article on late bloomers is also relevant http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...
- scotch_drinker 15y agoI was going to write something similar but I don't think it's most. Of the 7, only the Nobel Laureate, Ray Kroc and the runner seem to have been working on their "art" for lack of a better term for years beforehand. Bruckner and Midgley seem to have at least been in related fields though the difference between being a lecturer/teacher and an author/composer is more vast than I think we might think. Chandler and DuBuffet seem to be the most likely to be deemed prodigies. Chandler especially having been in a completely different field could be considered a prodigy.
- edw519 15y agoI love articles like this. It reminds the 99% of us who didn't "hit it big" in our youth that it's never too late. Hopefully someday... "edw519 toiled in obscurity writing software for over 30 years before he hit it big when his proprietary NFL Play Calling Software enabled the Pittsburgh Steelers to win 7 consecutive Super Bowls (American football). The string was only stopped when Paul Allen put together a team to reverse engineer the software, enabling the Seattle Seahawks to win their first Super Bowl in 2020."
- ryanhuff 15y agoWhile your post was in jest, it is (somewhat) unfortunate that the NFL bans this sort of technology from the game. I wonder if the top quantitatively skilled talent would be more highly prized to NFL teams than a top-flight QB.
- TDL 15y agoI would imagine that they (quants) would be highly prized, but you would still need the boots on the ground to execute the strategy.
- philwelch 15y agoNo way. Playcalling isn't the limiting factor in the NFL. Top teams don't lose because they fucked up their gameplan — they lose because the receivers drop passes, the quarterback overthrows, or the linebackers don't tackle low enough. And what you can do with playcalling is limited or expanded by the limitations and abilities of your players.
- umjames 15y agoThe Steelers have enough Super Bowl titles already. Why not help your brethren on the other side of the state? The Eagles still haven't won one (and have only been to two). You'd be a permanent legend here. :)
- lancefisher 15y agoThat's one thing I love about ultrarunning. The old guys can compete with the young guys. In what other sport is that possible?
- 100tonmantis 15y agoBowling.
- blhack 15y agoGolf.
- sdoowpilihp 15y agoarchery
- gcheong 15y agoDog Mushing (unless you're a dog). Archery.
- laserDinosaur 15y agosquash
- ryanglasgow 15y agoNascar (or any autosport)
- lebski88 15y agoFormula 1 drivers seem to lose their edge as they get older.
- wazoox 15y agoCycling. (Jens Voigt, 40 y.o., just arrived 2nd at today stage on Paris-Nice).
- run4yourlives 15y agoAren't drugs wonderful? :)
- philwelch 15y agoWhile some of these examples are rather remarkable, like the ultramarathoner, it's kind of a reflection on the media's obsession with youth that this seems like an oddity now, and I say this as a young person. Probably most serious achievement in any field will be by older people, just because it takes time to gain experience, knowledge, and wisdom. What's unusual is people achieving very much in their 20's, unless they're professional athletes.
- asmithmd1 15y agoKing Gillette is another patron saint of late bloomers. While walking around the Boston harbor recently I read the bio of him on a plaque at the site of the first Gillette plant. He was a middling salesman when he came up with the idea for disposable razors. When he was 48 years old he sold 51 razors and 168 blades, 12 years later he was selling 70 million per year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Camp_Gillette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Camp_Gillette
- iandanforth 15y agoMy favorite is Tolkien. The Hobbit was published when he was 45. To points made by others though he was a professor of English at Oxford for many years prior and wrote copiously during that time.
- saraid216 15y agoYeah, I wouldn't call Tolkien a middle-aged bloomer. His books were extensions of what he had already been doing that entire time, AFAIK: the stories were part stories for his kids and part riffs off his philology work. I guess you could point at his ambition to create an English mythology as his middle-aged success, but I'm not sure he was actually successful at that.
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI especially enjoyed Mary Midgley's quote: "I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I'm jolly glad because I didn't know what I thought before then I wonder how many of these folks were "big thinkers" just without the proper stimulus? Or in other words, did most of them come up with various other ideas throughout their life -- perhaps in various fields -- and it finally just worked out where all the pieces were in place at the right time? Or did these people undergo a personality change in their middle years? I suspect the former. Midgley's and Kroc's stories especially sound like people who were "accumulating" and working out ideas for many, many years before it finally gelled, but it's just a guess. When the 22-year-old hits it big with some idea we all say something like "Look at that awesome kid! He was born for greatness" but when a 44-year-old does the same thing, we can no longer use the "he's so special it's no wonder he succeeded" rationale. Something else is at work.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- epo 15y agoPerhaps it just takes a long time to work through the mistakes and mis-steps. Or perhaps just something as mundane as having the kids grow up thus giving you more free time.
- kstenerud 15y agoMostly you just look back in slack-jawed amazement at all the silly thoughts, philosophies, and epiphanies you've had throughout your younger years, and wonder what your future self will think of your present self.
- zubr1768 15y agoMany possess, at various times, the potential for brilliance in our ideas, connections, and intent. But how many will follow through?
- ansy 15y agoThe big miss in this article was leaving out Immanuel Kant[1]. Although he wasn't unknown in early life, the works that secured his place in history didn't happen until well into his 50's and beyond. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
- wslh 15y agoDon't forget Rabbi Akiva: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiva_ben_Joseph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akiva_ben_Joseph "A reliable tradition (Ab. R. N. l.c.) narrates that Akiva at the age of 40..."
- amattn 15y agoI hate slideshows masquerading as articles. I hate them so much. - Raymond Chandler, author - Harry Kroto, chemist - Anton Bruckner, composer - Mary Midgley, author, scientist - Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's - Jean Dubuffet, painter - Marco Olmo, runner
- DrJokepu 15y agoYou forgot image 8 of 8, which is an ad.
- aresant 15y ago40 seems like about the time you've got enough experience under your belt to build something extraordinary and enough comfort with money (or access to money) to realize your vision. Steve Jobs would be an interesting one for this list. He didn't change digital production history until he was 40 years old w/Toy Story in 1995. He didn't return to Apple until 1997 and turn it into the world's largest consumer electronic's business. Everything before that was marginal by comparison.
- gruseom 15y agoThe personal computer was not "marginal".
- drats 15y agoIt's true they made a decent contribution early on, but I hope you aren't implying they invented the personal computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer#History
- gruseom 15y agoApple up to the Mac is practically the prototype of the Silicon Valley young-founders-in-a-garage startup. To depict Steve Jobs as a late bloomer who did nothing big before 40 is silly.
- CamperBob 15y agoFor definitions of "personal computer" that don't involve toggle switches and #47 pilot lamps, yes, they invented the personal computer.
- htf 15y agoSteve Jobs was already worth $100,000,000 at 25.
- aresant 15y agoYah, but my point was that of the $8b estate he left behind, the majority of that wealth was created in his 40s.
- chbrown 15y agoHey pg, why don't the guidelines have something about submissions behind paywalls / sign-in-walls?
- tfm 15y agoAn interesting read is an interesting read, there are occasionally nuggets of gold even on the most poorly designed slideshow ad trap. I like to imagine that the "inverted pyramid" technique frontloads the best stuff on the landing page and this discussion page (a man can dream, can't he?). Etiquette might suggest a heads up in the submitted title (paywall, slideshow, obnoxious popover ad that breaks the article on mobile, &c). If the article is in fact paywalled then it's unlikely to rise far enough to get in many peoples' way.
- fuzzix 15y agoAgain, sorry for the shite submission. Some people enjoyed it, I guess.
- tzs 15y agoCliff Young would be a good one to add to this list: http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young More on him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete) Summary: 61 year old sheep farmer, shows up at an 875 km (540 mile) ultra marathon and enters. No sponsor, no fancy running equipment--he's in overalls and work boots. He won, setting a new record for the race, knocking almost 2 days off the old record.
- bootload 15y ago"... No sponsor, no fancy running equipment--he's in overalls and work boots. He won, setting a new record for the race, knocking almost 2 days off the old record. ..." I saw Cliffy Young during that run. I was on a bus on the way to Canberra for school when we passed him going up a hill. The way he won was by taking very few rest stops, sleeping at most 2Hrs every 24. I'm pretty sure he had runners on but did train in gumboots at home.
- pelemele 15y agoAs a life expectancy is much longer than it was 100 years ago (~30 years difference - http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html) we will see more and more "older" people doing stuff which was not imaginable just a half century back.
- adestefan 15y agoNot really. Life expectancy numbers were always skewed by the large number of childhood deaths. If you lived past 5, you've always had a pretty good chance of living a long life.
- chronophile 15y agoI don't suppose you might have a link to a study to support this statement? The way variations of this comment always appear without any sort of evidence or substantiation has made me think that it might me a popular misconception...
- jonathansizz 15y agoHere's the first one I found by searching for 'life expectancy by age'. You can see that child mortality was indeed very large, but adult mortality has also declined sharply e.g. a 20-year-old white male today can expect to live 15 years longer than his counterpart in 1900: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
- hristov 15y agoThe profile of Raymond Chandler is a bit misleading and over-simplified. It suggest that he lost his lucrative oil company job due to the depression. That was not the case. Chandler is a very good example for the suggestion that one has to try to do what one loves for a living. He was initially a very successful and well liked oil company executive. But his own success seemed to cause him unhappiness. He eventually started drinking showing up late for work, flirting with all women in the office, etc. Eventually, even though the company owners liked him and had a lot of respect for his abilities, they had to fire him. He then returned to a life of poverty trying to hack it as a writer. But eventually he became the brilliant writer who with Dashiel Hammett basically defined the noir style. He never quite kicked his alcoholism but he was much more fulfilled and productive than as an oil company executive.
- hncommenter13 15y agoRoy Thomson, Canadian founder of what is now Thomson Reuters and the 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet, was essentially bankrupt in his mid-to-late 30s, having failed in a number of enterprises. At age 40, he bought the first of the hundreds of newspapers he eventually would own because it was downstairs from his fledgling radio station. http://www.scotsman.com/news/the-men-who-made-the-scotsman-part-two-1-718332 http://www.scotsman.com/news/the-men-who-made-the-scotsman-p...
- b_emery 15y agoInspirational quote of the week: "Middle-aged people are arguably the pinnacle of human evolution: they can do more, earn more and, in short, they run the world."
- larrywright 15y agoAs someone who just turned 40, I resent the use of the term "middle-aged" here :)
- tsunamifury 15y agoI'd like to think that most people are more successful later in life. We obsess over young prodigies, but many work hard to achieve great things way past their 40's
- jacques_chester 15y agoWhen he crossed the Rubicon river, Gaius Julius Caesar was 51. Earlier, when he was 31, Caesar allegedly cried upon seeing a statue, in Spain, outlining the accomplishments that Alexander the Great had done before he died at 33. Great deeds are done at all ages. The only reason we obsess over the great deeds of the young is because it is exceedingly rare to achieve greatness during youth.
- run4yourlives 15y agoOur society also worships youth like few others in the past have.
- joezydeco 15y agoOr, our society has learned how to take advantage of the energy and enthusiasm of youth before those people get wise enough to figure it out.