Newmark's Door

How to quantify your beauty.

This is a good observation:

The majority of UFOs appear to people in the United States. It’s curious that Asia and Africa have so few sightings despite their large populations, and even more surprising that the sightings stop at the Canadian and Mexican borders.

"One section of U.S. Highway 129 in North Carolina has 318 curves in an 11-mile span, earning its name the “Tail of the Dragon,” as well as its reputation for being one of America’s most dangerous roads."

About a 12-minute video that gives some of the details. For more details I think you'd have to watch the previous videos in the series. But still impressive.

I have no idea if the author, who has "hereditary Slavs," is right, but I thought her piece was amusing.

I wish I had known about this when I was teaching.

This article shows that a highly statistically significant correlation exists between stork populations and human birth rates across Europe. While storks may not deliver babies, unthinking interpretation of correlation and p-values can certainly deliver unreliable conclusions.

100 pounds in about four months. And five years later he apparently has kept virtually all of it off.

The first two weeks are nothing but potatoes. Boiled or baked but not fried. With nothing added: no salt, no butter, no anything. Mandatory to also eat the skin. 

Details are in Penn's recent book, Presto! How I Made Over 100 Pounds Magically Disappear and Other Magical Tales. I read it and I think it desperately needs a good editor. Interesting but it would have been better at half the length. 

His diet guru is Ray Cronise. One piece on his thinking is here: "Ray Cronise Wants To Fix Our Broken Plate".

Quora discussion, with some that made me laugh.

Confused, distraught and annoyed when it’s time to pump your own gas. . . . EEK! Real talk, if you are from Portland, you have been spoiled and babied your whole adult gas pumping life. You will stand, or sit and wait for the gas attendant, that will never come to pump your gas.

You’re with the band. You’re in a band, were in a band, have managed or worked a bands merch table. You knew all the famous bands in town before they got famous, you probably even “dated” one of them. If you are from Portland you are probably claiming you have done one or all of these. Scene points, lots of scene points.

This, unfortunately, is also pretty Portland: "After defunding the police, Portland mayor attacks police for not arresting more rioters (that just get released anyway)".

Brief piece on the technical difference between "efficacy" and "efficiency".

The Brooklyn Bridge, Seven Mile Bridge, Bay Bridge, and others.