Monthly Archives: July 2009

From the Wall Street Journal: Cankle, a portmanteau word combining calf and ankle, refers to “the area in affected female legs where the calf meets the foot in an abrupt, nontapering terminus,” according to Urban Dictionary. A spokeswoman for the American Podiatric Medical Association says the word is not a medical term.

On pandagon.net there is a compellingly argued piece that Harry Potter should have been made (and still can be made) into a TV series, instead of a series of movies (note: for those who have not read the books, there are spoilers in the piece). Here’s an excerpt: Before the movie, we talked about how [...]

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An intriguing coincidence: The repayment rate of individual loans in Kiva (a broker for individual loans around the world) is 98.50%, which is quite similar to the payback percentage of Las Vegas slot machines. However, Kiva helps allow you to act as a banker to people throughout the developing world (and more recently, the United [...]

John Buffalo Mailer (son of Norman) writes in The American Conservative of the Summer of ’69: Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin’s campaign to liberate NYC. A thought-provoking read, which highlights many of the duo’s offbeat and intriguing campaign ideas, centerpiece of which was to make New York City the 51st state. Here are a few [...]

Joe DiMaggio and his streak is once again a topic of conversation. First, Radiolab had a discussion with my grad school adviser Steve Strogatz about the streak, in the context of stochasticity. And then, a few days later, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about randomness, and DiMaggio’s streak by Leonard Mlodinow. I guess [...]