Statistics Saturday: The Numbers Zero Through Twelve In Alphabetical Order With Two Mistakes To Lure Some Know-It-All Into Commenting

1. 8
2. 11
3. 5
4. 4
5. 9
6. 1
7. 7
8. 6
9. 10
10. 3
11. 12
12. 2
13. 0

Statistics Saturday: The Numbers Zero Through Twelve In Alphabetical Order With A Mistake To Lure Some Know-It-All Into Commenting

1. 8
2. 11
3. 5
4. 4
5. 9
6. 1
7. 7
8. 6
9. 10
10. 3
11. 12
12. 2
13. 0

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index fell five points today as everyone reviewed the list above and held their breath.

351

Statistics Saturday: Apollo Lunar Landings, By Day

I certainly hope this clears up some things!

Source: Oh, come on, like anyone couldn’t rattle off the dates that (say) the Apollo 16 Lunar Module was on the surface of the Moon with its complement of astronauts, Commander Astronaut Commander Guy, Lunar Module Pilot Pilot Person, and Command Module Pilot Ed Harris aboard? This hardly needs sourcing. We’re not savages.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose four points, no thanks to Lisa who’s still walking around and mentioning stuff about “deal memos” just loudly enough that everybody knows what she thinks she’s doing. We’re not taking her bait on the intimations of some kind of Dutch TV producers being involved either.

365

Statistics Saturday: Some Answers

• North Dakota in the year 1822.
• Myoglobin.
• It has none.
• The square root of two raised to the square root of two power.
• Cuckoo clocks.
• Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann.
• The Hartford Whalers.
• SS Ideal-X.
• Hexagons.
• Polymerization.
• The pathetic fallacy.
• Saw the board into two halves; combine the two halves to make a whole, and then climb out through the [w]hole.
• Pointillism.
• 95 percent.
• Dormer windows.
• Walk The Moon.
• James Irwin.
• Violincello.
• Doyenne, D-o-y-e-n-n-e. Doyenne.
• Had you considered the village barber might be a woman?

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped three points today, owing to traders getting all sulky when I told them that while I appreciated their idea about an imaginary HGTV show talled Tiny McMansions, there was no way I could build that up to one of my big-size weekly essays and I wasn’t going to try. Lisa went off fuming and saying she was going to put together a pilot episode.

328

Statistics Saturday: What The Days This Week Have Felt Like

Day	Felt Like
Sunday	Sunday
Monday	Monday
Tuesday	Weeping
Wednesday	Thursday
Thursday	Friday
Friday	A Pillow Full Of Bunny Kisses
Saturday	Take-Out From The Chinese Place With The Fake Vegetarian Chicken So Good You Kind Of Don’t Want To Check If It’s Real Chicken And They’re Just Lying

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose another sixteen points as investors decided that the week has just gone that well, what with having the gridiron thing explained and how the water bill turned out to be just exactly what everyone figured so they don’t have to worry about it being too high or suspiciously low.

291

Statistics Saturday: Books Making The Case Against

To give some balance. You know.

• The Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes.
• The Case Against William, Mark Gimenez.
• The Case Against the Supreme Court, Erwin Chemerinsky.
• The Case Against Satan, Ray Russell.
• The Case Against DynCorp, Ryan Zimmerman.
• The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Michael J Sandel.
• The Case Against Tongues: Weighing up the Evidence, Gordon L Swanepoel.
• The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do about It, Sara Bennett, Nancy Kalish.
• The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, Alfie Kohn.
• The Case against Sugar: Your guide to quitting Sugar and Breakfast and Baby Recipes with Zero or Low Sugar Content, Stacy Kennedy.
• The Case Against Happiness, Jean-Paul Pecqueur.
• The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought, Daniel Schwindt.
• The case against railway nationalisation, Edwin A Pratt.
• The Case Against Spirit Photographs, C Vincent Patrick.
• The Case against Origen and Reincarnation, Eric Liberatos.
• The Case Against Paul Raeburn, John Creasey.
• The Case against Joining the Common Market, Paul Einzig.
• The Case Against Socrates, Earl Jay Perel.
• The Case Against Diodore and Theodore, John Behr.
• The Case Against Consequentialism Reconsidered, Nikil Mukerji.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped three points and we’ve maybe beaten the whole Belgian cricket diet bubble by asking the Another Blog, Meanwhile trading floor to try eating some. It’s a small measure but hey, every little bit helps.

226

Statistics Saturday: Books Making The Case For

• The Case For Impeachment, Allan J Lichtman.
• The Case For Jamie, Brittany Cavallaro.
• The Case For Loving: The Fight For Interracial Marriage, Selina Alko, Sean Qualls.
• The Case For Heaven: Near-Death Experiences As Evidence of the Afterlife, Mally Cox-Chapman.
• The Case For Israel, Alan Dershowitz.
• The Case For The UFO, M K Jessup.
• The Case For Anthroposophy, Owen Barfield.
• The Case For US Nuclear Weapons In The 21st Century, Brad Roberts.
• The Case For Socialism (Second Edition), Alan Maass, Howard Zinn.
• The Case For The Cruising Trimaran, Jim Brown.
• The Case For The King James Bible, D A Waite.
• The Case For Polytheism, Steven Dillon.
• The Case For Animal Rights, Tom Regan.
• The Case For A Basic Income, Robert Jameson.
• The Case For Mars: The Plan To Settle The Red Planet And Why We Must, Robert Zubrin, Richard Wagner.
• The Case For Bureaucracy: A Public Administration Polemic, Charles T Goodsell.
• The Case For The Corporate Death Penalty: Restoring Law And Order On Wall Street, Mary Kreiner Ramirez, Steven A Ramirez.
• The Case For Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W Bush From Office, Dave Lindorff, Barbara Olshansky.
• The Case For Greatness: Honorable Ambition and its Critics, Robert Faulkner.
• The Case for The Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680-1760, John Robertson.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped sixteen points today in trading that could be called “lower”, or also “dramatically lower”, but to be honest who can focus on something like that anymore?

208

Statistics Saturday: Some Minor Hassles Made More Exciting By Labelling Them “The Great ___ Fiasco”

• The Great Dead-Battery-In-The-Radio-Set-Clock Fiasco
• The Great Trying-To-Put-My-Ancient-iPad-Back-On-A-Data-Plan-That-Somehow-Requires-A-Lengthy-Discussion-Among-The-Sales-Staff-And-The-Manager-Apologizing-And-Offering-Me-An-Amazon-Firestick-Whatever-That-Is Fiasco
• The Great Trimming-The-Branch-That-Keeps-Dropping-In-Front-Of-The-Satellite-TV-Dish Fiasco
• The Great Breakfast-Nook-Light-Fixture-Falling-Off-Hitting-My-Love-On-The-Head Fiasco
• The Great Can’t-Buy-An-HD-Antenna-That-Adequately-Picks-Up-Local-Channels Fiasco
• The Great Tried-To-Use-iTunes-To-Listen-To-A-Thing Fiasco
• The Great Struggling-To-Take-A-Photo-At-The-Amusement-Park-Where-I-Look-Neither-Asleep-Nor-Bug-Eyed Fiasco
• The Great How-Do-We-Get-Our-Saw-Out-Of-The-Weed-Tree-Trunk-That’s-Heavier-Than-We-Thought Fiasco
• The Great Me-Trying-To-Get-A-Large-Pop-With-That-In-The-Midwest Fiasco

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index continued its slide today, falling another 22 points despite attempts to rally traders behind the news that the 1st of July is less likely to be a Saturday (or Thursday) than it is any other day of the week and therefore shouldn’t they feel special that they got to see one like this? There won’t be another one like it until 2023, after all. This did nothing to help.

220

Statistics Saturday: Reuters’ Science Headlines All Jumbled Up

• Kepler telescope finds tiny Utah human origins
• Moroccan fossils provides new technique to size up skin, hair in pigs
• Einstein’s theory making ‘preliminary’ preparations for NASA astronaut corps
• In major breakthrough, firm for manned lunar mission makes breakthrough
• China’s quantum satellite regenerates Mars rover scientist, SpaceX engineer
• China shake up understanding of life-friendly planets
• 10 more possible stars in secure communications
• Join

OK, that last one doesn’t make sense but I had the word left over and it seemed like cheating not to use it.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped twelve points which was so much of a relief that it jumped back up another six points again, and then slacked off two points since it was so close to the end of the day.

266

Statistics Saturday: Devo’s “Are We Not Men” By Content

This. This is the sort of thing that happens when you let me put on the crazy grab bag of stuff that I call music. I get to listening to the Devo album I bought because I figured I liked that one song so why not? Also, you know, stringing out words into alphabetical order like this produces a bunch of interesting other word blocks. Yes, I am thinking particularly of the one that starts “do evolving from glue go God”. But really isn’t the most startling thing about this the discovery that “Are We Not Men?” is not in fact more than fifty percent of the song? No, it is not. Next week: They Might Be Giants’ “Particle Man” unless I get a better offer or maybe consider Sparks’s “Let The Monkey Drive”. also I know what you’re thinking and that strand is ‘now okay pool our pinheads’. Not ‘poot’.

The most starting thing about this? Learning that the song is not technically called “Are We Not Men” but rather is a pair of words in the middle of the song where nobody even heard them.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose two points today after investors noticed on reuters.com a commodities listing for some kind of sale of Palladium, which is the sort of thing that it seems like they should be tracking, even though if they’re reading the listing right it didn’t rise or fall or anything and just kind of filled up space.

216

Statistics Saturday: E.T. Fitted Into The Titles Of The Air Bud Cinematic Universe

• E.T. The Extraterrestrial
• E.T. Golden Receiver
• E.T. World Pup
• E.T. Seventh Inning Fetch
• E.T. Spikes Back
• Air E.T.s
• Snow E.T.s
• Space E.T.s
• Santa E.T.s
• Spooky E.T.s
• Treasure E.T.s
• Super E.T.s
• The Search For Santa E.T.
• Santa E.T. 2: The E.T. Pups

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose four points today as traders got caught up on watching Conan O’Brien on the DVR.

198

Statistics Saturday: Milestones In This Current Cough

Day	Event
Sunday	Little nagging sensation that I’m coughing a bit more than normal and feel all achy and hot.
Monday	I hear nothing after 11:18 am because of my uninterrupted coughing fit
Tuesday	Temporary suspension of the tooth-brushing routine because the sudden spasms from my lungs and the toothpaste foam and the irritation in my throat lining create such a bad situation, such a bad situation.
Wednesday	Boss excuses me from the planned two-hour conference call with a promise that he’d call back and catch me up and wrap up some loose ends, which he has yet to do.
Thursday	Broke the key by trying to wind up the clock and I coughed at the wrong moment and do you know how many different size keys there are for mantle clocks? There’s easily more than six.
Friday	Sleep is a lie, a distant faded memory never to be attained again in my life.
Saturday	Oh, that’s a good bit better actually.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped eight points as investors’ attention was captured by rumors the bagel place had the tomato tortellini soup today and what implications this might have for the flavored cream cheese they’re offering for bagels.

200

Statistics Saturday: Toto’s ‘Africa’ By Parts

Because sometimes you just run up to deadline and you have to go with what you have and those are always the bits people like best anyway and sometimes I wonder why I go into writing a second hundred words anyway and I just want a hug thank you.

Meanwhile: if you need to score a movie or TV scene and want to evoke mid-80s nostalgia without digging deep you’re going to pick “Out Of Africa”, sure. But what’s the equivalent for other decades? If you just want a wash of mid-90s nostalgia without digging deep then, sure, Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic”, or maybe Nirvana’s “Oh Whatever You Have On Hand”. But what about the 70s? The 60s? For the 50s I’d say “Mister Sandman” but that might just be Back To The Future talking. For the 40s there’s Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol”. How about the rest? Yes, start from the 1750s.

Not pictured: looking at the official music video for the first time in like three decades and feeling all the time like, oh this is uncomfortable and waiting for it to get really bad any moment now and boy but the whole thing stays pretty white-male-gazey. But boy those instrumentals.

Also not depicted: realizing like thirty years after that of course the song isn’t called “Out Of Africa” and you’ve been naming it wrong all this time.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped two points as traders got around to watching Wednesday’s The Price Is Right and it was another double overbid in the Showcase and it sure seems like there’ve been a lot of them this season. There was even one on, like, the Mother’s Day show. Everyone’s all cranky about this now and trying to undrestand how this keeps going wrong.

199

Statistics Saturday: 22 Kinds Of Mongoose Or Rabbit Ordered By Center Of Mass

1. Arctic Hare
2. Common Mongoose
3. Volcano Rabbit
4. Banded Doomed-Madagascaran-Marshlands Mongoose
5. Invisibunny
6. Meerkat
7. Silver Marten Rabbit (which sounds like somebody being ironic or something)
8. False Dwarf Rabbit
9. Anglican Slender Mongoose (Reformed)
10. Flat-headed kusimanse
11. Mongoose Civique
12. Bluffing Giant Hare
13. Furtive Upper-Tailed Cape Gray Mongoose
14. Belgian Hare IPA
15. Mer-goose (properly, a fish which takes on the appearance of a mongoose in order to punch snakes)
16. Morekat
17. San Jose Brush Rabbit
18. Trans-Canada Pika
19. Robertson square-headed kusimanse
20. Antelope Jackrabbit (which is not a jackalope we swear)
21. Thumper
22. Yellow Mongoose

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose twelve points as investors’ moods were buoyed by surveys asking what they would do if they had a robot donkey friend, with factions split between whether this would be a regular four-hoofed robot donkey or if it would be a humanoid robot donkey with two hooves but able to, like, shake hands and stuff like people swear they remember from that 80s cartoon about robot cowboys in Space Texas and that wasn’t just a crazy dream. Anyway, everybody’s enthusiastic after all this robot donkey friend talk.

165

Statistics Saturday: My Music Library (Not By Volume)

The real news, by the way, is that I’ve learned how to make the captions appear outside the wedges with little arrows pointing to them, instead of having to make the text kind of appear more or less on top of a wedge and maybe spill over onto the next wedge and I can’t figure a way to set all the text to be uniformly any color except by fiddling with edge wedge separately, which is stupid. This is a lot nicer to produce even though it’s probably unreadable at the available sizes. Sorry. It did leave me wondering if there’s pie charts then why aren’t there, like, cake charts where you just have easy-to-arrange rectangles of sizes representing portions of stuff and labels that fit on top of those? Except that’s probably how infographics get made, and I don’t know how to do those, because for all that I try to keep intellectually and emotionally youthful what that really means is I play pinball and listen to more New Wave music of the 80s than I ever did in the 80s. Anyway, while I’d like something like that, what’s important is, I found a way to make my computer thing do a thing in a slightly less annoying way than it used to. Ice cream for everyone!

Not listed: the works of They Might Be Giants even though their albums are clearly large amounts of high-quality music since all their songs have a lot of words in them. And notes for nearly every word or syllable, too.

For those wondering: I’m not saying the Nilsson album wasn’t, just saying what the expectations were.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

After what sure looked like a big mass of busy-work traders looked up from their desks to find the Another Blog, Meanwhile index was at an all-time high. Oh, the cheering, oh, the hand-slapping, oh, the mutual congratulations about how they must be involved in a real and important bit of work that brings real value to the lives of millions. Millions, they tell each other, millions!

158

Statistics Saturday: The United States In Descending Order Of Thickness

Also including the District of Columbia because, heck, what does that cost me?

State Or District Of Columbia	Thickness
Alaska	20,310 ft / 6191 m
California	14,783 ft / 4506 m
Washington	14,417 ft / 4394 m
Hawaii	13,803 ft / 4207 m
Nevada	12,665 ft / 3860 m
Arizona	12,565 ft / 3830 m
Idaho	11,954 ft / 3644 m
Utah	11,354 ft / 3461 m
Oregon	11,249 ft / 3429 m
Colorado	11,123 ft / 3390 m
Montana	11,003 ft / 3354 m
Wyoming	10,709 ft / 3264 m
New Mexico	10,323 ft / 3147 m
Texas	8,751 ft / 2667 m
North Carolina	6,684 ft / 2037 m
Tennessee	6,466 ft / 1971 m
New Hampshire	6,288 ft / 1917 m
South Dakota	6,276 ft / 1913 m
Virginia	5,729 ft / 1746 m
New York	5,343 ft / 1629 m
Maine	5,270 ft / 1606 m
Georgia	4,784 ft / 1458 m
Oklahoma	4,686 ft / 1428 m
West Virginia	4,623 ft / 1409 m
Nebraska	4,587 ft / 1398 m
Vermont	4,300 ft / 1311 m
Kentucky	3,887 ft / 1185 m
South Carolina	3,560 ft / 1085 m
Massachusetts	3,489 ft / 1063 m
Kansas	3,361 ft / 1025 m
Maryland	3,360 ft / 1024 m
Pennsylvania	3,213 ft / 979 m
North Dakota	2,757 ft / 840 m
Arkansas	2,698 ft / 822 m
Alabama	2,413 ft / 736 m
Connecticut	2,379 ft / 725 m
New Jersey	1,803 ft / 550 m
Minnesota	1,700 ft / 518 m
Missouri	1,542 ft / 470 m
Michigan	1,408 ft / 429 m
Wisconsin	1,372 ft / 418 m
Iowa	1,191 ft / 363 m
Ohio	1,094 ft / 333 m
Illinois	955 ft / 291 m
Indiana	937 ft / 286 m
Rhode Island	811 ft / 247 m
Mississippi	807 ft / 246 m
Louisiana	543 ft / 165 m
Delaware	447 ft / 136 m
District of Columbia	408 ft / 124 m
Florida	345 ft / 105 m

Source: Wikipedia from which I learn there’s only two states that have spots below sea level? That’s weird. Like, I understand Colorado not having any spots below sea level, but there isn’t one rocky crag somewhere in, like, North Carolina that runs below the ocean level? And like how has someone not dug a big cement-lined pit somewhere on Long Island to set it underneath the sea level just to show they can do something pointless like that? You know? Also, I guess mines and stuff don’t count for lowest elevations, which is fair enough, but wouldn’t they start counting if the mine’s ceiling collapsed? It seems like states could totally rig their thickness rankings if they wanted. Plus, like, I know for a fact that New York State claims sovereignty over the seabed of the entire Hudson River; doesn’t that count as the lowest elevation in the state? I’m saying while I give you this list I think there’s a lot of pointless argument to have about what the lowest points of elevation in states such as New York and Delaware are and yes that is because I’m from New Jersey and angry about the implications of colonial-era borders.

You know, you never really think of Kansas as having more of an elevation change than Pennsylvania does. I feel a bit weirdly defensive about it myself.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index fell five points today when no one brought an umbrella and it got all drizzly out.

116

Statistics Saturday: My Acts Of Passive Aggression

Not that any of you demanded it, or showed any particular interest, but that I like anyway.

Um. Sorry.

Omitted for clarity: smiling with just my mouth and not at all my eyes; time spent glaring at the satellite dish for not somehow being more satisfying a means of receiving transmitted bit that would, if decoded properly, be an episode of Paw Patrol; tossing in false results for the fun of it; reorganizing the books on the shelf behind my chair so the first letters on each spine spell out snark.

If you are careful enough in how you say something you can drive people crazy in ways they can’t protest without looking like they’re the ones being passive-aggressive. Also, is that [sic] one the most academia thing you’ve ever heard or what?

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index fell on rumors the ice cream place was all out of turtles and the discovery that M— didn’t even know what ice cream turtles were, prompting a long voyage of discovery of ways to pile ice cream ingredients together, plus an argument about whether there’s something that drizzles hot peanut butter on the ice cream? Is that a thing? Please report.

121

Statistics Saturday: The State Of Apologies

Admittedly the results are thrown a little off by going down to the farmers market on a Thursday afternoon and leaving my cart off to the side by the health-food clones of normal breakfast cereals and then having people apologize for being in my way when I backed it up from them. Also from people apologizing for getting bags of coffee beans while I was looking over flavors of coffee beans. Also for being in the same aisle while I was looking for one particular brand of barbecue sauce that wasn’t there.

Also they do amazing things with “Golden Grahams, only kind of healthy” these days, but it’s going to be hard to win me over from Grape-Nuts brand cereals where if you mix exactly the right amount of milk in it’s like you’re chewing down on concrete. There’s nothing better. I’m not being snarky here. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t eat cereal like that if you could.

I’m not bitter. Why are you saying I’m bitter? I better hear some apologies for calling me bitter, but I know I won’t, because of next week’s statistics piece, My Acts Of Passive Aggression.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index skidded down nine points as traders discovered it had rained overnight and there were all these wet leaves on the sidewalk, and where are they even from? All the leaves left over from autumn were blown away in the windstorm last month, we thought. That’s suspicious.

123

Statistics Saturday: The Ides Of April, This Century

Times I Have Been Ready To Inform Someone In Casual Conversation That The 15th Is Not The Ides Of April, The 13th Is	17
Times The Conversation Has Ever Come Remotely Near This Topic	0
Times A Comic Strip I Read Has Used This As The Base For A Joke	2
Times I Noticed In Time To Comment On This In A Timely Fashion	0

Plus is the 15th even the Income Tax Filing Deadline in the United States anymore? It seems like it’s always bumped to like the 18th of April or the 44th of May or the 216th of Freaking October anymore. I don’t know. And yeah, the ides are the 13th day of a 30-day month, plus February, and anyway the Romans listed days as counting down to the next big calendar event day, so that the 15th of April would be “17 Kalend May”, which everyone understood to be part of April, not May, and also they sometimes slipped an extra month in between the 24th and the 25th of February. This is why the Emperor Vespasian was never able to get his programmers’ database software to handle dates correctly. Neither can we.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index rose another point while wait, that thing in the Chocolate Swamp is named Gloppy? Also there’s a Chocolate Swamp in Candy-Land? We thought it was the Molasses Swamp? Or are there multiple swamps? Did it change? What is this? What are things? What is changing? Why?

135

Statistics Saturday: Some Now-Obscure Professional Baseball Players Given Nicknames Anachronistically

Drawing inspiration from Bob “Death To Flying Things” Ferguson, whose nickname is wholly unattested by any contemporary accounts. Team affiliations are not unique but represent my best guess about who they were with most of the time, and not all these careers were uninterrupted, which is important so that you know my little joke here is as intellectually honest as possible somehow.

• Candy “A-Go-Go” Cummings, Hartford, 1872-1877.
• Roger “10-4” Connor, New York, 1880-1897.
• John “Technopop” Clarkson, Boston, 1882-1894.
• Bid “Rocket Man” McPhee, Cincinnati, 1882-1899.
• Ed “Googie” Delahanty, Philadelphia, 1888-1903.
• George “Knuckles the Echidna” Uhle, Cleveland, 1919-1934.
• Kid “On Fleek” Nichols, Boston, 1890-1906.
• John “Brenke Fish ladder” Ward, New York, 1878-1892.
• Mickey “Laser Knees” Welch, New York, 1880-1892.
• Sam “Robo-Sam Crawford” Crawford, Detroit 1899-1917.
• Togie “Theremin” Pittinger, Boston, 1900-1907.
• Eppa “George `Knuckles the Echidna’ Uhle” Rixley, Cincinnati, 1912-1933.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped three points today on renewed rumors that Lisa was somehow related to legendary 19th Century baseball player Tim Keefe, which she could answer only by saying, “I dunno, I guess?” Indeed, who can truly know?

121