Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-895’s

Location	Ranking
Delaware	Relegated
Maryland	The fast food place made an extra bag of fries by mistake, you can have it
Massachusetts/Rhode Island	Imaginary
New Jersey/Pennsylvania	Waffle fries
New York	Steak fries
Virginia	Curly fries

Reference: Falling To Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey To The Moon, Al Worden, Francis French.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-795’s

Location	Ranking
Florida (unsigned)	The twilight realm
Maryland	The shadow realm
North Carolina	The daylight realm

Reference: Scholars, Students, and Parents: An Exploration of the Ideas behind the New Math and other Curriculum Reform, Stephen White.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-695’s

Location	Ranking
Maryland	New York
New York	Connecticut
Washington, D.C.	New Jersey

Reference: On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Commodore, Brian Bagnall.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-595’s

Location	Ranking
Florida	Casper the Friendly Ghost
Maryland (unsigned)	Timmy the Timid Ghost
Virginia (former)	Spencer Spook

Reference: Scholars, Students, and Parents: An Exploration of the Ideas behind the New Math and other Curriculum Reform, Stephen White.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-495’s

Location	Ranking
Capital Beltway	Five Stars
Delaware	Five Clovers
Maine	Five Diamonds
Massachusetts	Five Hearts
New York	Five Moons

Reference: The Port of New York, Carl W Condit.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-395’s

Location	Ranking
Connecticut-Massachusetts	Diamond
Florida	Platinum
Maine	Silver
Maryland	Bronze
Pennsylvania	Copper-clad zinc
Washington DC-Virginia	Gold

Reference: The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History Of America’s Great Department Stores, Robert Hendrickson.

Statistics Saturday: Ranking of I-295’s

Location	Ranking
Delaware/New Jersey/Pennsylvania	Star Trek: The Original Series
Florida	Star Trek: The Animated Series
Maine	Star Trek: The Original Series Movies
Maryland/Washington, D.C.	Star Trek: Enterprise
New York	Star Trek: Voyager
North Carolina	Star Trek: The Next Generation Movies
Rhode Island/Massachusetts	Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Virginia	Star Trek: The Next Generation

Reference: Sea of Glory: The Epic South Seas Expedition, Nathaniel Philbrick.

Statistics Saturday: Grading the I-195’s

Location	Ranking
Florida	Acceptable
Maryland	SafeAssign rates 85% confident copied off Florida
New Jersey	Really good; just a little short
Rhode Island/Massachusetts	Outstanding, top of the line
Virginia	Inadequate
Washington, DC	Overdue; see after class

Reference: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb.

Statistics Saturday: Most and Least Common Dates for Easter

• Most Common: Sunday, April 15
• Second Most Common: Sunday, April 10 or 19
• Second Least Common: Sunday, March 22
• Least Common: Thursday, August 15, 1816

Reference: The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History Of The Boston Post Road, The Route That Made America, Eric Jaffe.

Statistics Saturday: Things I Correctly Remember About _Charles in Charge_

• There’s no explaining how the theme song didn’t end up on the Top 40 pop charts.
• New boy in the neighborhood
• Lives downstairs and it’s understood
• He’s there just to take good care of me
• It started on some network. I know it wasn’t NBC. I feel like it was CBS except they already had Who’s The Boss?, right? So I guess it must’ve been on ABC instead?
• Like he’s one of the family
• Charles in charge of our days and our nights
• Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights
• The opening started with that van driving around the woods … no, wait, that was Who’s The Boss?.
• And I (something)
• On reflection most of what I remember about this show was actually about Who’s The Boss? instead.
• I want Charles in charge of me

Reference: Just One More Thing: Stories From My Life, Peter Falk.

Statistics Saturday: Some Movie Sequels II: Some Movier Sequels

• Unbreakable II: Unbreakabler
• Breakin’ 2: Brok’n
• The Taking Of Pelham 123 2: The Taking Of Pelham 1234
• On Golden Pond 2: On Goldener Pond
• The Verdict II: The Verdictation
• Star Trek II: Star Trekker (Star Trekkie west of the Rockies)
• The Land of the Lost (1914) II: The Land of the Loster (1916)
• Mother 2: Mothest
• The China Syndrome 2: The China Syndromedary
• π 2: Circumference

Reference: Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds In The Third Great Age Of Discovery, Stephen J Pyne.

Statistics Saturday: Things I’ve Tried To Warm My Feet Up

• Putting on a second pair of socks.
• Starting a fire in the fireplace, where such things are normal and expected, so that the whole room gets to be not as warm as you’d think it should be.
• Dousing my feet in hot chocolate.
• Putting on a third pair of socks.
• Turning the car thermostat up to ‘Melts the floor mat’.
• Setting them underneath a pet rabbit who then leaves.
• Putting on a fourth pair of socks, in-between the second and third, which does mess up the counting admittedly.
• Thinking a lot about when I lived in Singapore and it was 92F every afternoon and never colder than like 78F at night.
• Taking my feet off and setting them in the oven at 300F for a half-hour.
• Putting on so many socks my feet are spheres of fabric and I can’t fit any of my shoes anymore.

Statistics Saturday: Events Daylight Has Needed Saving From

• Chapter One. The airship Daylight has commandeered crashes!
• Chapter Two. The Neptunian Royal Guards shoot their blasters at the chair Daylight’s hiding behind!
• Chapter Three. Daylight didn’t know there was a trap door underfoot!
• Chapter Four. The Neptunian ray has turned off Niagara Falls just as Daylight was going to escape into it!
• Chapter Five. The spaceship Daylight has commandeered crashes!
• Chapter Six. Daylight is chained between the giant condensors as they’re turned on!
• Chapter Seven. Daylight’s comedic sidekick Willy reveals he’s a mind-controlled robot since his capture and brainwashing last chapter!
• Chapter Eight. The submarine Daylight has commandeered crashes!
• Chapter Nine. All the power goes off in the pneumatic subway system and Royal Guards close in from both sides of Daylight’s transport cab!
• Chapter Ten. The Emperor of Neptune activates the device to swap Daylight’s mind with that of a worker robot!
• Chapter Eleven. The titanic Neptunian chameleon is stepping on Daylight!
• Chapter Twelve. (Re-Cap Chapter; ends with Daylight swearing not to stop until Neptune’s reign of terror is ended.)
• Chapter Thirteen. Daylight’s antigravity glider-suit runs out of neutrons high above Space City!
• Chapter Fourteen. Earth forces think the Neptunian spaceship Daylight commandeered in is an enemy craft and order a full anti-airship barrage!

Reference: Reporting The Revolutionary War, Todd Andrlik.

(Spoiler: Daylight escapes by, it turns out, having ducked and rolled out of the way each time.)

Statistics Saturday: Weather Forecast For The Next Week

• Sunday. 44 F (7 C) Partly clumsy skies
• Monday. 12 F (-3 ha) Light snow between 2 pm and 3 inches.
• Tuesday. 66 F (2 km/s/Mpc) Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles
• Wednesday. 102.3 FM (The Rat Who Rocks) Snow expected in amounts between minus 4 and positive two inches (5.07995 cm)
• Thursday. 32 F (28 Men’s) Scattered bursts of Sunday, Tuesday afternoon, cloddy skies
• Friday. 36 F (10% off F’s with discount code) Every podcast publishes a new episode at once, explodes that thing that’s not called iTunes anymore but still can’t handle “download new episodes of podcasts you subscribed to and delete them after you’ve played them and also put the one you select as ‘play next’ as the next one on the list of things to play”
• Saturday. -12 (High)/48 (Low). Mostly clumsy skies, sunset better than the picture you take of it

Reference: Listening To Radio, 1920 – 1950, Ray Barfield.

Statistics Saturday: Obscure Aesop Tales, As Far As You Know

• The Ape and the Fox
• The Wolf and the Frog
• Washing the Mountain
• The Two Foxes and the Imaginary Hare
• Three Robins and an Olive
• The Winsome Badger
• The Swan, The Dolphin, and the Lion
• Hiding the Sea from the Weasels
• The Farmer Who Lived In The Well
• The Rose and the Satyr
• The Gourd and the Water and the Jealous Tree
• The Boastful Oyster and the Broken-Down Cart

Reference: The Louisville Grays Scandal of 1877, William Cook.

Statistics Saturday: Obscure Comically Named European Regents, So Far As You Know

• William the Decent, Brittany
• Edward the Hairy, Frisia
• Charles the Italic, Burgundy
• Johann the Comically Named, Schmalkaldic League
• Duke Carlo the Treated, Venice
• Æthelred the Unconsulted of England
• Margaret the Ambivalent, Schleswig
• Gustave the Doorframe, Thuringia
• Frederick the Bitten, Margrave of Meissen
• Isnardo the Not a Nardo, Genoa
• Christopher the Ineffable, Duchy of Neopatras
• Radolfe the Fed, Thuringia

Reference: Michigan: A History Of The Great Lakes State, Bruce A Rubenstein, Lawrence E Ziewacz.

Statistics Saturday: Words That Can Be Made From The Letters In ‘Taxidermist’

• Taxi
• Mist
• Remitted [ if you force it ]
• Matter [ which covers almost everything ]
• Smitten [ by mistake ]
• Praxis [ using the ‘d’ upside-down ]
• Drexmi [ hypothetical ]
• Rime
• Drems [ hypothetical ]
• Xide [ scheduled to enter service in 2025 ]
• Strime [ predicted as way to complete the brime-chrime-vrime assonant quartet ]
• Draximetist [ result of panic ]

Statistics Saturday: What’s Lingering In My E-mail Box

Not depicted: The e-mails from my family that are really text chats they’re all having on their phones that for some reason come to me as e-mails from their phone numbers, and the texts are attached files, and I don’t know how to answer any of this.

Reference: Gemini: Steps To The Moon, David J Shayler.

Statistics Saturday: Some Things US States Actually Do Look Like

State	Looks Like
Delaware	A pawn
Michigan (lower peninsula)	A mitten
Colorado	Detroit-style pizza
Vermont and New Hampshire	Someone heard about Penrose Tiling and tried drawing it without ever seeing a picture of what the tiles really look like
Michigan (upper peninsula)	That solar flare the starship Voyager flies through in the opening credits
Wyoming	Second Detroit-style pizza
Rhode Island	My cursive lowercase ‘r’
Connecticut	Elementary-school-style rectangle pizza with a tail
West Virginia	A potato you forgot about long enough it’s growing roots
Florida	That little emergency release handle to break open the bus window when it falls in the river or something
Oklahoma	A pot of macaroni and cheese someone left in the campfire
Tennessee	Deck of cards you set down wrong so they’re sliding apart
Maine	New England giving the Black Power salute
Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia	That cool animated PBS logo from the 1970s where the letter P turns around
Idaho	Cheese, Mega-Delaware

Reference: Lunar Lander: How We Developed The Apollo Lunar Module, Thomas J Kelly.

Statistics Saturday: Beloved-Enough TV Shows Already Made Into Movies You Never Knew About, So Far As You Know

• Car 54, Where Are You
• Sargent Bilko
• The Honeymooners
• The Archies
• Just The Ten Of Us
• Mr Belvedere
• Gilligan’s Planet
• Space Precinct
• Early Edition
• The $1.98 Beauty Pageant
• I Love Lucy
• Password Plus

Reference: The Triumph Of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life, I B Cohen.

Statistics Saturday: Some Things I Would Like To Stop With Their Not-Existing And Be Again

• My hair tie
• My tire pressure gauge
• This pair of eyeglasses my spouse had on the vanity that just disappeared one month when we weren’t paying attention to them
• The job I used to have that paid only okay-ish but where they left me alone to do whatever I felt like 380 days of the year and only had specific duties the rest of the time
• Those Star Trek tie-in novels from the 80s where everything was by some fanfic writer slipping in, like, the Fourth Doctor as a background character and no editor noticed or else some professional writer using a trunk manuscript so you get, like, Dr McCoy shaming the cosmic entity who makes quasars for being a jerk
• Two Guys discount department store since, why not
• That home videotape of my trip to see my aunt and uncle in Indiana from back in 1988 that I lost when I moved out to Michigan
• Story comics
• This one pen cap my spouse had that disappeared after dropping the book the pen was in on the floor
• Coke Zero Orange in cans
• Turn-based grand strategy games for the Mac
• The time slot where Buzzr would show Whew!

Reference: The Edifice Complex: How The Rich And Powerful — And Their Architects — Shape The World, Deynan Sudjic.

Statistics Saturday: Things I’ll Try Without Success To Re-Create That Mad-At-Funky-Winkerbean Readership Bump

• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Ask Shagg_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Drabble_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Raising Duncan_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _The Grizzwells_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Red and Rover_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _WuMo_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Bound and Gagged_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Sam and Silo_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Legend of Bill_?
• Why Is Everyone Mad at _Overboard_?

Reference: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham.

Statistics 2022: Jokes I Thought Of After That I Wished I Included

1. For Some Bad Wordle Starts: one of them should absolutely have been “four greens, one yellow”.

Yeah, that’s about it. Sorry. It was a real Funky Winkerbean of a year for me and it hasn’t been good for my esprit de l’escalier. Maybe next year.

Reference: The Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky.

Statistics 2022: Your Top Achievements of 2022

1. Nearing the ideal of throwing away the food that seems iffy instead of just eating around the suspect portion
2. Typing a sentence that included the words ‘Cincinnati’, ‘accommodate’, and ‘occurance’ without getting any of them wrong
3. Rickrolling without concern about whether it’s being done ironically, retro-style, or otherwise
4. Spotting an actual Ghost Clown, letting them know it’s not 2016 anymore
5. Mastering that magic trick where you make Donald Duck leap through a hula hoop and he turns into a kangaroo
6. That time the bill was $17.48 and you pulled out $22.73 without even thinking about it and the cashier had $5.25 in change before the register even told them
7. Joining in that thing back in August where all eight billion of us jumped up at the same time … uh … you did hear about that, right? … Oh … uh, whoops
8. That time you plugged in the USB cables the correct way first time for five days straight
9. Getting through that phone upgrade problem that required four visits to the store and three customer-support phone calls without ever raising your voice or giving in to despair
10. Memorizing the PLU number for flat parsley so the cashier doesn’t have to search for it or look it up on the computer (4901, like I hardly need to tell you)
11. Not squandering $44 billion in any ill-conceived purchases
12. Learning more about sharks

Reference: Symmetry: A Journey Into The Patterns Of Nature, Marcus du Sautoy.

Statistics 2022: Top Fads Of 2022

1. Hollering about “Quiet Quitting”
2. Re-requesting the multi-factor-authentication code be texted to us
3. Taffy pushing
4. Agreeing that animated Christmas specials these days move too fast and edit too much, all right-y
5. Re-launching your Patreon
6. Sea Shanties on TikTok? That was this year, right?
7. Struggling to remember why everyone was that angry about “Bean Dad” without looking it up
8. Nodding about how the weather isn’t supposed to be like this, all right-y
9. Goldfish swallowing telephone booths
10. Slumbering for ten times ten thousand eons until time has made mockery of all contemporary woes, finding they’ve still got as many woes left over, all right-y
11. Liminality
12. Minor-chord acoustic covers of New Wave hits

Reference: The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939 – 1941, Warren F. Kimball.

PS: the code was 560142. Please use within the next — sorry, it’s expired.

Statistics 2022: Top Months Of 2022, As Persons’s Names

1. June 2022 Hodiak
2. March 2022 Dahl
3. May 2022 Donahue
4. October 2022 Howard
5. April 2022 Bakaleinikoff
6. January 2022 Lyon
7. September 2022 Kagawa
8. November 2022 Cobb
9. August 2022 Astor
10. December 2022 O’Neal
11. February 2022 Ferrer
12. July 2022 Harris

Reference: Level Playing Fields: How The Groundskeeping Murphy Brothers Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris.

Statistics Saturday: Some Unconventional Christmas Presents

• The complete collection of Georges Méliès’s lost films recording the Paris Exposition of 1900.
• Storm windows.
• Coupon good for the resolution of one absolute fiasco.
• A temperate zone belt of the clouds on Jupiter. Not the one with the Great Red Spot, don’t be silly.
• This one thing that I kept thinking of every time I fell asleep all week that was really funny and apt and yet every time I got down to the computer the thought was gone, sorry, but I promise it was a good one.
• A nice warm hill you can just roll down all afternoon.
• Coupon good for the resolution of one relative fiasco.
• Sources.
• The name of that one song, you know, with the daaah-di-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-diiiiii-dah bit.
• Persuading the SCTV gang to do a sketch for “Ken Russell’s 2001: A Space Odyssey”.

Reference: Paving the Way for Apollo 11, David M Harland.

Statistics Saturday: Adaptations Of _A Christmas Carol_ Ranked

1. Alastair Sim’s version
2. Reginald Owen’s version
3. The Odd Couple version
4. Lionel Barrymore’s version (radio only)
5. Patrick Stewart’s version
6. The Real Ghostbusters version
7. Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds version
8. The Pac-Man cereal box version
9. The Back to the Future cartoon version
10. The Oddball Couple version
11. Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds version
12. This really good sink fixtures display they had one year at Rickel’s, though.

Reference: A Voyage Long And Strange: Rediscovering The New World, Tony Horwitz.

Statistics Saturday: Questions Raised By _Funky Winkerbean_ This Or Any Week

• What?
• Huh?
• Wait, what?
• Why?
• What does that even mean?
• OK but you know that’s not less creepy, right?
• Seriously?
• Oh for crying out loud how?
• Why are we spending time on this?
• What?

Reference: Michigan Curiosities, Colleen Burcar.

Statistics Saturday: Most Recent Mentions of Things in Peanuts

(An incomplete list.)

Thing	Most Recent Appearance
Arthroscopic Surgery	November 30, 1987
Astronaut Scott Carpenter	June 28, 1962
Beethoven	April 15, 1999
Billie Jean King	January 30, 2000
Boyne Falls, Michigan	July 7, 1975
Christo	November 20, 1978
Connecticut	October 29, 1961
Daffy Duck	January 30, 2000
Davy Crockett	March 8, 1956
Disco Fever	October 19 1978
E-mail	April 27, 1996
Flying Ace	November 28, 1999
Fussbudgets	September 30, 1987
Joe Biden	May 24, 1993
Joe Garagiola	May 21, 1991 (with a mention in the repeat of December 10, 1997)
Joe Schlabotnik	January 3, 1997
Mascot Costumes	March 29, 1983
Mickey Mouse	September 5, 1999
Raccoons	March 3, 1979
Rod McKuen	October 3, 1969
Singapore	October 15, 1961
Spuds Mackenzie	October 12, 1987
Stage Fright	April 2, 1989
Tear Gas	July 7, 1970
Tilt-a-Whirl	June 3, 1971

Reference: Skyscraper: The Search for an American Style, 1891-1941, Roger Shepherd.