Monthly Archives: October 2011

“You Are Not So Smart”

Posted on October 29, 2011 by

That’s the title of a new book by David McRaney. Here’s part of an excerpt from The Atlantic: You rarely watch films in a social vacuum with no input at all from critics and peers and advertisements. Your expectations are … Continue reading →

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Iraq Casualties and Public Opinion, 2003

Posted on October 22, 2011 by

Here’s a very low-res, preliminary version of the animation I am working on to map casualties from the Iraq war with public opinion over time. The opinion variable is the percent of respondents from each state who approved of George … Continue reading →

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Mapping Leadership Removals in Mexico

Posted on October 18, 2011 by

Here’s a first look:

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Where did service members killed in Iraq come from?

Posted on October 15, 2011 by

Below is a map of the home cities of US service members killed in Iraq. Thanks to Adam Ozimek’s Stata geocoder and Hadley Wickham’s ggplot2 package for R, this took a grand total of 14 lines of code. I suppose … Continue reading →

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Another Cartel Leader Arrested

Posted on October 14, 2011 by

Oliva Castillo, Zetas Cartel. The three northeastern states that Oliva Castillo allegedly oversaw are some of the Zetas’ strongest-held territory. Authorities say that much of the violence registered in these states is the result of the Zetas fighting rival groups … Continue reading →

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Tips for Writers Block

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

Ten helpful tips, directed at fiction writers but applicable to other areas are here. Mild spoiler alert: I was disappointed to discover that the tenth type of writers block was not “You are reading too much,” which seems to me … Continue reading →

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Moneyball Roundup

Posted on October 8, 2011 by

Something for everyone. Here are some links to supplement my previous posts on the topic. For movie lovers: Review of the movie at New Raleigh: Here’s the dirty little secret behind Moneyball that no one ever mentions. During the same time that Beane … Continue reading →

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Bus Schedules as Micro-Institutions

Posted on October 6, 2011 by

Like many other universities, Duke has a lack of parking in close proximity to its class buildings, and so it operates a free shuttle service to take students and employees from remote lots to their desired locations. Today I parked … Continue reading →

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Three Senior Cartel Members Arrested

Posted on October 6, 2011 by

While not as thought-provoking as Jim’s post, here is more on Mexico from BBC. The article gives an idea of how someone progresses to the leadership ranks of a cartel, something that interests me greatly: Noel Salgueiro Nevarez is accused of … Continue reading →

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Fantastic Video: Ólafur Arnalds – Ljósið

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

Ólafur is from Iceland and was featured in the documentary PressPausePlay. His video needs no comment from me:

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