Post 500!

I had planned some grand statistical analysis of this blog (such as that of post 100), but quickly found that 1) the text file version was too big to use and 2) stripping all of the complicated code from it is beyond my computer skillset.

So, I’ll celebrate simply by saying thanks to the four or five people who read this blog for, well, reading. Not much of what I say makes much sense, my politics are often vague and the themes are often haphazard and chaotic, but this remains an important tool for me. It’s not easy working through one’s thoughts and this give me a space to be incoherent, if not batshit nonsensical.

So thanks to all. It means a lot.

As, I’ve nothing else to say, here’s a run down of the top five posts:

1. African Conflict and the Murdock Map of Ethnic Boundaries At more than 15,000 views, this wins the top spot. It’s got pretty pictures and some suspect methodologies.

2. US Bombings in Laos 1965-1973 I thought this was a cool post. I went on a bender for spatial data on conflict for a while. It’s too bad I didn’t pursue it further. This one even came with a movie!

3. Andrew WK: How He Almost Became the US Cultural Ambassador to the Middle East No surprise here. It’s pretty easy to rack up hits on articles about rock stars. Global health… not so much.

4. Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Reporting April 7, 2011 I was downloading police reports of the number of dead and missing during the Tohoku earthquake/tsunami for a while. Then I went to Japan, didn’t have internet and couldn’t keep up with it. It was a valiant effort.

5. Lynching Data Are we starting to see a pattern here? I’m hoping that I haven’t put any misinformation out there with these odd data exercises. Unfortunately, my time is limited these days but it would be fun to get back into it. I was pretty wide-eyed and dreamy about data back then.