Skip to main content

Updates

Marathon man update

Last month, I wrote that a friend of mine is running a marathon to cure cancer. I had that slightly wrong, in that he was raising money for cancer in order to run a marathon! It turns out that he needed to make his goal of $4000 in order to run the marathon with his father. It turns out that he made his goal!
The email he sent out to announce that he made his goal is more colorful than his initial fundraising email (and more typical for Gorka, with lots of capitalization and repeated letters):
WE DID IT: $4084 for the Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research (IN 4 WEEKS!!)

$2063 has been raised under my father's name, and HE IS HAPPIER THAN A KID WITH A NEW TOY.

Not only that, but $2021 has been raised under my name.

Yes, your already know that ...

(1) we have raised $4084 for the Aubrey Fund for Pediatric Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

(GOOD JOB!)

ANDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

(2) Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is official, MY FATHER AND I are running the 2008 Chicago Marathon on October 12th. :-)

“ESKERRIKASKO” (=THANKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS A LOT!!!)

Gorka

Hurricane update

Have you been keeping up with the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic this season? It's relevant as a still-debated sequela of global warming, it has played a role in the US presidential race, and it's also question number 11 in the 2007 Prognostication Quiz. With 5 hurricanes so far, we're already past answer A (4 or less), but well behind the insane 2005 season.

At this point in 2005, there had already been 10 hurricanes (on the way to an all-time record 15). At this point in 2006 and 2007, though, there had been 5, just like this year. We ended 2006 with 5 and ended 2007 with 6. It looks like Tropical Storm Kyle (active now) might make hurricane status, though, so I'm betting the final answer will be C (7-8 hurricanes).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v...

2016 PROGNOSTICATION QUIZ

Entry deadline is 3:30 p.m. CST on  Saturday, January 16, 2016 . Send fifteen answers and one tie-break to jmandresen at gmail.com. Anyone with an email address is welcome to enter! 1. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many countries it calculates to be free, partly free, or not free. The 2015 report calculated that 89 of the world’s 195 nations were free in 2014. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2014? Note: the nine  worst  free countries (with the highest likelihood of being downgraded) are Botswana, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Lesotho, Montenegro, and Peru. The fifteen  best  partly free countries (with the highest likelihood of being upgraded) are Albania, Bolivia, Ecuador, Georgia, Indonesia, Mexico, Moldova, Paraguay, Philippines, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, ...

Leagalize drugs!

The Economist has a wonderful editorial this week about legalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly agree that the world will be better off by far if the United States legalized, taxed, and regulated illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin. The goods that will come from legalization: 1. We will save the $40 billion the US spends trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. 2. We will save the costs involved in incarcerating so many drug offenders (as well as gain their productivity in society). 3. We will gain money through taxation on the legal drug trade. 4. Legalized drugs will be regulated, and thus purer and safer to take. 5. With all these savings, we will have lots of money to spend on treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a law and order issue. We will have lots of money to fund treatment programs for addicts that are ensnared by the easier availability of drugs. 6. We will prevent tens of thousands of killings in countries that produce drugs when proc...