Friday, February 27, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/27/2009


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Fast Women


The New York Times ran an article (ha ha -- sorry) this week about the rise of women in distance running. While this is hardly new news --
    (duh, just go outside and count the number of women and men you see running -- I estimate you'll find about 2/3 women -- ok, now I totally have to try that experiment, and get people to count in different cities across the country...new project!)
-- I was glad to see the story.

And, because I am currently training for a marathon (or another), it got me interested in what the gender breakdown is of marathon runners these days.

Here are some quick stats I compiled from 2008 (based on finisher data):
  • Portland: 7,862 total; 4,152 female (52.8% female)
  • Walt Disney World: 12,964 total; 6,570 female (50.7% female)
  • Los Angeles: 17,239 total; 8,363 female (48.5% female)
  • Phoenix Rock 'n' Roll: 6,499 total; 2,977 female (45.8% female)
  • Eugene: 1,741 total; 770 female (44.2% female)
  • Chicago: 3,1345 toal; 13,666 women (43.6% female)
  • Boston: 22,377 total; 9,113 female (40.7% female)
  • London: 34,405 total; 10,725 female (31.2% female)
  • Stockholm: 13,546 total; 3,030 female (22.4% female)
Ok, so it's hard to pull out any trends from this small data set, but it kinda goal small to big and west to east ... kinda.

Also, for all those men who gripe that it's easier for women to qualify for Boston, this pretty much says, "You are complaining for no reason...Get out there and train!"

(Note: Doing this mini-analysis makes me miss working with data. I could totally get sucked into compiling age and gender statistics for races -- big and small -- all across the country! Seriously, few things are as uniformly put on the web as race results. It's a huge set of data just waiting to be analyzed.)

(Another note: Yes, that is me on the left in the photo. This is a picture that was taken at a cross-country race my freshman year that has persisted on the internet. It still pops on on the third page or so if you Google my name!)

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/24/2009


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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/22/2009


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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Article: "Going green in a grey industry..."


It's blast from the past time! While revising my resume for summer internship applications (fun stuff...), I ran into an article I wrote for IzzitGreen that, well, never actually made it on to IzzitGreen.

"Going green in a grey industry with Pixxlz.com and Grover Daniels"


It's a profile of Grover Daniels, CEO of Pixxlz.com, a "green printing company." At the time I wrote the article, Pixxlz.com was advertising on IzzitGreen -- hence the conflict of interests and the reason it never went up on the site.

It did, however, make it onto the Pixxlz.com blog!

It starts:

You’ve got 5 seconds to name a "green" business. Did you name solar power company? An organic dairy? Chances are you didn’t name a printing company.

Grover Daniels, founder and CEO of eco-friendly printed products company Pixxlz.com, acknowledges that printing isn’t conventionally thought of as green industry. "The printing business is a difficult business to keep environmentally friendly. You would never create this business as a green business."

But that’s just what Daniels did.
read the rest of the article


It's kind of fun to go back and look at it. Unlike most of the other articles I wrote for IzzitGreen, this one actually kinda sorta has a lede, nut graf, and kicker -- before I even really knew what those things were!

Friday, February 13, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/13/2009


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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Boulder, the land of no Trader Joe's

So I know this already got circulated around the web yesterday (thanks, Dad!), but I just had to post it here:



I almost died a million times during the song, but especially at the phrase "cylindrical salmon."

The best part is that it just keeps going and going and going, kind of like how you keep putting more and more and more things into your cart when you go to TJ's!

This makes me miss TJ's already more than I already do...the closest one is a 6 hour drive away, in New Mexico:


View Larger Map

Oh gosh, instead of doing work I am going to watch it again...

Why working in the library is a BAD idea


Comfy (but not too comfy) chair? Check.

Desk space? Check.

Outlet? Check.

Oh no. As soon as I reached behind the reference bookshelf to plug my computer in so I could get to work writing an essay on John McPhee's "Encounters with the Archdruid," my eyes landed on the, "Encyclopedia of Food and Agriculture, Vol. 1".

Crap.

Did you know that...
  • "'Jack and the Beanstalk' illustrates an example of threatened cannibalism." (p. 314) For some reason, I never really thought about it that way.
  • "Pre-Columbian Indian medicine men used peppers mixed with other substances for such ailments as coughs, poor digestion, ear infection, sore throat, injuries to the tongue, and to expedite childbirth." (p. 375) Hmmm...chili peppers always seemed to CAUSE those ailments for me (all except the childbirth part).
You probably already knew that, "Custard and puddings are words that describe several important sweet foods." (p. 485) But you probably didn't know that, "in Birgmingham, England, in 1844 a pharmacist named Alfred Bird devised custard powder, a flavored starch mix, for his wife who was fond of custard but allergic to eggs." We have custard powder because Mrs. Bird was allergic to eggs!

All right, I'll stop now. Oh! But I just flipped past a section called "Art, Food in." (p. 114)

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/04/2009

  • GOOD presents information on circulation v. area population of the 75 largest newspapers in a cool, visual way. The data is from 2006, but it's still interesting.

    Note: The Oregonian says pop. 550,000; daily circulation 333,000. It seems like The Oregonian has a strong hold on Portland, but I am guessing the population is JUST for Portland, whereas the circulation includes tons of people who live in Lake Oswego, Greshman, etc. So, the real level of penetration may be quite different.

    tags: newspaper, circulation, data, population, market


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Monday, February 02, 2009

Daily Diigo Bookmarks: What has Jordan been reading on the web today? 02/02/2009

  • From the article:

    "I took a road trip to ponder that question: East Coast to West Coast, 13 days, more than 4,800 miles, driving nothing but four beautiful diesel models of Audi.

    "I was accompanied by 183 other journalists from such far flung ports as Japan, Colombia, Germany, France, Australia (crazy bastards those Australians, donning Elvis outfits in Memphis, cowboy duds in Texas) and beyond. Audi provided the cars and the accommodations along the way. Four waves across America, different routes. We did them all."

    Wait, journalists got SPONSORED to drive around in diesel Audis? Is it shameful for me to declare getting an assignment like this one day as one of my life goals?

    tags: audi, diesel, road trip, mpg, gas mileage, globalpost, royal ford

  • And the Wal-Mart saga continues. This blog on Boing Boing (courtesy of Saideep -- thanks!) is written by a Wired writer who got an entry-level job at Wal-Mart.

    Interesting excerpt:

    "As for all those Wal-Mart horror stories—when I went home and checked the web sites that attack the company, I found that many of them are subsidized with union money. walmartwatch.com, for instance, is partnered with the Service Employees International Union; wakeupwalmart.com is copyright by United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Why are unions so obsessed with Wal-Mart? I'm guessing that if the more-than-a-million Wal-Mart employees could be unionized, they would be compelled to contribute at least half a billion dollars per year in union dues."

    tags: wal-mart, boing boing, immersion journalism, employment, retail


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