Measuring gives you a leg up on experts who are too good to measure. —Walter Bright If you’ve been following along via email (and if not, you should be: subscribe here), you understand that my current philosophy of site growth is to focus on long-term readers. Social traffic is easy to obtain, but oh-so-fleeting. By concentrating on returning visitors, I can build a sort of relationship with you, the gentle reader, and focus on consistent, steady growth, instead of the occasional dizzying flurry of activity when something takes off on Reddit.

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these. —Ovid From 1995 to 1998, during the daytime on rural roads, Montana had no numeric speed limit. The policy was that one should drive as fast as is “reasonable and proper.” In 1999, they threw this out, implemented proper speed limits, and… accidents increased. Markets are great at aggregating information, which is then reflected in the price.

A year ago, I logged a prediction (at 60% confidence) that this year’s Boston Marathon attendance would be lower than the previous year’s as a result of the 2013 bombings. Well, the numbers are in, and I wasn’t even close: Last year, 26839 people entered the race. This year? 35671 runners, about 33% growth. (In hindsight, what was I even thinking?) I wanted to quantify just what sort of effect the bombings had on attendance, so I gathered all the data that’s readily available online, and plotted it:

I love surprises. Imagine a man — oh, I’ll just pick a name at random, let’s call him James Randi. He’s a staunch materialist. And not the “I like to buy a lot of stuff” kind of materialist, but the sort that believes everything is made out of atoms and quarks (and whatever quarks are made out of) and that magic is physically impossible. Now, imagine that this man, fed up with arguing with hippies and magical thinkers generally, snaps and declares, “I’ll bet anyone a million dollars that they can’t come into my laboratory and produce obviously supernatural phenomena.

Regarding MMOs: 23 percent of men play as women, but only 7 percent of women try taking a walk on the hairier side. If you’re interested in artificial general intelligence (strong AI), several researchers in the field have put together “course recommendations”, including one from Ben Goertzel, one from Pei Wang, and one from Marcus Hutter. The largest dinosaur yet has been discovered: “Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall.

    Belladonna means “beautiful woman” in Italian, but it’s also the name of a type of plant. The origins of the term belladonna are uncertain, but date back to at least 1554. It’s been suggested (and this is my favorite theory) that the name might be related to belladonna’s use as a cosmetic. Women would consume the plant in order to dilate their pupils, in an attempt to enhance beauty.

If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine. —Jim Barksdale I’m not too fond of the phrase “information age.” It sounds like someone sat down and was like, “Hey, there’s a ton of information today… what should we call it? How about the information age?” First of all, that’s just lazy and, second of all, it doesn’t capture how overwhelming it all is, the sort of angst and helplessness you feel when confronted with… everything.

You can’t avoid danger. —Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses Yeah, you can. Don’t get one of these jobs, for instance. —me David Henderson has rightly earned the title contrarian with his latest post which, to kick off National Police Week, points out that it’s more dangerous to be a farmer than a policeman — “For every 100,000 police, the annual fatality rate is 20. For every 100,000 farmers, it is 40% higher, at 28.

Curiosity is only vanity. Most frequently we wish to know but to talk. —Blaise Pascal, Pensées Joshua Bell, the Washington Post assures me, is a world-class musician and a Very Big Deal. The Post asked him if “he’d be willing to don street clothes and perform at rush hour.” The results? No one cared. (HT: Terry Tao) For luxury goods, the ruder the salesperson the better.