Category: Blog

FiveThirtyEight’s Top 103 Commenters

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I recently wrote a story for FiveThirtyEight about why people leave comments on the Internet. I surveyed a bunch of commenters (as well as some people who don’t comment) and the results yielded some interesting insights, which I discussed in the story. (You can hear a dramatic reading of some of the comments left on my FiveThirtyEight stories here.) I also wrote about how journalists think about comments at my blog, Last Word On Nothing, and the post includes data about how journalists think of and respond to comments. For these stories, I spoke with a few of our most prolific commenters at FiveThirtyEight.

Enough people asked about the list of top commenters (my story only listed the top ten) that I thought I’d go ahead an share the top 100 list, which is actually a top 103 list, since there were some ties. The list, created by my colleague Dhrumil Mehta, is based on comments made on FiveThirtyEight articles between March 10, 2014, and Nov. 17, 2016.

RANK NAME  Number of comments
1 Warren Dew 552
2 Norman Shatkin 360
3 James Deedler 308
4 Fel Martins 269
5 Joseph Michael 252
6 Glenn Doty 247
7 Django Zeaman 234
8 Harold DePalma 230
9 Nealy Willy 217
10 Davey Williams 214
11 Janet Stockey Swanborn 198
12 Robert Lash 196
13 Dan Frushour 193
14 Joe Schmitz 183
15 Aaron Baker 181
16 Bill Wild 175
17 James C. Higgs 163
18 Jack Springer 161
19 Samuel Xavier McPherson 161
20 Joshua Long 160
21 Frank Lee 159
22 Andrew Lang 157
23 Judy Konos 153
24 Morgan Alexander Mikhail 152
25 Robert Jensen 151
26 Brian Silver 150
27 Robert Davidson 148
28 Steve Olson 146
29 Williame Harrisone 145
30 Simon DelMonte 145
31 Rob Ross 141
32 Mike Stanley 139
33 Alan Snipes 137
34 Andrew Jones 137
35 Luís Henrique Donadio 131
36 Keith Bloomquist 128
37 Rutger Colin Kips 128
38 Don Incardona 127
39 Steve High 123
40 Richard Cowgill 121
41 Tim Thielke 119
42 Jason Turner 117
43 Don Wilber 116
44 Shi Gu 113
45 Steve Evets 108
46 Daniel Warren Curtis 107
47 Steve Veasey 106
48 Robert Grutza 105
49 Brandon Butcher 104
50 Matt Silver 103
51 Shawna Walls 102
52 Jeff Seifert 100
53 Jeremy Bailin 98
54 David Reid 97
55 Stellar Generali 97
56 Kevin McRaney 96
57 Tyler Cooper 95
58 Charlie Pluckhahn 95
59 George Craig 95
60 Jeb Makula 93
61 Robert Rio 92
62 Martin D. Kilgore 92
63 Adam White 92
64 Tim Blankenhorn 90
65 Sigmund Menbrodssen 90
66 Will Bishop 89
67 Mark Lantis 89
68 Brian Tucker-Hill 88
69 Peter Wolf 88
70 Pat Ziegler 87
71 Johann Holzel 86
72 Biff Guiznot 83
73 Antoine Guéroult 83
74 Grant Saw 82
75 Dave Barnes 82
76 Michael Brotzman 81
77 Tom Davis 81
78 Kar Nels 80
79 Barb Campbell 80
80 Dan Schroeder 80
81 Mark Charles Salomon 78
82 Julius Fazekas 78
83 Tatiana Romanova 78
84 Garrett Weinzierl 78
85 Brian Hess 77
86 Rupert Barker 76
87 Ed Gruberman 75
88 Jeff Maslan 75
89 Ben Slowen 75
90 Alex Whitworth 75
91 Steve Gibson 74
92 Robert Weller 74
93 Edward Chik 74
94 Dan Bruce 74
95 Jon Worley 72
96 Manny Longfellow 72
97 Daniel Song 71
98 Sayeeshwar Sathyanarayanan 70
99 Abiatha Swelter 70
100 Beverly Ray 69
101 Mark Jorges 69
102 Aaron Allermann 69
103 Ken Kornfeld 69

 

Stalking my dinner

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Photo Oct 25, 8 03 19 (1)A few years ago, I decided to take up hunting. This was kind of a big deal, because I’d spent the first decade-plus of my adult life as vegetarian. I became a big game hunter for the same reason I raise chickens — to know where my food comes from and ensure that it’s raised and harvested humanely. I figure if I’m not willing to kill it myself, I have no business eating it.

I spent last weekend elk hunting. It was an amazing, wonderful, addictive experience that I wrote about at Last Word On Nothing. Read the full story here.

I don’t love my treadmill desk.

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In my latest Washington Post AnyBody column, I write about how I expected to love my treadmill desk like my writing buddy Paolo Bacigalupi and fellow blogger Craig Childs love theirs. But I just don’t. In my Post column, I explain my suspicion that treadmill desks are the wrong solution to an important problem, and at Last Word On Nothing, I devise some theories about why I don’t like the treadmill and recount how James Levine (father of the treadmill desk) gave me permission to give mine a new home.

 

The problem with “reunion porn.”

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Heart-warming broadcast homecomings have become the public face of post-deployment family reunions, but the intense happiness of these moments can mask the challenges that lie ahead as military families navigate life after their loved ones return from war. “We call it reunion porn,” says Amy Bushatz, managing editor of Military.com’s SpouseBuzz blog and the wife of an infantry soldier. “The feeling among the people I work with and my readers is that it’s not a fair representation.” The happy welcomes tell only the “mushy reunion half of the story,” she says. “What happens when he gets home? Not just that night, but three weeks from then?”

Read the rest at the Washington Post.

 

Talking About CrossFit

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Yesterday, I was a guest on Ohio Public Radio’s All Side with Ann Fisher, talking about CrossFit and my New York Times review of J.C. Herz’s new book about CrossFit, Learning to Breathe Fire. The 20 minute interview begins 15 minutes into the show. View the archive or listen here:  http://streaming.osu.edu/wosu/allsides/090314b.mp3

 

Platelet-rich plasma and the power of belief-based medicine

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I recently wrote a Washington Post column about platelet-rich plasma, a treatment highly touted for sports injuries but without much clear evidence. As I later wrote at Last Word On Nothing, PRP provides a case study in why it’s so important to track outcomes in medicine. If you don’t measure your outcomes, you have no way to really know how you’re doing. Humans are notoriously bad at self-evaluating. A 2006 study published in JAMA found that, “physicians have a limited ability to accurately self-assess,” and a 2012 study found that doctors overestimate the value of the care they provide. And if you have an incentive (money?) to keep doing something, results be damned, then if you’re not careful, an ineffective practice can become fixed as the standard of care. Once that happens, it’s very, very difficult to walk it back.

 

 

Report from the Solutions Summit

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Back in early 2013, an email discussion among friends turned into a realization. We were having the same tired discussions about gender bias, over and over. The details might vary slightly, but it was the same story, again and again, and nothing was changing. It was time to go public and start looking for solutions.

That conversation conversation led to a panel at Science Writers 2013 meeting, which in turn led to a work summit to come up with solutions. The first Women in Science Writing: Solutions Summit took place at MIT on June 13-15. Read my full report of the summit, including data and survey results, over at Last Word On Nothing.

 

 

 

The Value of College Sports

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CUnatChampsAs I’ve followed the NCAA basketball tournament (join me and some folks from Radiolab tonight, as we live tweet the final game), I’ve been thinking about the value of collegiate sports. My first experience with sports in college came as an NCAA division I cross-country runner. I lettered in cross-country at the University of Colorado my freshman year, but a freak knee injury cut short my collegiate running career. Though I had no experience in the sport, I started training with my school’s Nordic ski team, and I also bought a bike and joined the cycling team.

Cross-country and skiing were both division I, NCAA sports, but cycling was governed by its own body, outside of the NCAA system, and was overseen by club sports, rather than CU’s varsity athletic program. The difference was immediately noticeable. As a varsity NCAA athlete, I received special treatment — advance, preferential registration for classes, private tutoring if I needed it, and excused time from class to attend practice and meets, not to mention free tickets to all sporting events. This special treatment fostered a sense of privilege. We were part of the student body, but we were treated as if we were somehow above it.

My teammates and I were good students, and we were there to get a degree, we didn’t expect to make a profession out of sport. Nevertheless, as varsity athletes, we understood that performance was expected of us. Our sport was no hobby — we were there to win.

Things were different on the cycling team. My teammates and I were no less devoted to our sport, and our coaches were every bit as enthusiastic as those in the division I sports. But we didn’t have the same sense of entitlement or expectation. We were pursuing the thing we loved and didn’t assume that our classmates would share our reverence for our sport. The school wasn’t pressuring us for results; it was us who created the expectations.

We were national champions my senior year, and we didn’t need the school’s adoration to enjoy the thrill of victory. We were pursuing the sport for its own sake and had won because we’d worked hard and our luck had aligned, as it must to win a championship. Our victory wasn’t the result of financial incentives that allowed us to recruit a winning team from afar. Instead, we’d pulled together a championship team through happenstance and training. Sure, we had plenty of talent (one of my teammates would go on to become a Tour de France stage winner and infamous doper), but the riders on our team had come to CU for school, not to prep for pro sports. The opportunity to race bikes in Boulder was an attractive reason to attend this particular school, not the sole reason for being there.

Read the rest at Last Word On Nothing.

 

How losing my smart phone made me smarter

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A few weekends ago, I hiked a deep canyon with a couple of friends. As has become my habit, I toted my smart phone along. I set it to mute so that I’d remain undisturbed by pings and rings, and I pulled it out of my pack only to take a few photos.

After the hike, my friend drove us back to our carpool spot, and after changing out of my hiking shoes, I reached for my phone to call my husband. Except it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the front pocket of my pack, or anywhere else I looked.

Panic. Was it in my friend’s car? Or had I dropped it somewhere in the canyon? I reached to call the friend, who was now five minutes down the road in the other direction, but — oh right. I’d have to call her when I got home. Wait, did I know her number? No, I did not. It’s programmed into my phone. I probably added it to my contacts via email, never once dialing it.

A sense of doom set in, as I thought about all the other information I’d offloaded from my brain to that shiny glass rectangle. But the despair was quickly followed by a sense of release. I was suddenly free from obligation. I couldn’t check messages. No one could reach me. I was untethered.

It was Saturday afternoon, and I decided not to think about the phone for the next 24 hours. It sounds simple, but I kept reaching for the phone out of instinct. Standing in line at the grocery store on my way home, I was shocked to realize how long it had been since I’d waited somewhere without occupying myself with messages and other reading material on my phone.

Read the rest at Last Word On Nothing.

Death Barged In

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Grief is an unbecoming emotion. It’s raw and unvarnished. It exposes truths we’d rather left unsaid. It changes relationships. The people you expect will be there aren’t, and the ones you would never have depended on are the ones who help you find a way through the darkness. Read more of my latest blog post, Death Barged In, at Last Word On Nothing.

 

Breast cancer’s latest saga: misfearing and misplaced goalposts

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A new Canadian study adds to the amassing research suggesting that most of what mammography has done is turn healthy people into sick, but grateful cancer survivors. It’s time to change our goals. We should be aiming to save lives, not create as many cancer patients as we possibly can.

Read more about my take on the latest mammography study at Last Word On Nothing and Slate.

24 Reasons to Ignore Best Places Lists

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The latest issue of Sunset Magazine arrived in my mail last week, and the cover story immediately caught my eye — “24 Best Places to Live and Work 2014.”“Looking for the perfect place to launch a career? Start a family? Just relax? We’ve found the ideal city, town, or neighborhood for you.”

For instance, if you’re “ready to put down roots,” the story’s handy flowchart offers you two choices — Issaquah, Washington (if “the burbs are calling”) or Sugar House, Salt Lake City, Utah, if they’re not.

Now Sunset is a fine magazine and they’re hardly alone in propagating these“best places” inventories.I understand the impulse to quantify a place’s attributes and size them up against other localities. But I worry that the proliferation of these lists have transformed place into a commodity rather than a commitment.

What I’ve learned from living in three countries and more than 20 locations is that there is no perfect place. Believing otherwise prevents the letting go of elsewhere necessary to create a home place where you are— a journey that takes effort and devotion.

Turning place into a consumer item diminishes its essential dimensions. As poet Gary Snyder once wrote, the demands of a life committed to a place, “Are so physically and intellectually intense, that it is a moral and spiritual choice as well.”

Communities are most alive when people are engaged and fully present — rather than merely coming home to sleep between commutes to elsewhere. Mine is the kind of place that people dream of escaping to when they’re stuck in rush hour traffic; yet too many of those who come here keep one foot planted somewhere else. Community is what happens when people have a stake in their place and an investment in its future.

Finish reading this post, 24 Reasons to Ignore Best Places Lists, at Last Word On Nothing.