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I had the pleasure of joining my cousin in Italy again, this time on a 9 day trip to Sicily.  We started in Palermo and made our way in a counter-clockwise tour of the island.  One of my favorite stops was the geological formation known as Scala dei Turchi just to the west of Agrigento. It looks like a milky-white set of steps rising out of the Mediterranean Sea, and it's completely free to explore.  While I'm really glad I was able to climb it, I do hope that one day soon the government will decide to protect the area since it will likely become quite damaged from all the human activity.  For more pictures of the trip, check out my Instagram feed . One of my other favorite stops was the UNESCO world heritage Baroque town of Ragusa.  Not only is it absolutely lovely, it has some of the best restaurants on the island including the 2 Michelin-starred Ristorante Duomo.  We were able to have a 7 course lunch there for only 45 euros (that's like $50 with the rec...

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) serves as a lifeline for about a million of workers and their families in the country. It gives insurance protection to workers and their families when they retire or in case of a serious, long-term disability. The benefits of Social Security Disability Insurance is modest. Beneficiaries of it get about $42,000 on average, based in 2014 wage levels. Qualification for Online Application for disability benefits:     18 years old or above     You are not currently receiving benefits on your own Social Security record     You are unable to work because of a medical condition that is expected to last at least 12 months or result in death: and     You have not been denied disability benefits in the last 60 days. If your application was recently denied for medical reasons, the Internet Appeal is a starting point to request a review of the medical determination we made. Here's How To Apply On...

Now it's here, the end, I find myself uncharacteristically unable to think of anything profound to say. I'm sure there's so much I've forgotten to tell you. The "drafts" folder of this blog is full of half-written posts, that stop in mid-air, trying to say something. But the thought was too vague, or I was too tired, demented, angry, self-pitying, or just busy, to finish it. Some of you understand why this blog has to stop and others don't. The best way I can put it is that if I carry on, I will feel like I am betraying something. Let me explain. Life with a two year old and a four year old is still demanding, but I can't deny that it's easier. At times it's even nice in the way that life with two under-threes, or a new baby, or being pregnant or whatever just isn't ever. Well not for me anyway. I was always having a good time despite something and I would briefly think "Look! Look it's not relentlessly crap!". Whereas now ...

Click the image to enlarge it. My first post about gender inequality went awry, but no matter! In writing the original post, I thought of an even more interesting question about gender inequality and women's gymnastics. When it comes to women's gymnastics, does gender inequality pose a barrier to entry? Is there some kind of threshold for inequality – a point where it becomes increasingly more difficult for women to participate in major competitions?  Let's discuss the graph above.  What is the GII? The United Nations has developed a gender inequality index (GII), which takes into consideration things like adolescent birth rates, labor market participation by gender, and proportion of parliament seats occupied by women.  If you want to read more about this index, I suggest that you hop over to the UN's website . To create this chart, I took every country from the UN's database, eliminating the countries that didn't have an index score for 2013. (Sorry, Hong Kong...

At one point, some people believed that elite gymnastics was governed by two maxims: The shorter, the better The lighter, the better These silly notions led to all sorts of problems in the sport. (You can read Little Girls in Pretty Boxes to get a glimpse into some of the problems that happened in the U.S.) And really, those notions are silly. Within the small population of elite gymnasts, a gymnast's individual height and weight do not correlate with competition rankings. The Sexy Data In Baku, fans had access to profiles with each athlete's height and weight. So, I decided to run some regressions to see if height and weight had any influence on a gymnast's final ranking.* And well, height and weight weren't strong predictors of final rankings. In fact, neither height nor weight was statistically significant for the gymnasts at that competition. That is, neither height nor weight has a significant impact on gymnastics results. D and E scores, on the other hand, were s...

Gymternet, my apologies. I'm on a myth busting tirade. In my previous post , we looked at whether D-scores were strong predictors of final all-around rankings. Now, I want to set that post aside, and I want to look at which event is the strongest predictor of final all-around rankings. On the men's side, conventional wisdom would say that pommel horse is the "make it or break it" event. And on the women's side, NBC would have us believe that balance beam is the "make it or break it" event. Well, let's take a look and see how things played out at the 2014 World Championships…  TL;DR: When it comes to final rankings in the all-around competition in Nanning, all individual event scores are statistically significant. So, the question really is, Which event is a stronger predictor of your all-around rank? For the men, high bar is the strongest predictor of your final all-around rank. For the women, uneven bars is the strongest predictor of your final al...

It's time to look at another controversial subject among gymnastics fans. It goes something like this: "The gymnast who performs the most difficulty will win the all-around competition." In other words, gymnastics fans tend to believe that D-scores are stronger predictors of a gymnast's final AA rank than E-scores. I was curious about this, so I did some sexy data analysis. I ran some multivariate regressions, and here's what I found… TL;DR: When it comes to final rankings in the all-around competition, both D and E scores are statistically significant. So, the question really is, Which is a stronger predictor of your all-around rank? The answer to that question depends on your sex. For the men, the D score is a stronger predictor of your final all-around rank. For the women, the E score is a stronger predictor of your final all-around rank. You can see this in the charts of relative importances below. For those who aren't used to looking at charts of relative...

I have a new favourite ingredient and it is called teff flour. Never heard of it before? I hadn't either until I started experimenting with gluten-free baking. There are numerous gluten-free flours out there: oat, buckwheat, sorghum, almond, coconut, corn; the list goes on and on and on. Now, I can't really go into any specifics on why teff flour is so popular other than share my own highly subjective experience: it works great in pancakes. I've had issues in the past with gooey, not properly cooked, gluten-free pancakes and let me tell you, it ain't pretty. But to my great surprise, these ones turned out really light, airy and fluffy! Triple yay! So from what I can understand, teff is an ancient grain that has been used in Eastern Africa for ages. Ethiopians and Eritreans use the flour to make their special, sourdough flatbread called Injeera. Like many other seeds and grains, teff has an excellent nutrient profile. It's high in calcium, iron, zinc and many other v...