Skip to main content

Donut Holdiay Election

Dear Members and Constituents,
With election season behind and the holiday season upon us, wouldn’t it be nice if we could combine the two? Stay with me on this one… What if you could have a popularity contest for holiday terms? An objective face-off to determine which word is most popular. Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was a tool to scour fifteen million books and determine how often a given word has been mentioned over time? As it so happens, we’re in luck! Google labs has released such a tool: the Ngram Viewer and I’ve taken it for a test-run. For grins and giggles, several seasonal terms were pitted in a head-to-head popularity battle. The first experiment was to pit the word donut against several major holiday terms. I was initially shocked when I incorrectly concluded the word “donut” was more popular than other holiday terms (I was using lower-case for terms normally capitalized –and capitalization matters to this tool).


Obviously, this initial comparison was fundamentally flawed. A better frame-of-reference would be other holiday foods. Armed with this insight, I put some traditional Christmas season foods to the test, alongside two alternative spellings for the word donut. It turns-out donuts (regardless of spelling) are more popular in literature than eggnog, fruitcake and candy canes; and their recent popularity has grown much faster than that of holiday foods. At the end of the day, when it comes to food, the only popularity contest that really matters is the one your taste buds hold every time take a bite.


Today, my desk is vacant and I will have to vicariously enjoy Kelly Becker’s debut as donut girl through you. So, come on down and, once you’ve had your fill, do tell me which donut is your favorite.
Happy Friday!

P.S. A big “thank you” goes to Bill Long for discovering the Google Ngram Viewer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ashes to Ashes

  Friends, I don’t know about you, but my household tends to use things a tad beyond their reasonably useful life. Cars, razors, pillows... heck, we squeezed the last BTU out of our home’s 25 year old thermostat —15 years is for rookies. This week we bid our fire pit farewell. Structurally unstable and rusted to the core, this contrivance was well on its way to returning to the soil. Memories of s’mores, cigars and shared spirits come rushing back, as does the six foot tall cardboard peach burned atop it, which caused the first stress fractures in the waning days of 2019. Good times! I suppose nothing lasts forever, but memories can add a sense of permanence to the fleeting. So go, grab a donut and make some new memories!! Happy Friday!

To an end to Covid Games

  Friends, As 2021 comes to an end, it’s time to remember and be grateful for another year of life – there’s much for which to be grateful. Sure, some things could have gone better (they always can), but on balance things were good. At the González household, the cathartic process of capturing this year’s essence to burn at midnight is wrapping-up. This year’s theme, “Covid Games from home” uses Squid games (Netflix’s unlikely breakaway hit) as a way to mock the two main Covid variants of concern (Delta and Omicron) and commiserate about working from home with all the weirdness it carries along. Comfy slippers combined with dressing-up from the waist up for zoom meetings (not to mention the quarantine fifteen). As I hope for lots of snow and no wind (lest we need to call an audible on the midnight burn) my thoughts turn to my friends in Boulder county and hopes for a quick recovery. May 2022 bring an end to confinement and lots of opportunities to share donuts. Happy Friday!

BIrds of a Feather

Friends, The early bird catches the worm, however, as the sun rises I’d much rather have a Denver omelet than a diet of worms . Ready to fly the coop, my ducks all in a row, I ponder one more time whether a bird in hand is truly worth two in the bush. Egged-on by my quest to tuck away a nest egg, I’ve decided to change industries and hope that, like the phoenix, my career will also rise from the ashes of change. After all, I’m no spring chicken –my crow’s feet and gray bely my age – however, I have to trust my judgment and believe you can’t catch this old bird with chaff (whether or not folks think me an odd bird for my actions). And so I shall attempt to soar like an eagle, aware that counting my chickens before they hatch would be ill-advised. As I learn to talk turkey in the language of cybersecurity, I will endeavor not to hide my head in the sand, choosing instead to be like a duck – calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath! And while my excessive use of bird-inspired