Microhistories
Mark Kurlansky–style PDFs for a single sitting (~2 hours). Mundane objects, hidden worlds — the salt on your table, the zipper on your coat, the pencil in your hand.
The Pencil
You call it lead; it never was. From Borrowdale’s guarded graphite mines to Conté’s wartime kiln, Thoreau’s Concord factory, and the NASA space-pen myth — the six-inch stick that outlasted every prediction of obsolescence.
Read PDFThe Zipper
The sound that named an invention. From Judson’s failed clasp locker at the 1893 World’s Fair to Sundback’s interlocking teeth, Schiaparelli’s runway, and YKK’s billions — why most closures are harmless and the right one is catastrophic.
Read PDFHistory & Engineering
Tracing the people, decisions, and breakthroughs that shaped modern engineering and technology.
Salt, Tires, and Explosives
How America's strategic missile industry grew from explosives, rubber chemistry, and unlikely corporate alliances. A genealogical history of the engineers, failures, and pivotal moments that defined the Space Race.
ExploreFriction and Flow
The history and mystery of the Navier-Stokes equations — five independent derivations, their use in every aircraft and pipeline ever built, and the million-dollar Millennium Prize problem that remains unsolved.
ExploreIn Search of the Optimum
A narrative history of mathematical optimization from Fermat to Karmarkar. Ten chapters covering the brachistochrone, Lagrange multipliers, the simplex method, Soviet linear programming, and the 1984 interior-point revolution that shook AT&T's patent lawyers.
ExploreThe Restoring Force
Hooke's Law and the birth of the science of materials. From a coiled spring in seventeenth-century London through Young's modulus, Cauchy's stress tensor, and beam theory to seismology, piezoelectricity, and MEMS.
ExploreData Science & Optimization
Modern computational techniques applied to classical problems — from optimization and causal reasoning to data analysis.
Data Science Tools for Classical Operations Research
Python implementation of numerical optimization and modern operations research. From linear programming to metaheuristics and beyond.
ExploreUncertain Minds
Causal inference, Bayesian reasoning, and the science of learning. Understanding cause-and-effect relationships in an uncertain world.
ExploreOrigami Optimization
Numerical optimization in origami engineering. Crease geometry, circle packing, energy minimization, and inverse fold design — with executable Python throughout.
ExploreCarrier Throttling Analysis
When “unlimited” stops meaning unlimited. Two years of Ookla speed tests and FCC panel data on whether your carrier quietly slows you down after you hit the fine print.
ExploreWhere Should You Go?
Scores 31 countries across 11 dimensions — cost of living, healthcare, safety, visa access, English proficiency, and more. One-click presets (Budget, Family, Digital Nomad, Retiree, Safety, Adventure), live weight sliders, instant radar comparisons, custom country what-ifs, and shareable configs.
Launch interactive appBackyard Seed Advisor
What your feeder says about the birds in your zip code — and which seed they actually want this month. Region, season, and recent sightings in; ranked seeds and a custom mix recipe out. Runs in the browser, no account required.
Try the appIndependent Verification & Validation
Occasional spot-checks of published claims against raw microdata and primary sources. The US Census IV&V series doubles as a tour of what the Census API has to offer.
The Bell Curve — Replication
Herrnstein & Murray's 1994 book generated one of the most contentious debates in modern social science. This is a personal look at the underlying numbers — AFQT, SES, and social outcomes in NLSY79/97 and GSS — not to litigate the conclusions, but to see what the data actually show.
ExploreUS Census IV&V
Spot-checks of Census Bureau data releases against raw microdata and the Census API — a running tour of what the API can do and a seed bank for future projects.
ExploreComputational Linguistics
Historical linguistics meets modern data science — word origins, sound change, cognate detection, and semantic drift in Python.
Etymology + Data Science
A 12-chapter computational tour of historical linguistics: sequence alignment, phylogenetic inference, proto-language reconstruction, and semantic drift — all in Python. From the 19th-century comparative method to modern transformer-based models.
ExploreSentence Diagrams
Interactive visual sentence diagramming for English & German. Traditional Reed-Kellogg + modern syntax trees. Extensible to Spanish, Latin, Greek.
Try the toolDo Technology Words Drift Faster?
Measuring semantic change rates across word categories using Hamilton et al. historical embeddings. Tests whether tech vocabulary drifts faster than biology, law, or everyday language.
ExploreLoanword Networks
Graph-theoretic analysis of borrowing density across Indo-European branches.
Cognate Detection Benchmark
Comparing edit-distance, PMI, and neural methods on gold-standard cognate pairs.
The Neogrammarian Test
Are sound changes truly exceptionless? Corpus validation of the regularity hypothesis.
Reconstruction Accuracy
Transformer vs. rule-based proto-form reconstruction — scored against attested Latin and Greek.
Semantic Drift Dashboard
Interactive browser for any word's semantic trajectory across decades.
Cognate Explorer
Input two words — alignment score, shared ancestry probability, and tree placement.
The Indo-European Problem
Full reconstruction pipeline for one language family — phylogenetics, sound laws, and the debate history.
Music & Practice
Companion volumes for deliberate practice on nylon-string instruments. Scores, tablature, audio references, and focused technique guidance.
Classical Guitar Companion
A practical study guide for nylon-string players — repertoire, technique, scores in notation + tablature, and deliberate practice strategies with audio.
PlayClassical Ukulele Companion
Classical repertoire and technique for tenor (standard tuning) and baritone ukulele — notation, tablature, audio references, and deliberate practice strategies.