The Philosophy Behind the Album

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” – Carl Sagan “I am the consequence of 3 miracles: the miracle of Life, the miracle of Mind, and the miracle of Culture.” – Gregg Henriques “I am large, I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Photo by Robert Hensley I have learned […]
Food choices as knobs on vintage audio gear

Do you prefer to think about your daily nutrition choices as vintage audio gear? From my reading of Greger and Ornish, it looks like optimal health happens when you turn as many of these knobs to the right as you can. Go for more fiber, more greens, more whole foods (versus processed foods), more plant-based […]
Henry Waring Latané Temple and Susan Jones

“They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever.” – Daniel 12:3 Henry Waring Latané Temple was born in April 6, 1812 in Essex County, Virginia, the fourth child of John Temple and Mary “Polly” Latané. Essex County in […]
How I Met My Great-Great-Great Grandparents

I have 32 great-great-great grandparents. Four of them are Virginia natives, and two of them are Essex County, Virginia natives. I had seen that birthplaces for Henry Temple and Sarah Jones Temple were in Essex County, Virginia. My great-great-great grandfather Henry Waring Latane Temple was rector in South Farnham Parish and at St. Paul’s Episcopal […]
Updated Greatest Films of All Time for 2017

A new edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die was published in October 2017, and that means a batch of new movies have been added to the “Greatest Films of All Time” movie recommendation app. In the 7th edition of the ‘1001 Movies’ series, 22 movies released in 2015 and 2016 were […]
Words of Persuasion – The Text Predictors of Persuasive TED Talks

What makes for a persuasive presentation? How can you speak to persuade? To create theodorespeaks.com, I webscraped every TED Talk, analyzed words in the transcripts & user’s ratings, and found that the most persuasive speakers used MORE negative emotion words and LESS ‘I, me, my’ words. So the next time you’re trying to convince, try […]
What’s your favorite Austin restaurant? (What was it’s last health inspection score)

Last night, the organizers of a meetup at data.world issued a challenge: in 1 hour, pull together 1 visualization that tells a story from an open dataset. Our team created an interactive dashboard to explore 3 years of good and bad restaurant health inspection scores in Austin. Search by restaurant name, choose your zip code […]
The greatest films of all time- a list compiled from multiple sources

This web app and open dataset I made for movie fans compiles several ‘greatest films’ lists to find the greatest of the great, and the analysis reveals seven films to be the best of the best. Here’s a Movie Recommender visualization and interface for the data hosted on Tableau Public: The Problem There’s nothing worse […]
Comedy Central Presents – Complete Episode List with IMDB Ratings

If you are serious about laughing, here’s a dataset for you and a visualization (below and here) you can use to explore it. Good stand-up comedy looks easy, but it is a structured, precise, and subtle form of communication, a tightrope walk in front of a live audience, that is always a millisecond or a […]
It’s All Connected

The ToK System as described by Henriques (2003). It’s all connected isn’t it? It’s not just six degrees of separation from any actor to Kevin Bacon, it’s a low number of degrees of separation between anything and anything else in the world. Start with any observation or fact and you can get to any other […]