"According the model, a hurricane with wind speeds of about 100 miles per hour — making it a 'weak' Category 2 storm — might cause on the order of $35 billion in damage if it were to pass directly over Manhattan…. Although far from the most likely scenario, this may represent a reasonable-worst-case estimate of what could happen if Hurricane Irene took exactly the wrong turn at exactly the wrong time…. Keep in mind that New York’s annual gross domestic product is estimated to be about $1.4 trillion — about one-tenth of the nation’s gross domestic product — so if much of the city were to become dysfunctional for [...]

Your Geeky Boyfriend Nate Silver has some fun with a study that purports to show that stimulus funding was disbursed in a partisan manner. When Nate Silver calls you out for failing to identify the commonalities between apparent outliers in your dataset, you stay called out.

Attention sex-doers: Wednesday is your best chance at getting lucky, according to Your Geeky Boyfriend Nate Silver and the guy from that dating site who is so good at getting publicity.

In the wake of New Jersey's whole "Chris Christie: Too enormous to be governor?" controversy, Your Geeky Boyfriend Nate Silver runs down the nation's 50 chief executives and rates their fitness. Sample: "Bill Richardson (NM) — fat; possibly getting fatter." Clip and save!

The always-number-crunching Nate Silver has compiled a chart of fast-food items' relative unhealthiness to KFC's Double Down. The winner as far as pure gluttony goes: Wendy's Triple Baconator (pictured), a three-patty lots-of-bacon-and-cheeseburger that has 1,350 calories, 90 grams of fat, and 2.78 grams of sodium — the equivalent of two and a half Double Downs, if you want to get mathy about it. If only it came on a lattice of bacon instead of a bun. It would be so much more bloggable that way! Someone get on that, OK?