Gonzales will resign in September. Hillary will take the White House. Jordin will be the American Idol winner.

Do those scenarios sound likely? Some people find them probable enough to put money on the line. Each prediction is based on a contract price at Intrade, which is a futures market similar to the Iowa Electronic Market.

People buy contracts that pay off if certain events occur. Higher-probability event contracts fetch higher bid prices, so high prices correlate with likely events. Categories range from weather to politics, many with significant volume.

Can the markets predict outcomes? The data suggest they can.

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

Let’s say you’re having an argument with somebody. Do you (a) calmly negotiate a resolution or (b) agree to disagree?

No! The correct answer is obviously (c) drive around with the person before stopping your car in the center lane of a major freeway at rush hour, getting out of the car, and throwing shoes at each other while holding up traffic.

When I drove by the altercation on my way home from work, I thought that the two women had simply had an accident. It never occured to me that the real reason would be much more bizare.

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

Growing up, I always thought that a bicycle remained upright due to the gyroscopic nature of the spinning wheels. The pesky fact that bicycles remain stable even at very low speeds? Ignored it.

Now I know better. The majority of the stability comes from the geometry of the bicycle. In essence, a falling bike causes a steering deflection that moves the center of gravity back underneath the bike and stops the fall.

Some Brit made a special bike with a counter-rotating wheel, just to prove the point. The bike remained rideable.

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

There were always stories about ghosts of orphans roaming the Pike house and grounds. Invariably, the accounts were hearsay, often attributed to Brothers past. Nobody ever told of a first-person encounter with a specter. Some attributed odd noises to the supernatural, but what aged structure is completely silent? Despite the dubious nature of the stories, nighttime ventures into the notorious parts of the property remained frightful experiences.

The national Pi Kappa Alpha magazine published an article about the Iota Delta house, history, and ghost stories. Not surprisingly, the Brothers in the spooky stories were nameless.

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)

I’ve been noticing a growing number of you, dear readers, following this site via RSS. That’s fine — I think feeds are great! Unfortunately, I love statistics, and those can be skewed by RSS readers.

Fortunately, there’s Feedburner. Now that it’s set up for this blog, I hope to provide some juicy factoids for you all in a few days. I suspect that the main feed has about two dozen subscriptions. With luck, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)