IT Insights Blog — TestOut Continuing Education

Spring is just around the corner, and that means that baseball players are, um, already shagging fly balls and taking BP. Hey, you think spring training can wait until, you know, spring is actually here? Not a chance. The Arizona-based Cactus League tossed out the first pitch on Feb. 21, while the Grapefruit League kicked off in Florida on Feb. 22. It's hardly reasonable to expect baseball players to be ready to play 180 games if they don't get started early.

We occasionally shout out some pretty silly national days here at the IT Insights Blog. (Hey, this is a rough gig. YOU try coming up with something new to write about three days a week for an entire year, Mr. Intelligent Trousers.) For example, in additional to being Feb. 27, today is also Anosmia Awareness Day, National Kahlua Day, National Strawberry Day, National Polar Bear Day, and National Retro Day.

There's a pretty good chance that almost no one who stumbles across this blog post will have ever read, or even heard of, the 19th-century English novel Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Let's face it, there are probably plenty of people who teach English literature who have never read or heard of Paul Clifford. Bulwer-Lytton's novel is not quite so lost to time that it's out of print altogether ... but the current paperback edition is ranked No. 1,890,901 on Amazon.

Show of hands, who has ever taken a long road trip, say, 10 hours or longer by vehicle to some far-off destination? (On a related note: The IT Insights blog squad was driving home after work last night and saw a service station signboard advertising regular unleaded gas for — wait for it — $1.99/gallon. Shiver me timbers, lads, $1.99! The price of gas hasn't been that low in at least 20 years.)

For a variety of reasons, human societies have long had an interest in gathering and analyzing data. Ancient Rome, during both its republican and imperial phases, used census data extensively. One of the first things that the United States did after concluding its war of independence from the British crown was to conduct a nationwide census. The parameters of the census were even written into the U.S. Constitution.