Adventures with algorithms

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Technology is wondrous. It allows us to make animated kitten gifs in mere minutes. It allows us to experience the raw brutal pleasure of German pornography. It allows us to steal music with a level of efficiency not matched since the time your town’s high school dropout kid plowed his El Camino through the front doors of Best Buy at 3 in the morning.

One thing it seems to really suck at, though, is determining the romantic compatibility of two human beings. In that respect, technology is nearly as bad as actual human beings.

Today, for shits and giggles, I decided to to do a “reverse match” search on Match.com of people who say they’re looking for someone like me. Match immediately tried to flatter me with sheer quantity. 1,622 results! I’m more desired than Jon Hamm wrapped in cupcake icing and bacon!

Once that immediate hit of ego-satisfying euphoria wore off, however, I took a closer look.

Here’s the entire profile of my third result:

About my life and what I’m looking for

im 5ft even redbone thick wit it 4tatts 2 gold teeth spotaneous outgoing silly at times good sense of humor easy to get along wit but just dnt rub me the wrong way then you will see that pisces side of me

I want to laugh at this awful dating profile, but I can’t! According to Match’s super high-tech algorithm, we should be a perfect match. This says more about me than her. I guess at this point the only question left to ask is….

What flavor of 4Loko should I bring on our first date? Is “purple” too fancy?

Thug Life

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My paean to the joys of Boardwalk Empire having been pushed off the main page, I feel compelled to keep the fire alive by acquainting you with four real-life inspirations of the show’s most colorful gangsters.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano

Okay, so this one isn’t as cute in real life as Vincent Piazza, the fine young actor who portrays him on the small screen. Such is life. Lucky was born in Sicily and emigrated to New York as a child, where he befriended fellow gangster Meyer Lansky and became a protégé of Arnold Rothstein. Early success as a drug trafficker and a bootlegger allowed him to rack up both millions of dollars and a 6-month prison sentence by his 20s. Luciano had a hand in organizing all the major Mafia families in the 1930s and setting up a common governing body, with himself at the top. After a successful life of crime that brought him millions and took him to the penitentiary, he was deported back to his native Sicily. Lucky slipped out of Italy and had a successful foray into pre-revolutionary Cuba, where he rejoined his pal Meyer Lansky and resumed his criminal activities.  Lucky ultimately returned to Italy and died of a heart attack at age 64.

Continue reading →

International Security and Local Law Enforcement

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Occasionally, I’d like to touch on something a little more serious. Countless critics provide quality artistic and socio-political analysis of today’s high quality dramas: Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Top Chef. But I’m afraid that this particular focus has led us to ignore the important lessons we can learn from America’s Top New Drama:  Hawaii Five-O.  Here are some important lessons from this week’s episode. Continue reading →

Comcast makes me want to stab a bunny

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So about nine days ago my internet service at home started intermittently crapping out. Suddenly I’d lose service and it would stay down for an hour or so and then pop back up.

It kept doing this, so I called Comcast. I got through to tech support easily enough, and they were friendly, but they couldn’t call someone out to my house because there was already a general outage in the neighborhood. That policy actually kind of makes sense, unless someone WITHIN the troubled area has a more specific problem.

This went on for approximately five days.

FINALLY they set up a service call for today (Tuesday) between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Apparently they expected me to just take the day off from work and wait at home all day because they didn’t bother to call me when the repairman showed up, so I missed the appointment. THANK YOU, COMCAST. IT’S NOT LIKE I HAVE A JOB OR ANYTHING. I AM IN FACT THE HEIR TO THE KIBBLES ‘N BITS DOG TREATS FORTUNE AND NEVER HAVE TO WORK A DAY IN MY LIFE. IT IS QUITE LEISUREFUL. I SPEND EVERY SINGLE TUESDAY WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OBLIGATIONS OTHER THAN PLAYING CONTACT BRIDGE WITH A COLORFUL ASSORTMENT OF FILIPINO CARNIVAL WORKERS.

So now I’m not getting internet service restored until at least tomorrow. I hope you get fisted by a Kim Jong Il puppet, Comcast.

And one last thing, I know you’re trying to rehabilitate your company’s rep for completely shitting all over its customers, but just training them to be friendly is not enough. I don’t care if the lady sounds like a chatty Cracker Barrel waitress from Murfreesboro. I’d prefer a rude asshole who can actually fix my shit.

Winter Tires

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When one thinks of milestones in life, they may think of graduting college or getting married, perhaps buying a house or having kids.

I’ve accomplished one of those events, and while it was a significant event in my life, I find that the smaller, less momentous occasions are the ones that stick with me, and end up being just as defining in in shaping who I am.

One of those such small things is buying winter tires.

I have never bought winter tires before. I have not…

EDIT: WHAT THE HELL? I got part way through and decided I didn’t like how this was going, so I decided to delete it. Clearly that didn’t happen. Sorry guys….

So anyways, anyone have any winter tire suggestions? I’m buying some, and I don’t want to die on my wretched Canadian roads, so I need to get good ones.

In Which Neil Young’s Electric Lincoln Burns His Stuff

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In sleepy San Carlos, CA Neil Young maintains a warehouse full of memorabilia, artifacts, guitars and apparently an electrified 1959 Lincoln Continental.  The thing about turning your old Lincoln into an hybrid bio-diesel-electric is that spontaneous combustion should always be at the back of your mind.

Merc

Let’s get boozy pt. 1

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You know what the best thing about the winter holiday season is? Of course you do, it’s holiday themed alcohol. Wondering what kind of sweet boozy nectar is the best to get trashed on this holiday season? You’re in the right place.

Gingerbread ale.  I was browsing the aisles at Whole Foods one day when I stumbled on this gem.  It’s dark, spicy, and tastes likes Christmas (just like me). Sadly, it’s only sold in four-packs, and doesn’t have a wide availability, but if you see it around, it’s definitely worth picking some up.

Pumpkin ale.  Dogfish Head’s Punkin Ale is pure deliciousness.  It’s the orangey/brown color you expect out of a ‘punkin’ ale, and tastes moderately sweet while being heavy on the spice, but low on the pumpkin. Honorable mention to Blue Moon’s Harvest Moon since it’s more widely available.

Celebration ale. Sierra Nevada’s celebration ale is an amber-ish IPA with extremely bitter after notes.  It’s pine-y, earthy, not very sweet, and the bitter lingers for ages.  It doesn’t really taste like the holidays, but that doesn’t stop me from consuming mass amounts of this stuff once it’s on the shelves.

Sam Adam’s Winter Classics pack is my go-to party beer during the colder months since there’s a beer in here for even the pickiest drinkers.  While I enjoy all of the beers included, the stand-out is really the Holiday Porter.  It’s dark, and slightly creamy with a much lighter mouthfeel thank you would expect.  But oh-so-good.  My runner-up in this pack is the Winter Brew. An amber colored, pumpkin pie-spicy bock

Game time!

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How was the universe…created? Do we even know that?

Short version:
THEORY: Not created, formed. Space/everything began, grew. Before? *shrug*

Long: Read more here.

I was always terrible at physics. Why is [light] both a wave and particles?

Short version:
Light reflects/refracts like waves, has energy/momentum like particles.

Long: Read more here.

Submit a science question to me either in the comments, to my Gawker account, or to my email. I will answer it in ten words or less. If you ask me a question that neither I nor anybody else has the answer to, I will pretend I never received the question.

Just kidding. If any of you can answer this, there’s a Nobel waiting for you. Is the multiverse real?

The Night Watchman

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Warning: Author is dweeb academic type who does not normally do “creative writing.” She apologizes in advance for any tedium. Thanks Mr. Meat, this is great.

I don’t sleep. Even when I was a kid I was up at three in the morning staring at the ceiling. During the summer I stayed with my grandparents on an isolated farm in the Western Nebraska scrub. My grandmother didn’t sleep either. We would lay on her bed in the still hours and she would read the comics to me while my grandfather slept in the recliner he passed out in at eight o’clock. Continue reading →