1-31-09: eHarmony and Other Dating Sites

To start, I've never registered for or used an online dating site. I know people who have, and none of them have found anything there that lasted more than a few dates.

Not that I have anything against people who do use them. Whatever makes you happy. But something funny came up a week or so ago when I was watching TV with the lady friend and a commercial came on for eHarmony.

During the commercial, the lady friend made an interesting remark: "I wonder what would happen if we both used eHarmony right now. Do you think they'd match us up?" It was, of course, in jest, so I laughed and said "Well if we did and it didn't match us, I'd be willing to go with whatever the internet says and I guess we'd have to break up or something." She laughed (fortunately) and it was the end of it (because the commercial was over).

I didn't think anything about that remark until a couple days ago, when an interesting social experiment popped in my head. What if you had, say, 50 unmarried couples register for, just for argument's sake, eHarmony. What are the odds that any of those 50 couples would be matched by the site? I'd guess it would be no greater than 5% chance that ANY couple would be matched, but that's just a wild guess. I have no idea what their algorithm is, but if you take into account all the registered users on eHarmony, the odds might be against you that you find one person.

Now, I'm not saying eHarmony is unreliable for finding good matches. I'm just saying there are plenty of other ways that people meet that generally work better. For instance, I went to the same (small) college as the lady friend, graduated on the same day, and we have mutual acquaintances from college. In fact, at one point in time (I believe) we lived about a block away from each other. But we didn't meet until about a year after graduating. We both work for the same company, and met through a softball team she organized. We didn't actually start seeing each other until the season was almost over. It turns out, she's a more avid Red Sox fan than I am. I found that to be very nice.

So what factors actually matter? Is it more important to be matched on 30-something degrees of ... whatever eHarmony calls it... or to have mutual interests? Who knows, but I do want to see that social experiment in action. Maybe something can be worked out by Valentine's Day...

1-30-09: Crosby's Backhander

The kid's got some serious talent.

1-29-09: Technology Thursday: "Thank an Engineer"

These videos come from Texas Instruments' website. My personal favorite is the "Wireless Handsets" one.

MP3 Players

Wireless Handsets

Text Messaging

1-28-09: Profiting from a Name

I heard a story today about how John Wayne's kids are selling beef jerky with his name and likeness on the front. The piece featured an interview with his son, who spoke about how he and his dad loved to eat beef jerky, and he said something along the lines of "You know, one day we're going to see him again, and we'd want him to be happy with what we did."

I'm not sure if this is more disturbing than what Ted Williams' son did, but I just get a really bad feeling when I hear about people who profit from their family name. These people aren't necessarily doing anything special; they're selling normal goods that happen to have the name and face of a famous celebrity. I guess it's their right, but it still feels wrong. Do you really think John Wayne wanted his name associated with a brand of beef jerky?

This goes beyond just selling useless crap like t-shirts and beef jerky. Plenty of average people just sit around and live off of their name. Somehow, people think talent is genetic. Whether it's an actor's or a famous athlete's kid, they are given the benefit of the doubt. I guess it helps put people in the seats. But it doesn't often work out. There are only a handful of instances where some one lived up to their name (like Ken Griffey Jr. or Brett Hull). It's very, very uncommon.

But selling John Wayne Beef Jerky is plain wrong.

1-27-09: Malkin's Goal from the All-Star Game

I meant to post something yesterday about the NHL All-Star game from Sunday for "Hockey Monday," but I was busy.

I'm not a huge fan of the All-Star Game in general. It is nice to see the skills these guys have, but it's not in a real game setting because there's no hitting (an unwritten rule though it may be). But either way, the skills are undeniable:

A distraught Giants fan

I feel for you, buddy, but I'm not quite sorry for you.


WARNING: Foul language, kids.

1-25-09: The War in Gaza, a Personal Account

I had a great, though brief, conversation with a friend of mine from Israel about the recent skirmish in Gaza.

It didn't go quite as I expected, but I think it was actually better than I hoped. I thought he might be a bit more gung-ho about it, but he was much more mature about it. "It's unfortunate," he lamented a few times. I was a little surprised.

My friend had spent 11 years in the Israeli Air Force, so he knows a thing or two about war. He's fought in a few. I think it's good to hear from some one who's experienced it. Instead of relying on propaganda, he actually knew something about the suffering on both sides. But, in the end, he said "If I have a choice between eating shit and giving shit, I'm going to give it. It's that simple."

But my friend also spoke about his disappointment in how the Isrealis explain themselves, which I thought was a very good point. He brought up a quick example:

The Palestinian insurgents (or agents of Hamas fighting against the Israelis) could release a picture of a young child in a street, with her house destroyed behind her and her parents' bodies lying nearby. That's a powerful image, and one that CNN and other broadcasters are bound to show worldwide. Opinions are then formed that the Israelis are somehow monsters because they killed this girl's parents and ruined her life.

But as my friend pointed out, they don't show how a combatant fired a missile or shot out from that building moments before it was destroyed. And on top of that, and this is something I did not know, a lot of buildings are booby trapped to prevent Israeli soldiers from going building to building. That is to say, rather than allowing Israelis to come in and shoot the enemy, Hamas agents simply blow it up. Apparently, these bombs can even be set off if a building nearby is bombed. That is truly scary, and it's something the Israelis struggle to communicate.

In the end, I got more of a disappointed vibe from my friend, which is sad but good to see. It shows that, even some one with military experience fighting against this same enemy, there's some compassion.