Modern love gets you to the church on time

Interesting overview of eHarmony web architecture on slideshare, not so much for the architecture itself as for the fact that as I look over the slides I can visualize their Hadoop cluster churning away (mapping and reducing those 20 cazillion dimensions of compatibility as my lies are compared to the lies of a cross section of candidate buzz gal pals). Ain't modern love wonderful.

Twitter-de and Twitter-dumb
Well, I'm fully twittered up now but still can't seem to muster up the energy to start sharing the minutia of my day-to-day existence these days. (It's enough that I have to suffer through it but must I force others to do so as well?) I'll give you what my nightly digest would doubtless consist of this evening:

• 8:55pm: watching 'Factory Girl' on the movie channel - great swinging 60s vibe and the luminescent Sienna Miller
  
• 9:55pm: getting ready to watch 'Weeds' on Showtime - I've had a major crush on Mary-Louise Parker that began in the 90s, was heightened with her turn as the West Wing's Amy Gardner and continues unabated with Weed's Nancy Botwin
• 10:30pm: can't get into 'Nurse Jackie' for some reason - love Edie Falco and the scripts seem pretty good but I find myself drifting
• 11pm: daily show
• 11:30pm: starting the book "the media relations department of Hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday"
• 1am: sleep

Pretty darn fascinating ...

Jacko Fever

I'm amazed at the Internet traffic surrounding Jacko's death. I find the reaction to his death far more fascinating than the death itself (which is usually the case with a mega-celebrity). It is interesting to measure the tolerance (even demand) for eccentricity when it is applied relative to fame. I mean, how many co-workers do you know whose nose has been steadily disappearing, with a complexion that has gone from dark to light to translucent and who has taken to wearing one glove and a series of outfits not seen outside the cover of Sgt. Pepper? Oh, and whose family photos on their desk consist of unrelated children and circus animals?

"Hi, Mike - how was your weekend? How are Bubbles and 'the kids'? I see you must have spent some time in the Hyperbaric Chamber, eh? Beats a tanning salon all to hell, I bet - you'll be ready for the beach in no time - where are you vacationing this summer? Neptune, you say?"

As for his musical influence and talent, I personally thought that he hit his peak with 'Ben' back in '72. (I mean, how do you top a love song to a Rat?)

Something is happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

I'm a bit late to the blogging game. I'm usually slow to try new things, whether it be MP3s or DVDs or what-have-you. However, I am surprised that it's taken me this long to morph out of read-only mode in the blogosphere, given my penchant for the written word in other mediums (my excessive verbosity has become notorious to those whose jobs require they read it).  My plan is to use this as a sounding board for my opinions on technology (I'm generally for it), politics (I'm almost always a bleeding heart liberal, except when I'm not), and popular culture.

Popular culture is probably my favorite topic - but usually more along the lines of trying to find the answer to 'What sorts of music and movies young people in Iran and China like and how do they subvert authority to get access to them?' and not so much seeking clarity on 'What rock did Lindsey Lohan crawl out from under this morning?', though perhaps in some sense the answers to these questions are not so dissimilar.  And it's certainly not to say I'm not interested in Lindsey's rocks.

Well, just a first post to get this started. A "Hello, World" if you will.

Later.