OKCupid

I know this is weird, but I find the ques­tions asked on OkCu­pid more inter­est­ing than the “match­es” it comes up with. Of course, since I don’t make the first move, ever, time spent brows­ing match­es is large­ly wast­ed for me, anyway.

I end up mark­ing many of them as “irrel­e­vant,” though. I can­not see rul­ing out a rela­tion­ship based on whether or not some­one can cook, has ever been in an elec­tion, or is famil­iar with the sec­ond move­ment of Dvo­rak’s 9th sym­pho­ny. Then again, the things that are impor­tant are tru­ly important—like whether the oth­er per­son would con­sid­er a rela­tion­ship with some­one who has a chron­ic illness.

Uncan­ny physics of com­ic book superheroes
Can you teach a physics class with only com­ic books to illus­trate the prin­ci­ples? Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta physics pro­fes­sor James Kakalios has been doing it since 1995 when he explained the prin­ci­ple of con­ser­va­tion of momen­tum by cal­cu­lat­ing the force of Spi­der-Man’s web when it snagged the super­hero’s girl­friend as she plum­met­ed from a great height. “Com­ic books get their sci­ence right more often than one would expect,” said the gre­gar­i­ous Kakalios. “I was able to find exam­ples in super­hero com­ic books of the cor­rect descrip­tions of basic phys­i­cal prin­ci­ples for a wide range of top­ics, includ­ing clas­si­cal mechan­ics, elec­tric­i­ty and mag­net­ism, and even quan­tum physics.”