Sentence of the day: Java edition

As a Java programmer for many years, this was both exciting and horrifying: my own tools had turned on me!

The physical state of pizza

Spoiler: It’s solid.

So determined Chester County President Judge James P. MacElree. In order to determine whether a thrown slice of pizza counted as a "solid object" under the law, His Honor undertook scientific observation of a pie:

MacElree said that to confirm his assessment, he bought a pizza and tested its physical properties. Unlike a gas, the pizza did not take up the shape or volume of the container in which it came, i.e. a cardboard box. When he sliced it into six pieces -- ''because I was not hungry enough to eat eight pieces," he said in an aside - the slices did not reform to take the shape of the container, and thus it was not a liquid.

To confirm that a slice was a solid, MacElree said he picked one up and noted that it retained its basic shape, "although it did droop a bit at the end.

"Further, I was able to bite off one piece which required some chewing before I could swallow it," he continued. "I put the remainder on top of a paper towel and observed that it stayed in place, did not spill onto my desk, and held its shape (less one bite)," he wrote. "I therefore concluded it was a solid."

I’m a bit disappointed that Judge MacElree did not rule out plasma or Bose-Einstein condensate.

The Gaga-Burroughs movement [Gross]

Slonkast Episode 24

I was once again privileged to be a guest on the Slonkast this week. Kevin Slonka, Ryan Lantzy, Jim Jacoby, and I discussed Watson on Jeopardy!, Apple’s 30% cut of content sales, and more.

Download Slonkast Episode 24 (MP3, 93.7 MB)
The articles we discussed are linked in the "talking points" at the episode page.

iAd ante drops 1 octave; 12 to go

Apple has reduced the minimum buy-in for its iAd mobile advertising platform from $1,000,000 to $500,000 to attract “smaller” campaigns.

I’m astonished that it was, and is, so high. Since one of the advantages of the platform is location-based targeting, I would expect small local businesses like restaurants to want to advertise. But the buy-in has to be realistic for small businesses—more like $100 to start. And the iAd platform is well below capacity; the fill rate has been under 10% recently.

Google’s AdWords platform, by contrast, has no minimum campaign budget. I’ve played around with it for $10 or $20, just to learn how it works. I wonder why two smart, successful companies chose such different approaches for this parameter.

Beavers finally on top, as Oxy goes down

It came down to the last shot of the season, but the Caltech men’s basketball team snapped a 310-game conference losing streak that dated back to 1985. ESPN reports:

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Caltech men's basketball team ended a 26-year conference losing streak Tuesday night after posting a 46-45 victory over Occidental in the team's regular-season finale on senior night.

By my count, Caltech faculty won 9 Nobel prizes between the Beavers’ last two conference victories. I boldly predict that that’s an NCAA record that will never be broken.

The miseducation of American pallets

The Johnstown Galleria's Tonic Grille, when not calling young professionals the B-word, has an interesting suggestion:

I concur. Education of this overlooked demographic is a major problem facing America.