Been doing a little fooling around on a dating site which has a mathematical algorithm which matches you to people who answer questions similarly. It works surprisingly well.

Without my telling it anything about my affiliations, and very little about my interests, it has matched me with one Teachers College student, one guy who says his favorite books are the series I have been deeply engrossed in for the past month, and two Hampshire students. The Hampshire students seemed very interesting well before I knew where they were from. They have clarified for me what it is about Hampshire students that makes me willing to volunteer to spend time with Hampshire grads I have not even met before.

Oh, Hampshire students. They go about the world with their ears pricked up. You can see them! They are the rabbits listening for danger and the cats about to poke their noses where they probably oughtn't. They are the pointing hounds and the collies figuring the best place for the sheep to go next. They are the robins standing stock still, eyeing the ground. They are paying very, very close attention to everything. Either they are very emotionally attentive to the people around them, or they are about to take apart every machine in the vicinity to see how it works; they are looking for flaws in your argument or trying to see a pattern in the trees and their leaves. God love 'em. You will not find a more inquisitive, sensitive people anywhere. Posted by Gus at May 30, 2005 12:17 PM