A little friendly sex

As usual, I enjoyed the recent 'Stuff Mom Never Told You' podcast from How Stuff Works.

Have you checked it out yet? Good stuff. Last week's episode was titled 'Can men and women really be friends?' Of course, 'When Harry Met Sally' came up several times during the discussion.

I'm not a math person, but the platonic pals question seems like something you could reduce to a formula.

1) How much time do the pals spend together in a given day/week/month? Call this 'T'

2) Do they share 'Real Stuff' - feelings, hopes, dreams, good news, bad news? Or share only 'Superficial Stuff' like chatting about music and other entertainment? Call this 'S'

3) Do they drink alcohol or do other drugs? Call this 'D'

4) Are they in committed relationships with other people? Call this 'C'

5) Do they find one another at least somewhat attractive? Call this 'A'

6) Do they have prowess/experience with sex, have had casual sex several times in the past? Call this 'P'

If T = 15 hours or more per month
If S = Real Stuff
If D = Yes
If C = No
If A = Yes
If P = Yes
Then sex will happen at some point.

If the above conditions are met, it seems it's just a matter of time before the two of them are in the necessary emotional state at the right time, at the right level of inebriation, with the right opportunity and locale to have sex. Not that drugs are a necessary component, but it would be a factor in taking the edge off the 'Gosh, I couldn't have sex with my pal!' concern, making eventual intimacy more likely. People find a lot of solace in friendship, and physical intimacy is a great source of solace, making it almost inevitable given enough time.

This situation never happened to me, because the 'A' attribute was always lacking on my end (you'll only find a more asymmetrical face in something by Picasso) and I was never into 'D'. And I was clumsy and inexperienced while single - I'd give myself a P minus. All that said, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Cake Cutting

Cutting a cake so everyone gets a good piece can be tricky, even more difficult when there are many people to cut for.


Some brainiacs have a solution! (Though not one the average man can comprehend... maybe they'll release a cake-cutting phone app?)

"...For measurable utility functions, we find a fully polynomial-time algorithm for finding an approximate envy-free allocation of a cake..."