Forget Google's 'Near Me Now' to figure out where in a straight line from the train station to your house you can pick up that bouquet, chocolates and card you should already have. All a romantic nerd really needs for Valentine's Day is Wolfram|Alpha.
The silver-tongued devils at the computational knowledge engine have some fabulous talking points to, shall we say, move your evening right along.
"Let’s start with the holiday itself," says a timely post on the Wolfram|Alpha blog. "Just typing in “valentine’s day” gives the expected calendrical information, from which we learn that Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday this year."
Good start.
"Wolfram|Alpha also shows various other useful data, including the interesting fact that Valentine’s Day coincides withChinese New Year this year." Also, that it's the 10th anniversary of the death of Manhattan Project physicist Walter Zinn, and actress Meg Tilly's 50th birthday.
The object of your desire is not melting yet? Tough room. Try this:
"For instance, do you know the average weight of a human heart? The typical resting heart rate? The Unicode point for the heart symbol character? Or perhaps you’ve forgotten the ASCII keystrokes needed to insert a love emoticon at the end of an email to your Sweet Baboo?"
We're sure the cut-ups at the service which wants to make everyone an expert are having their fun, and will excuse ours. But, seriously, it's tomorrow, dude. Look up some Shakespeare or Shelley or find a Cyrano.
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