January 18, 2007

How safe are U.S. states relative to other countries?

If you're an American citizen looking to travel outside the U.S., the U.S. State Department advises you to check its travel bulletin about countries that may pose a threat to you. Violence, political instability, infectious diseases and a whole bunch of other causes can lead to a country ending up in the State Department's watchlist.

What about security and safety within the U.S. though? The U.S. has the highest rates of poverty and other high-risk factors for crime among developed economies. While idly browsing NationMaster and StateMaster, I thought of eyeballing per-capita homicide rates in U.S. states and comparing them with per-capita homicide rates around the world (the per-capita homicide rate, in this case, acts as a very rough proxy for 'safety', a very subjective term).

Each state above is labeled with the country that most closely matches its per-capita homicide rate. If you are from California, you can figure that you have just as big a chance, give or take a few percent, of getting murdered in Zambia as at home. Likewise with Texas and Poland.

The states are also colored along a gradient. In other words, if you are from India, you are safer at home than in Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico and other states colored darker than Colorado, Rhode Island and New Jersey. Or maybe you'll get the sobering realization that Wyoming is only as safe as Azerbaijan. Louisiana led the nation in per-capita homicides in 2002, a number that comes close to Mexico's per-capita homicide rate per 10,000 people. The lowest per-capita homicide rate was recorded in North Dakota, whose numbers come close to those of Greece.

Only five countries in the above list are more dangerous than the entire United States: Colombia, South Africa, Jamaica, Venezuela and Russia. Countries safer than the entire United States included Hong Kong, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Interestingly, Saudi Arabia appears on the current State Department warning list.

There are lies, damn lies and statistics, but let's occasionally let the numbers speak for themselves!

Posted by Vishy at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2006

Vishy's Possibly Useful Factoid: Closing multiple windows together in Windows

To me, the taskbar grouping feature of Windows XP (or as some know it, Windows FP, for "Fisher Price") is a source of great consternation. While it saves me plenty of taskbar real estate, the grouping and ungrouping algorithms are entirely outside user control. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem, but it is one of my pet annoyances that these algorithms are arbitrary and somewhat braindead about when they group and ungroup taskbar buttons (as an aside, I should note here that the Gnome desktop environment lets the user explicitly group and ungroup taskbar buttons).

Some aspects of Windows are plain idiotic, but they may merely hide a savant nature. One of my favorite parts about the taskbar grouping feature is the ability to close all windows in a group at once. I discovered by chance today how one could close multiple windows together as a group even if they aren't all part of the same group on the taskbar. I am about to reveal the secret of window closing on overdrive—the power of multiple selection brought to taskbar buttons.

Hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys and click on the taskbar buttons of all the windows you want to close. They will all depress, just like the button of the currently active window. Release the keys and right click on any of the buttons for the same menu that appears when you right click on an ordinary group. You can now close all of them, or cascade and tile only the ones you chose, if you are into that.

Go forth, grasshopper, and banish all those stray popups and windows that you forgot you even opened.

P.S.: In case you didn't know about this other, less obscure tip, hold down Shift as you click on the Close (X) button of any window to close other windows of the application ("related windows") at the same time.

Posted by Vishy at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2006

HOWTO: Fake out someone about where you live in New York

One of the paradoxes of New York City, and Manhattan in particular, is that despite its size, many of its residents tend to live most of their lives within a 10 block radius of their home and office. When one really thinks about it though, this phenomenon is hardly surprising. Each neighborhood has a distinctive character, except perhaps midtown, where people tend to spend time solely for work reasons. When picking a part of town in which to live or spend an evening, this diversity of character results in a high degree of self-selection, sometimes to the point of self-segregation. In short, people tend to keep their favorite two or three neighborhoods. You can use this simple truth to fake someone out about where you live or work in New York.

You may be trying to fend off a creepy guy at a bar, or you may be a B&T spy chatting up a girl under an assumed identity. Whatever be your reasons for doing so, you can use this handy guide to faking Manhattan addresses and be assured of success simply because a disturbing number of New Yorkers simply don't know better. I hope I don't sound condescending, for I count myself among this band of New Yorkers. Most importantly though, it is the truth! Still, armed with a handy map of New York, NY and enough determination, you can accumulate all this *cough* extremely useful information.

Most of Manhattan is criscrossed by numbered and named east-west streets and north-south avenues (if you didn't know this, I'd be afraid, very afraid in your place). Not all avenues intersect all streets. Here's a list of all the avenues and the streets where they begin and end. Just pick an avenue and a number outside its range and bingo, you have a fake Manhattan address.

Going approximately east to west...
Ave D
Runs from Houston St to E 13th St
Ave C
Runs from Houston St to E 15th St
Aves A and B
Runs from Houston St E 14th St
York Ave
Runs from E 60th St to E 92nd St
1st Ave
Runs from Houston St to E 125th St
2nd Ave
Runs from Houston St to E 128th St
3rd Ave
Runs from E 6th St to E 149th St, in the Bronx!
4th Ave
Runs from E 6th St to E 14th St. This avenue wins the dubious honor of being the shortest.
Broadway
From Battery Pl to Well Outside New York City, all the way to Rockefeller State Park, near Sleepy Hollow, NY (not recommended as a fake out, because it actually hits every numbered street in Manhattan. After all, it was a major Native American trail before the Europeans arrived.)
Park Ave
Runs from E 17th St to E 132nd St
Madison Ave
Runs from E 26th St to E 136th St
5th Ave
Runs from Waverly Pl (~8th St) to E 142nd St
6th Ave
Runs from Canal St to W 59th St
7th Ave
Runs from Clarkson St (just North of Houston St) to W 59th St and then, in a remarkable resurrection, W 110th St to W 145th St
8th Ave
Runs from Bleecker St to W 58th St
9th Ave
Runs from W 14th St to W 57th St; continues as Columbus Ave from W 57th St to W 110th St
10th Ave
Runs from W 14th St to W 57th St; continues as Amsterdam Ave from W 57th St to W 188th St and then back to 10th Ave from Dyckman St to W 218th St
11th Ave
Runs from W 22nd St to W 59th St; continues as West End Ave from W 59th St to W 107th St; continues as Broadway until the end
12th Ave
Runs from W 22nd St to W 57th St
Lenox Ave
Runs from W 110th St to W 145th St
Frederick Douglass Blvd
Runs from W 110th St W to 155th St
Riverside Dr
Runs from W 72nd St to W 181st St
As with everything, use the above with a generous dollop of discretion. If you say you live at Ave A and 72nd St, even the most insulated New Yorker is going to call you on it.
I hope you have enjoyed this instalment of useless knowledge.

Posted by Vishy at 11:20 PM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2006

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day: Windows calculator keyboard shortcuts

Anyone using the Windows Calculator is struck by how zealously it tries to emulate a real-world calculator. In fact, so striking is the imitation that the limitations of a meatspace calculator get carried over to cyberspace as well.

Most operations in Windows Calculator involve pointing and clicking, actions that need a lot more dexterity in cyberspace than in meatspace. When entering a complex expression with brackets, such as a compound interest calculation, there is no way of seeing the whole expression at once to make sure there are no mistakes. Meatspace calculators (except graphical ones) don't show brackets for reasons of simplicity and economy. But when I pay $1000 for a computer running Windows, I want a calculator application that uses its medium of expression well, rather than an imitation saddled with all the restrictions of its meatspace analogue.

Having said that, there is more to Windows Calculator than immediately meets the eye. Earlier, I was confident that Windows Calculator only recognizes numeric keys from the keyboard. The other day, I was idly tapping my keyboard with Windows Calculator in focus, and I accidentally found that pressing some letter keys also changed its display. After checking the online help for clues about these effects (and failing miserably), I set out on a systematic mission to find what each key does. To use these letter keys, enter a number into the display and press the key for the function you want:

Trigonometric functions


Pressing these keys gives different results depending on whether the numbers you enter are in degrees, radians or grads.

S - sine
O - cosine
T - tangent
Hyperbolic and inverse versions of these functions are also available. See below.

[Why not use C for cosine, especially when C is not bound to the traditional 'Clear' function of a calculator? -V]

Logarithmic and exponential functions



L - common logarithm (base 10)
N - natural logarithm (base e)
X - to enter a number in scientific notation. The key sequence '3 X 2' stands for 3e+02, or 300
V - convert to normalized scientific notation, where the mantissa, the part before the e, is less than 10.

Modifiers


H - hyperbolic mode: calculates hyperbolic trigonometric functions; e.g. '45 H S' would calculate the hyperbolic sine of 45.
I - inverse mode: inverts any of the functions above; e.g. '90 H O' would calculate the inverse cosine of 90. Very useful to me while conducting this investigation.

Other functions


P - fills the display with the value of pi
R - reciprocal
[If they could use P for pi, why not E for e (2.71828...)? -V]

And finally, the poor man's Excel


Calculator also provides a rudimentary statistical toolkit that can be used to run basic analytics on a series of data points. The menus are silent about this feature, as is the four-function mode. The scientific mode only has a cryptic Sta button. But given how counterintuitive the user interface of this feature is, its clandestineness may be calculated (no pun intended).

Hit Ctrl+S to bring up the statistics toolbox. Then, click on the main calculator window, enter a data point and hit the Dat button. Rinse. Repeat. After the Sta window is populated with data points, the Ave, Sum and s buttons spit out the mean, the sum and the standard deviation of the population respectively. The CD and CAD buttons remove data points from the population.

This statistical toolkit suffices for one-off statistical calculations, but God forbid anybody actually has to use it for a living.

Conclusion


Microsoft can really do a lot with Windows Calculator, if they dust off its wide-eyed-intern-contributed codebase and take a second look at it. How about taking some inspiration from one that seems to understand basic natural language? Until then, I hope the above tips make it more keyboard friendly and a little less irritating.

Posted by Vishy at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2006

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day: Ranking schemes

Could an overachieving third-grader be more devastated? I looked on in horror at my report card at the end of third grade. I had been ranked first in my class at the end of the first and second grades and frankly, I was rather getting used to it. Now, I stared at the number 3 filling up the Rank line item. As if to add insult to injury, there were two students who scored one point more than me and they were both ranked first. I went up to my teacher, puffy-eyed, and asked her why I wasn't at least ranked second, for my score that came right after my two classmates. In an explanation that felt utterly inadequate, she said, "Vishwanath, when there are two first-ranks, the next rank is third." A number of years later, I realized that my expectation to be ranked second rather than third was not entirely fanciful. I was merely expecting to be ranked in a different ranking scheme.

Consider the following: if Alice got 97 points in an exam, Bob 97, Charlie 94 and Dave 89, should Charlie be ranked 2nd or 3rd? The answer is 'it depends'. It depends on what you're trying to get out of the ranking: the top N candidates in a cohort or the top N scores. Typically, one ranks a group to confer some advantage on the top few ranks. From the test takers above, it is clear that the top 3 are Alice, Bob and Charlie. The last person in the top 3 should definitely be ranked 3rd. Thus, Charlie is ranked 3rd and rank 2 is skipped entirely.

However, what if the ranker's objective is to get the top 3 scores in the test? From the above example, the top 3 scores would correspond to test takers Alice, Bob, Charlie and Dave. In this case, it's fair to have Alice and Bob be ranked first because they got the top score, but Charlie ranked second because he got the second best score. The top N scores may not correspond to N test takers, but there are no skipped ranks.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found that this distinction is codified in the Oracle relational database system. When returning a ranked set of rows, a query can use either the RANK or the DENSE_RANK functions. In case of the former, Charlie above would get ranked 3rd, but he would be ranked 2nd if the latter function were used. I expected to be ranked in third grade via DENSE_RANK (solely on my mastery of the material) when the function being used was RANK (relative to my peers). I was never able to make up for this abysmal performance. Starting with fourth grade, I moved to a different school, which refused to rank students strictly by their total point score on a set of exams and used a GPA system instead.

Posted by Vishy at 06:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2006

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day: How did the word ghetto come about?

I was just at a little reunion of alumni of my high school in India. It was a motley, multicultural crowd of people whose lives have continued to be at least as interesting as when they were in my school. It was in a conversation with this group that I heard of the origin of the word ghetto.

Ghetto was an island in Venice where the city's Jews were segregated. Apparently there was a fountain on the island that spouted a powerful spray of water, which goes by the word jetto (jet) in Italian. The Venetian dialect of Italian tended to harden j- sounds to g- (as in glamour), which resulted in jetto changing to ghetto.

So the next time someone applies the adjective 'ghetto' to you or one of your posessions, ask them if they really think you look Italian.

Posted by Vishy at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2006

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day: Soft drink brand names

I was reading a piece the other day that explained the history of several familiar brand names, including names of cold drinks. I was very amused when I came across the explanations for Pepsi and Fanta.

From the piece:

Fanta- was originally invented by Max Keith in Germanyin 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix.
Pepsi- Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.

I thought the Fanta explanation was priceless even though I am a fan of the drink, especially the pineapple variety. I am ashamed I hadn't noticed about Pepsi earlier but the explanation just spoiled it for me altogether. The next time I drink a can of Pepsi I am going to feel like I am taking medicine for an upset stomach. Mmmm... dyspepsia.

Posted by Vishy at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #21: Rejected names for Canada

Yes, I am alive! Thanks to a recent burst of activity on my part, both at work and outside of work, I have had no time to update the blog. It appears that the spurt of activity isn't going to abate anytime soon. Still, I will do the best I can to keep posting about interesting things I see and read about.

Case in point -- what Canada might have been called. Published in The Book of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information by Ira Basen and Jane Farrow, here's a list of twenty eight failed names for Canada:

Canada derives from the Huron-Iroquois word for village, kanata, a term that was used initially in reference to Quebec City but grew to include the whole region.

Posted by Vishy at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #21: What's the Michelin Man's name?

The Michelin Man has been one of the abiding icons of the automobile industry. He inspires an aww-so-cute feeling almost universally as he makes his appearances on TV and in the print media. Did you know though that the name of this lovable rubber-ringed creature is Bibendum?

A recent issue of Fortune magazine profiled this veritable icon of advertising, who was born no less than 107 years ago! He first appeared on an April 1898 poster with the slogan Nunc est bibendum (Latin for "Now is the time to drink").

Michelin Man's first poster

Notice how the glass he is holding up is filled with nails and glass? That's an allusion to how Michelin tires could just 'drink up' nails and glass without puncturing, whereas other tire brands of the time failed. A rather weird sales pitch for a tire, if I do say so myself. The bibendum ('to drink') part of the slogan stuck nonetheless and continues to be the official name of the Michelin Man to this day.

Posted by Vishy at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #20: How is blond hair used in weather measurements?

Gentlemen used to prefer blondes. Nevertheless, there seems to be no end to jokes about people with blond hair. Lately, it also seems like brunette is the new blonde. However, meteorologists still prefer blondes to brunettes for, of all things, measuring certain weather indicators.

Straight blond hair is on average thinner than brunette hair. In the presence of moisture, the keratin that makes up a strand of blond hair is more susceptible to absorbing it, losing tension and expanding. Blond hair therefore provides a much more reliable measurement of humidity than other hair types. Blond human hair was used to measure humidity until electronic means were available. To think that human hair is actually useful somewhere other than the human head! A strand of nylon is said to be similarly sensitive to humidity and can be used to make a simple hygrometer.

Posted by Vishy at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)

September 05, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #19: Hurricanes and other tropical storms

With all the recent coverage accorded to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, I thought I'd put out a few useless factoids relating to hurricanes and other tropical storms around the world.

Low-pressure storms marked by high winds and circular cloud patterns that converge upon a central eye are called hurricanes in North America. They are named for Huracán, the Carib god of wind and storms. The Spanish conquistadors picked this word up from the original inhabitants of the Caribbean islands, who worshipped Huracán to escape his horrible temper. In East Asia, such a storm would be called a typhoon. This word is said to originate from tai fung (Cantonese, "big wind"). There is a similar sounding word in Hindi, toofAn, which is said to be unrelated. ToofAn came to Hindi through Arabic, which, in turn, got it from the Greek tuphon. In India, a storm resembling a hurricane would be called a cyclonic storm. 'Cyclonic' derives eventually from the Greek kuklos (circle), a versatile word that is linked to something as unrelated as a white supremacist group. Cyclonic storms frequently hit Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal from mid-April to mid-June. These storms are called kal baisakhi (lit. the dark face of Baishakh, the second month of the Indian calendar) and routinely claim far more people each time than Katrina ever could.

Hurricanes began to be named in the United States starting in 1950. Currently, there is a list of names that is repeated every six years. Names of particularly destructive storms are retired to avoid unpleasant associations in the future.

Posted by Vishy at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #18: Nodding and shaking in Bulgaria

Visitors to India often complain about the strange way Indians nod. In India, the neck is craned rapidly to the left and to the right to signify a 'yes'. This different way of nodding is hardly a cause for complaints when you consider what other cultures do to signify 'yes' and 'no' nonverbally. In Bulgaria, nodding your head in an up-down motion signifies 'no' and shaking your head from side to side signifies 'yes'. No really! It's the complete opposite of what English speakers are used to.

So, to all the guys: if you're in the midst of a particularly steamy night with a girl at a club, if she shakes her head, she does not mean yes. Take it as a no before you get into a date-rape situation. However, if you're in Bulgaria (and being an Eastern European country, the girls are particularly hot), an apparent 'no' may actually mean you'll get lucky that night.

Posted by Vishy at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #17: The subliminal sensuality of the Starbucks siren

You definitely know it seems like there's a Starbucks coffee shop practically at every street corner in Manhattan. Have you been enticed by the spacious (for Manhattan anyway), well-lit spaces of their coffee shops? Or is it the warm feeling of a $4 latte down your yuppie gullet that you desire? Could it perhaps be something else? Surely you have noticed the Starbucks logo by every store. Does the woman in the logo try to seduce you subliminally into having Starbucks coffee? Let's find out.

The other day I heard a couple of my friends mention that they'd heard that the Starbucks logo is seductive in a subliminally sensual way. Initially, I dismissed it as the stuff of urban legend but later I consulted the almighty G on a whim and found something interesting.

The Starbucks logo features a siren surrounded by the words Starbucks Coffee. Sirens, in ancient Greek mythology, were sea nymphs who sang sweetly and lured sailors to destruction on rocks surrounding their islands. The siren has been linked to the symbol of a mermaid in other cultures. Recently, Starbucks was forced to change its logo because customers found the topless double-tailed siren in the original logo lurid and too overtly suggestive. A simplified, stylized logo, where the wavy hair of the siren covers her breasts, was introduced in its place. The double-tailed siren, a decorative motif found in many European churches and cathedrals, represents female sexual mysteries, according to an excellent article on the symbology of the siren-mermaid as it relates to the Starbucks logo. The article reviews a lot of cultural symbology related to the siren-mermaid in a Robert Langdon(à la The Da Vinci Code)-esque manner. I never realized that the two appendages to the left and right of the siren in today's Starbucks logo were her fins. In the original logo, however, the double-tailed siren is holding them apart in a suggestive pose reminiscent of an ancient Indo-European mother goddess of fertility and sexuality, known as Sheila-Na-Gig (potentially not safe for work).

So the next time you find yourself being lured into Starbucks' plan for world domination, ask yourself if its the sensual siren who is drawing you in...*wink*

Posted by Vishy at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #16: Manhattanhenge

Manhattanhenge is a unique phenomenon that occurs on the island of Manhattan on May 28th and July 12th every year. On this day, the sun sets flush along every Manhattan cross street. The name is by direct analogy to Stonehenge, the ancient Celtic structure along whose length the sun rises and sets on the day of the Summer Solstice, June 21. If the island of Manhattan were oriented exactly east-west, Manhattanhenge would happen on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

A similar phenomenon happens twice in the winter along MIT's Infinite Corridor, once in November and once in January. By the same analogy, this phenomenon is called MITHenge.

The beauty of both the above phenomena must be seen to be believed. Manhattan's streets and the Infinite Corridor light up in a fiery orange. Watching the sunset on these days fills me with awe at the precision with which all of nature operates. Try it -- you'll probably feel everything is right with the world.

Posted by Vishy at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #15: Duane Reade

This factoid is more useless than average; it will be useless only to those who live and work in the New York City area.

The drugstore and pharmacy Duane Reade is everywhere you go in New York. In fact, 'Everywhere you go' is their motto. Probably the only chain more prolific than Duane Reade on Manhattan is Starbucks (not sure of this fact -- merely guessing). I wasn't sure why the store was called that. Perhaps it was because of Drs. Duane and Reade, who founded so many of these stores as a token of their pharmacopoeial magnanimity.

One day I was walking down Broadway a few blocks away from its busy intersection with Canal St, where one fifth of all humankind always seems to have gathered at any given moment. (In fact, because that intersection is smack dab in the middle of Chinatown, I am not far from the truth.) I passed two streets in succession -- Duane St and Reade St. Their juxtaposition in the non-Cartesian maze of Lower Manhattan was simply too much of a coincidence. Were Drs. Duane and Reade buried nearby? Were two consecutive streets along Broadway named after them because they wished to be united not just in the many neon signs of their eponymous store but also in the hereafter of Lower Manhattan's map? Consider my astonishment then that I found myself standing at a Duane Reade between these two streets! The plot was surely thickening.

It thinned completely and disappeared disappointingly when I went to investigate the mystery of Duane Reade's name at their website. I quote:


Duane Reade takes its name from the Company's first successful full-service drugstore, which opened in 1960 on Broadway between Duane and Reade Streets in Manhattan.

So it wasn't Drs. Duane and Reade giving their names to a store, which then got so famous that it gave its names to the streets. The streets named the store!

That, fellow New Yorkers, was today's more-useless-than-usual factoid brought to you by the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge.

Posted by Vishy at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #14: Handedness and season of birth

Or, how I learned to stop worrying about when the stork dropped me off and hit the ball with my left hand.

Not all the endocrinal functions of the mysterious pineal gland are fully understood. In ancient cultures, such as that of India, it is known as the Third Eye and has been associated with giving special powers such as clairvoyance. It is activated by prolonged periods of darkness, and its function is to suppress the production of sex hormones. What good does this serve? When summer arrives and the days start to get longer, the pineal gland lets the sex organs do their work to increase libido. This evolutionary adaptation of the pineal gland results in babies being born at the start of spring, when fresh food is available. In sum, when the days are long, hormonal levels, especially those of sex hormones, are high.

It is well documented that men and women both secrete trace quantities of the other sex's sex hormones. In other words, women too secrete trace amounts of testosterone. In a pregnant woman, increased levels of testosterone are associated with increased asymmetry in how the analytic, visuo-spatial left brain hemisphere of her developing child dominates over the holistic, non-visual right brain hemisphere. Much like an embryo is female by default, neither hemisphere dominates the other one particularly strongly by default. Along comes testosterone to change everything. In addition to being produced by the pregnant mother, testosterone is also produced by genetically male embryos, starting at 8 weeks of gestation. It converts the so-far female embryo to a male embryo and skews the left hemisphere to dominate over the right hemisphere. High levels of testosterone are therefore more likely to lead to right handed people, whose left hemisphere dominates their right hemisphere. This effect is more pronounced when the fetus is exposed to high levels of testosterone in the first six
s of pregnancy.

So where does this leave us? If a baby is conceived in the winter months (between December and May in the Northern Hemisphere), it is exposed to lower levels of testosterone overall, which means a lower likelihood of left hemisphere dominance and a higher occurrence of non-right-handedness. These left-handed and ambidextrous babies are born from August to January. This effect is more pronounced in the temperate latitudes, where seasonal effects are stronger. I didn't find studies to corroborate a complementary seasonal pattern for handedness in the Southern Hemisphere. However, exposure to high hormonal levels has been linked with occurrence of schizophrenia and other psychological conditions. Complementary seasonal patterns have been observed in schizophrenic births in Europe and South Africa.

I am left-handed. I was born in September. I am the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge.

Source for the above, with lots of citations

Posted by Vishy at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #13: Dieresis

You may have noticed certain esteemed publications like the New Yorker or Technology Review print cooperation as coöperation and reelect as reëlect and wondered which Martian does their typesetting. Turns out they are are pedantically following the rule of the dieresis in spelling (Brit. diaeresis).

A dieresis usually appears on the second of a sequence of two vowels to indicate that it begins a new syllable. This means that the two vowels should be pronounced as two syllables rather than as one diphthong. This rule of spelling was apparently followed in older English publications, which explains why I have seen it appear in some elegantly typeset Arthur C. Doyle books. The dieresis is easy to miss if you are reading a passage quickly, but chances are you won't miss it if you spell naive as naïve, similar to its French analogue, naïf.

Most publications either ignore the rule of the dieresis entirely and omit it from typesetting. Others put in a hyphen where the syllable break occurs, as in re-elect.

Note that strictly speaking, a dieresis is a different diacritic than the umlaut. It is rendered the same way, but they are semantically and phonologically very different. A well-designed typeface would have umlauts very close to the vowel they modify, but would place dieresis marks over vowels slightly higher than an umlaut in the same font.

Posted by Vishy at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #12: Copying Windows XP error dialogs

Every so often you're trundling along doing something in Windows XP and all of a sudden, your application crashes with an Unspecified Error and a dialog box filled with gobbledygook. Said gobbledygook sometimes contains an error code in hex (like 0x80346513) and a bunch of other useful diagnostic information. Your face turns several shades paler. It is time to call Microsoft Support at $2.79 a minute with a $35 minimum charge. You can be sure they won't charge you just the minimum, though. With the money you would eventually spend, you could probably have gotten considerably more satisfactory *ahem* service on your friendly neighborhood 1-900 party line.

So you decide to post to Usenet (Note: Usenet? Usenet is part of the Googleplex. It has always been part of the Googleplex. It has always been known only as Google Groups.) Painstakingly you write down every digit in the horrendous HRESULT you got, as well as every other hex digit Windows spewed back at you. Little do you know that you've transposed two digits in the HRESULT and it's going to seem like an entirely different error to the trolls that troll Use^H^H^HGoogle Groups for nubile users like yourself.

Wouldn't it be great if you didn't need to write down anything by hand? Well, fear not, genuinely useful help from Windows XP is at hand!

Click on any dialog box. When it is the active window, hit Ctrl+C. Open Notepad or your favorite text editor and hit the Paste command, usually Ctrl+V. Voila! The contents of the dialog box are pasted into your text editor. It even draws cute lines for the borders of the dialog box. I did the Ctrl+C trick on a dialog box and this is what I got. 






---------------------------

Notepad

---------------------------

The text in the Untitled file has changed.



Do you want to save the changes?

---------------------------

Yes   No   Cancel   

---------------------------

Look familiar? I only wish this worked for BSODs as well. Oh well, maybe in Longhorn!

This has been a presentation of the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge. Heck, this factoid may even prove useful to you one day.

Posted by Vishy at 09:55 PM | Comments (1)

June 05, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #11: Fried Uzbek tetrahedrons

A sine qua non of Uzbek cuisine is the somsa. It is a flaky pastry filled with minced meat, onions and animal fat. Mmmm... (Who am I kidding? Even if I knew an Uzbek person, I wouldn't eat it because of my dietary habits.)

This delicious word snaked its way into Persian as samosa. Hindi picked it up later as samosā, with a long terminal vowel sound. So next time you're about to sink your teeth into a samosa, make a mental note to learn more about Uzbekistan, because the scrumptious fried tetrahedron you're holding in your hand came from there.

This useless factoid has been brought to you by the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge.

Posted by Vishy at 02:04 PM | Comments (1)

June 02, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #10: What does serendipity have to do with Sri Lanka?

The word serendipity was coined in a Jan 28, 1754 letter by the English author Sir Horace Walpole to describe lucky accidents. He created this word from the title of an old fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip, who "... were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of...? Serendip derives from the Persian Sarandip, which in turn comes from the Arabic sarandib. This word is an old name for today's Sri Lanka.

Hm, any other present day English words containing country names? How about the word indigo? Indigo descends from indicum (Lat.)/Indikon (Gr.), meaning "from India". It was a simple name for a shade of blue so distinctive that it was just called "the Indian dye". Did Microsoft name its sexy new messaging system after the large number of Indians who are probably working on it?

That, my friends, has been today's useless factoid from the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge.

Sources: serendipity, indigo. *sigh* The things you learn from Answers.com.

Posted by Vishy at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #9: Etymology of Ku Klux Klan

Being as I am into names and all, I was somewhat intrigued by a certain white supremacist organization's choice of name, the Ku Klux Klan.

For having been created in an overwhelmingly English-speaking America, it doesn't sound even remotely like English. I had read in my copy of World Book Encyclopedia nearly 10 years ago that the words Ku Klux Klan resembled the cocking of a gun, an argument I sorely disbelieved even though it came from an apparently authoritative source.

In Levitt&Dubner's Freakonomics, I found an explanation that better suits my tastes. The founders of the KKK chose the Greek word for circle, kuklos, and corrupted it slightly to arrive at kuklux. Then they added a Klan for good measure, because several of their early members were of Irish, Scottish or generally Gaelic descent.

This useless factoid of the day was brought to you by the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge.

Posted by Vishy at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #8: O say can you see, what a great irony?

When I came to the U.S., I was struck by how the culture seemed liberal and uptight all at once, particularly about alcohol and sexuality. You would hear of binge drinking in fraternities. Yet, the drinking age (21 in most states) is higher than in every other industrialized nation, and, moreover, is enforced religiously at bars and at colleges. Formerly taboo topics such as homosexuality have become fashionable in media and culture. Yet, in New York, late in the evening, you would hear on Fox 5 News, "It's 10pm. Do you know where your children are?" (Compare this to several European countries, where it isn't uncommon to find hardcore pornography being played on public access channels starting at 10pm)

Americans are very proud of their system of government (which, for its time, was a singular accomplishment) and by extension, their national symbols. Yet, a country founded apparently by freethinkers also featured conservative Puritan laws about alcohol and sex that hold sway in some states even today.

Consider my amusement then, when I saw this piece on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/07/04/national.anthem/, I was beside myself with mirth.

That's right... The Star Spangled Banner was set to the tune of an English drinking song!

Here's the first stanza original drinking song, for those who care:

To Anacreon in Heaven, where he fat in full glee,
A few fons of Harmony fent a petition,
That He their Infpirer and Patron would be;
When this anfwer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian
"Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,
"no longer be mute,
"I'll lend you my Name and infpire you to boot,
"And, befides, I'll infruct you like me to entwine
"The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine.

See the rest at To Anacreon in Heaven

I think the U.S. national anthem would have been a lot more fun if it had been set to the tune of The Engineers' Drinking Song.

Posted by Vishy at 01:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #7: Habemus Papam -- Pope Names

Habemus Papam! (Lat., "We have a Pope")

German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected today as the successor to Pope John Paul II. The world was certainly grieving at Pope John Paul II's death, his papacy being one of the longest and most influential in recent Catholic and world memory. However, the focus from now on is clearly on the new Pope and the new era that begins after he takes over the reins of one of the most influential organizations in the world.

I'll spare my audience the painful details of conclave, which have been flashed around not only by newspapers and periodicals for the last month or so, but also by some *ahem* popular authors. (Angels and Demons, anyone?) This post concerns what happens at the end of conclave, when the new Pope has accepted his election (I am going to be unabashedly non-gender-neutral here until such time as there is even one woman in the college of Cardinals.). The newly elected Pope chooses a name for himself and is thusly wedded to the Holy See until death or retirement do them part.

I am not a Catholic, or even a Christian for that matter. However, aside from my passing interest in onomatology, I should mention that this post comes thanks to my teeny tiny audience, one of whom actually requested that I blog on the subject of papal names. It seems like my reputation as the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge is taking on a personality of its own!

From some research on various Catholic websites and howstuffworks.com, I learned that the tradition of Popes choosing a papal name different from their birth name dates all the way back to 553 C.E., when Pope John II was elected. This Pope's birth name was Mercurius, obviously derived from Mercury, the Roman god. It was thought to be inappropriate for a Roman Catholic Pope to have a pagan name. Mr. Mercurius therefore renounced his birth name and assumed the name John II. Later, the Pope's choosing a new name was seen to be a symbol to his entry into a new life as the spiritual head of millions of Catholics. Popes typically assume names that honor their favorite saints or a previous Pope. Pope John Paul II chose his name to honor Pope John Paul I, his predecessor, who reigned for 33 days. Pope John Paul I had chosen his name to honor predecessors John XXIII and Paul VI.

Did you know that there has never been a Pope named Peter II? Ye Olde Peter I, also known as St. Peter, was the founder of the Roman Catholic sect and the Prince of the Apostles. In deference to his seminal accomplishments, no Pope has taken on his name. Apparently, the Prophecies of St. Malachy, an elaborate forgery perpetrated by some 15th century Jesuits, who had nothing better to do, say that the last Pope would be named Petrus Romanus.

Posted by Vishy at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #4: Daylight Saving Time causes some radio stations to lose money

It's that time of the year again -- one hour of sleep has been taken away from me forever and when it does come back in October, I'm sure I'll be frittering it away on something inconsequential. Ah, c'est la vie! Daylight SavingTime, for me, is Sleep Losing Time.

This post is about how daylight saving time adversely affects small commercial radio stations. I read about it in an interview with David Prerau in the Boston Phoenix. Prerau recently published a book full of random facts, controversies and anecdotes associated with Daylight Saving Time.

I hate to be a pedantic prick about it, but it's Daylight Saving Time (like dog walking time, or vaccuming my apartment time) and not Daylight Savings Time, even though it rolls off the tongue better. See why at Wikipedia's entry about DST.

Sunlight affects the the electromagnetic and conductive properties of the ionosphere. In general, radio waves travel further during night because the ionosphere conducts them better without the powerful electromagnetic interference from sunlight. Because radio waves travel further at night, fewer stations can be broadcast without interfering with each other after the sun goes down. Certain small radio stations operate on daytime-only licenses because of these physical constraints imposed by the ionosphere.

These small radio stations typically broadcast local news, weather and traffic to their biggest audience segment, morning commuters. Generally, people don't listen to these stations in the evenings because during the evening they prefer stations with wider news and entertainment coverage. Daylight saving time comes in and shifts the hours of operation of these stations one hour later. This leaves them a smaller window in which to broadcast during the day. The end result is that they lose money when Daylight Saving Time is in effect.

This rather fascinating Useless Factoid of the Day was brought to you by the World's Largest Repository of Useless Knowledge, me.

Posted by Vishy at 12:47 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2005

Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #4: Beginning school causes anorexia

It's a messed up world when 6 year old girls have body image issues.

Six-year-olds 'want to be thin'

Posted by Vishy at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #3: Ema Datshi

Mmmm... spicy food.

I thought I was an aficionads of spicy food of all flavors -- jalapeno, habanero, tapatio sauce and wasabi. I am willing to try food that makes me tear like I was just in a chemical weapon attack. Eventually, after the spice has died down enough, I would still have enjoyed some aspect of it. I even briefly considered buying this T-shirt.

However, nothing I could do can beat ema datshi, the national dish of Bhutan. Ema datshi is a unique preparation made of chilies and cheese -- that's right, the chilies are actually used as a vegetable.

Mmm... now to find a friendly Bhutanese person or Bhutanese restaurant in my general area... or better yet just go there when I go home!

Posted by Vishy at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day #3: Two random facts about Vishy's life

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. Work has been busy and even my weekends have been otherwise gainfully occupied. The two factoids are truly useless -- they are only about me and will be of no use to you whatsoever. If that bugs you, then what are you doing here on my blog?

Factoid #1: Vishy's voice
Welcome to the Customer Care Line. This call may be recorded for quality assurance. Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line... Me: Hello? Hello? This is Nicole with [credit card]. Your name and account number please? Vishwanath Venugopalan. I'll spell it out for you. First name V-I-S-H-W-A-N-A-T-H Last name V-E-N-U-G-O-P-A-L-A-N ... O-P-L-A-M? No. O-P-A-L-A-N as in Nancy. Okay, what can I do for you today, ma'am? Actually, it's Sir. What can I do for you? I need to report a lost card. Okay, let me bring that up for you... [Hold music... My attention wanders around the room. I think of food, various attractive women, work...] MA'AM, MA'AM, are you there?? I told you I was a Sir. Thanks for holding, ma'am. I'll need to get some security information from you...

I don't have a very deep voice. The pitch of my voice fluctuates with my mood, my general level of excitement and even maybe my level of hydration. Unless I am sick, however, it stays within reasonable limits from what people consider to be my average voice. Neither me nor my friends think of me as very feminine sounding. However, about half the time, I get mistaken for a woman on the phone. Most of these times, my repeated entreaties to address me with a title appropriate for my sex are ignored -- something that pisses me off to no end. I have mostly given up on correcting their impressions of my sex, especially if I have been put on a long hold already and I am impatient to get off the call.

The even stranger thing is that the people who mistake me for a women are overwhelmingly women themselves. It's very rare that male customer service representatives mistake me for a woman. My best theory for this (which I don't really believe in myself) is that I naturally get nervous when talking to *any* woman, even if I am only going to speak to her once. This results in a higher pitch and therefore a higher probability of being mistaken for a woman.

What about other guys who are reading this? Do you have similar experiences?

Factoid #2: My new apartment
I live in apartment number 9-K. If A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 and so on, K = 11.

Replace the K with its number and my apartment is 9-11. How afraid should I be?

Posted by Vishy at 10:22 PM | Comments (1)

January 05, 2005

Useless Factoid of the Day: Psittacosis

I heard the word 'psittacosis' in a medical context on TV the other day and found that I have really no clue what sort of a condition it was. So, I got curious and decided to look it up. If you have a pet parrot or parakeet, you better listen up. Psittacosis is an infectious disease that can spread from parrots to humans. Psittacus is Latin for parrot, in case you were wondering. In human beings, psittacosis manifests itself as flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, headache, muscle aches and a dry cough). Hepatitis and neurological complications can also occur. Don't inhale dried secretions from your bird ;) That's how it gets transmitted. Today's Useless Factoid was brought to you by the World's Biggest Repository of Useless Knowledge, me.

Posted by Vishy at 09:06 PM | Comments (1)