qotd

why is it that people who can't take advice always insist on giving it?

-- bond, "casino royale"

on father's/mother's day

"this invented holiday was never part of our emotional calendar."

-- from "the diving bell and the butterfly"

real world hack .. free shipping

imagine a store X that has both a physical and online presence. X offers only free shipping if your purchase exceeds Y$, however it allows you to return the purchased items in-store without charge.

simple hack (discovered by accident): purchase items worth more than Y$ (including whatever you really want). return the undesired items in-store once they arrive. u effectively got the desired item shipped for free :-) (modulo the cost of having to go and return in store)

driving violations

do people driving fancier cars get bigger fines for similar violations compared to people who drive more ordinary/rundown cars?

irony

pain forcing a cheery disposition

brain and time

how does the brain keep time and identify periodicities -- especially with respect to music/beats etc?

also whats the finest resolution of time that the brain can keep track of -- second/millisecond?

update: well there seems to be a whole line of research on this topic http://ticktockbraintalk.blogspot.com/

random: swiss army laptop backpacks

i have been recently amazed by the sudden apperance of swiss army laptop backpacks (well there is the possibility of a confirmation bias here .. but lets set that aside for now). too many people seem to have the same brand of backpack.

i figured there must have been some kind of promotion or sale forcing such a monoculture but couldnt find anything of note. a little bit of inquiry revealed that the bags were on sale at sams club (www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate. do?dest=5&item=361436&pCatg=5791 ) and were a good deal.

for the record, i think the backpack looks good.

brilliant ..

"Fewer than one in forty Biharis possesses a television. For entertainment, many rely on Lalu .."

-- In spite of the gods, Edward Luce

google checkout - bug?

google checkout consistently gives out 10$ off for anyone signing up for a new google checkout account -- the cost of creating a new account is trivial. and as far as i can see there is no conscious effort to correlate credit card numbers or address information to prevent the obvious cheat of creating bogus identities to get 10$ off each time?

am i missing something

(only flip side is by signing up multiple accounts, u run the potential risk of compromising the private information more often if the account gets cracked)

no right to comment on ..

i have no right to comment on people wearing non-matching socks

(my left shoe and right shoe today are different -- in my defense the two brands of shoes look very similar, but thats no excuse!)

happyness =

splitting chewing gum wrapper cleanly into three layers -- paper,plastic,metalfoil :-).

accidental discovery of the day

typing "www.url.com." or "www.url.com./" in your browser address bar gives same result as "www.url.com"

steam shadows

as i watched water boil (no it doesnt affect it :-) ), i noticed that the steam/vapor induced a shadow on the wall but i couldnt actually see the vapors.
a. are there other such examples where things can be seen in shadows but through eyes?
b. is this because the human eye doesnt have sufficient resolution -- e.g. would a hi-fi camera pick it up?

any answers?

derandomization

brain seems to be less inclined to random thoughts, hence the reduction in blogging frequency. dont know if senile degeneration has already set in :-(

HDTV

same garbage, only sharper

--werner vogels, amazon

accidental discovery of the day

my elbow is stronger than a squash racquet :-)

Parthenogenesis

via: http://www.slate.com/id/2180956/fr/rss/

if i was part of the religious right, i now have an amazingly good argument in favor of the immaculate conception!

(i wonder who is funding the research :-) ?)


update: wikipedia suggests that the doctrine of immaculate conception should not be confused with the doctrine of virgin birth (who would have guessed they would have two low probability events?)

karma, reincarnation, and conservation

suppose you believed in reincarnation -- in that case, is there some sort of a law of conservation of "souls"?
that is, the total number of "souls"that exists is a constant, its just that the manifestations are different.

couple of thoughts:
1. the definition of what has a soul is fuzzy -- does a single-celled amoeba have a soul?
2. it seems that the total number of life-forms is in fact increasing over time (even not counting bacteria, amoeba etc). this seems to contradict what little i understand of karma etc, the number of souls is strictly decreasing over time (some attain moksha).

qotd

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

--Upton Sinclair

via "Super Crunchers" Ian Ayres

depressingly true ..

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=944