Random thoughts

Snoring

2009-12-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

I wonder why people snore only when they are asleep and not when they are awake? Are there other things humans do only while asleep.

Middle man business plan

2009-12-23T01:06:00.000-08:00

I came across a great description of the utility of the middle man in the world.
"Famous 1945 article by R. A. Radford, "Economic Organization of a POW Camp." Prisoner of war camp, food and some necessities are provided by the "detaining power." Main thing that provided them with stuff was Red Cross packets. Everybody has the same endowments, but people had different tastes. Some people don't smoke, some don't eat beef. Talks about how institutions of trade emerge without any top-down supervision and with resentment of people participating in the trade: we each think that the exchanges we make are voluntary but have a sense that someone is exploiting me. Itinerant Padre, went around and made voluntary exchanges but after a day ended up with two packets plus a little more. Left every person better off; but he ended up with more than he started."
They essentially make arbitrage possible in many ways. (It is a very different view point from what I had of middle men. I always vilified the middle man.) I believe the internet makes it possible to make the middle man scale his reach way beyond what was possible before. So onto coming up with the next middle man web site.

Free work?

2009-12-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Let us consider Yelp. It feels strange to me that people do so much free work for them, but then the value of Yelp is in providing a forum (middle man) where I as a user can go and see what other people liked or recommended. So in a sense the value I get from Yelp is for free which is arguably offset by the free work I do for Yelp by writing reviews. Now that is a wonderful self sustaining model.

Non-vegetarians actually save animals from extinction

2009-11-23T09:08:00.000-08:00

My hypothesis is that non-vegetarians actually save the animals they eat from becoming extinct. Take for example, chicken. Humans might eat chickens but they also breed them and feed them, allowing the chicken gene pool to survive and flourish. So from the chicken gene pool perspective, humans are making their life easier in some sense, by allowing them to keep passing on their genes to their descendants in a safe environment. Well the same argument can be made for the other animals that humans eat. It is no different than saying humans also enable the gene pool of rice plant or wheat plant to survive and flourish. Of course their survival is conditional on humans themselves surviving. So in some sense we are tying their survival chances to ours. Wonder what the vegetarians have to say?

As an aside, for the ethical vegetarians here is an article you can read and ponder on?

Consciousness in babies

2009-11-09T15:54:00.001-08:00

I wonder at what point of time between conception and birth of the baby around 9 months after, that the baby develops consciousness. I am assuming the one cell conception stage does not have consciousness. It is fascinating for me to think that in this small 9 month period there is an instant in which the baby turns into a conscious being from a bunch of cells. Yes, I know I have not defined what consciousness means. I guess with whatever definition of consciousness the thought still holds.

I want new fruits

2009-11-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

Why do we not find any more new fruits? Is this an inevitable side effect of globalization? Just from a statistical point of view, I would think there are more plant species than animals, which would mean there must be new fruits out there to be discovered?

I did find a fruit that is new to me: persimmon. It is from the same family as sapota or chikku but tastes different. I dont think this has made its way to India yet. If you are in the bay area it is available in chinese stores like Ranch 99 or trader joes has it too.

Air bubbles in glass of water

2009-10-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

Why does a glass of water sitting around get filled with bubbles after a few days?

Dusshera and Durga puja

2009-09-29T01:58:00.000-07:00

Is it a coincidence or is there some connection between the two festivals Dusshera and Durga puja occuring around the same time frame? It is quite a coincidence that the time frame that Ram killed Ravana is also the time when Durga vanquished Mahishasura.

Addendum: Got a reply from Tapas Kanti Roy
Tapas Kanti Roy: but wait: they are indeed connected. According to legend, the first person to perform Durga Puja in Autumn (in the month of Ashwin) was Rama. That is why, sometimes in Bengali, it is also called 'Okal Bodhan' (untimely worship). He did that to pray for his victory over Ravana. On the Dashami (10th day after new moon) of Ashwin, he slayed Ravana: ... Read Morethat is why it is called VijayaDashami. Three weeks after VijayaDashami, Rama returned back to Ayodhya, which is Diwali.
Before that, Durga Puja used to happen in Spring.

And of course, don't forget the symbolism: of both the Puranas and the Ramayana :). You cannot bind the act slaying mahishasura by goddess durga in a time frame...

Vanpool pattern

2009-08-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

Vanpooling is a great amortization pattern. It provides a way for people to amortize their commute cost (time and gas) and thus provide an alternative to living near your workplace. It is also a great example where a group of people can do far better than a single person. You can quantify your commute time in vanpool as (Actual_commute_time / number_of_people_in_the_vanpool) + extra_time_to_drive_to_vanpool_meeting_area. So for example, my round trip commute time is 90 minutes. My vanpool has 7 people. So my commute time now becomes approximately 13 minutes + 5 minutes to drive to the meeting area, which is as good as someone living close to my workplace. The disadvantages with this pattern is the rigidity of the start times of the commute. The other disadvantage is the huge penalty (in time) you pay if you miss your vanpool (by being late).
I wonder if this pattern can be applied as a solution to a software problem? I guess I have a solution waiting for a problem here...

Usain bolt could do a Sergey bubka

2009-08-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

The way Usain bolt is running, maybe he should just follow in the footsteps of Sergey Bubka. He can shave off a few milli-seconds from the world record time in every big event he runs in. That way he can hold the most world records in the world in 100 meters.

Graph of life

2009-07-10T09:55:00.001-07:00

I was talking to my brother who turned the corner on 40 which to me sounds like an age threshold.. At some point of time, the age the person is and the age the person feels diverges. So, I have this idea of plotting a graph, in which x axis is time from birth in months or years and y axis is age. In the graph, I am going to plot the real age and the age felt by a person. It will be interesting to observe this graph for every person and how the age the person feels criss crosses the real age. I took a stab at drawing mine. Since I was the youngest in my class by one year I increased my felt age by one for my school days. I think I stabilized during my undergraduation days. Currently I do feel younger than my real age :)
I also drew Benjamin Button's graph just for comparison's sake.

Half dome

2009-06-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

Just noticed on a recent trip to yosemite that you can actually see an old man on the half dome when viewed from glacier point. I have attached the actual half dome and one with my impressions :)
p.s Interestingly, I subsequently checked wikipedia, and found the following:
"Half Dome was originally called "Tis-sa-ack," meaning Cleft Rock in the language of the local Native Americans. Tis-sa-ack is the name of a mother from a native legend. The face seen in Half Dome is supposed to be hers"

Dryer etiquette

2009-04-20T02:54:00.001-07:00

If you ever lived in an apartment with shared washing machine/dryer room then you would know that one of the common etiquette's followed is the current user cleans up the lint caused by the previous user. In my opinion this is effective and fair since you will not be penalized. What I mean is that if the etiquette were that each user cleaned up the lint after their use, it is most probably going to happen that someone will forget. So you as a good user would have to clean the lint twice in this case, once before use and once after use.

I wonder which aspects of life follow the "dryer etiquette"?

Home remedies

2009-03-21T14:58:00.001-07:00

Everytime I fall sick in India my dad and mom huddle together and start going into the kitchen to come back with some concoction for me to drink. Most of my ailments are digestion related: gas, loose motion etc. Anyways just anecdotally from my experience it looks like some of these ailments actually work. So I thought I would just list some of these remedies in one place for me to refer back to:
- mild diarrhea: boil skin of pomegranate and water and drink the resulting syrup.
- fever associated with cold and shivering: drink coffee without milk boiled with chukku which is the malayalam word for dried ginger, black pepper and some sugar or honey.
- gas problems: lemon tea

Top results on google

2009-02-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Just noticed that my blog comes up as the top result on google for the following search terms: "aaroosh", "extinct names", "how do you make a 200 meter track"

World is flat or World is round, in economics?

2008-12-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

It came as a surprise to me that there is one scientific endeavor in the 21st century that is still debating the equivalent of "earth is flat" or "earth is round". I am referring to economics. The two schools of thoughts are the Keynesians and the Austrians. The Keynesian school claims spending is the way out of the current financial crisis. The Austrians claim that saving is the way out of the current financial crisis.
In fact the prescription offered for the current financial ailment by the doctors of the two schools are complete opposites. Clearly economic theory is still in the middle ages.

Better to live for a cause than die for it

2008-12-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

Is a quote from the novel "Catcher in the Rye". I write this after we have seen the unfortunate sacrificial weapons of terror being unleashed on India in Mumbai. But my blog is about how to make an idea live long. You can either force it down the throat of someone (i.e violence) and subdue them to accept your idea. The other way is to let the idea speak for itself by resonating with logic and reason. There is no greater marketing strategy than a viral one, one in which people take it upon themselves to spread an idea since they find it useful, interesting, valid etc. The violent method might have some success in the short term but it will never live long. So if you have an idea (good or bad) and you care for it to lay down your life, I would think it is a better, effective way to live and try to propagate the idea. If it is not a good idea, then you can learn from your mistakes. If it is a good idea, other people can learn from the idea. Either way the world is a better place for it.

States created per economic school

2008-10-30T19:14:00.000-07:00

I believe there has never existed a country that has followed a pure free market theory as espoused by the Austrian school of economic thought. So there is no way to know if the theory is just idealistic and will fall apart in the real world.
So here is my proposal. Just like the Mormons settled in utah, it would be interesting to see a few states that are formed with their economic thought as part of the state constitution (if there is such a thing). The other economic thoughts would be the progressives, keynesians etc. And say in 10 years time we will know which system fares better.

Iceland: most developed country in 2007, bankrupt in 2008

2008-10-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just came across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland on Iceland. Apparently Iceland was ranked the most developed country in 2007. In 2008, Iceland also happens to be be the first country to be victim to the global credit crisis and declare bankruptcy. One wonders what measures were used to rank Iceland?

Hybrid images illusion: thumbnail images that turn out into a different image

2008-08-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Scientific American has a series of optical illusions including this one concerning hybrid images. The image from closeup looks like Einstein whereas from far it looks like Marilyn Monroe. Well I discovered that this same illusion holds if you shrink the image down to a small size. The smaller size image looks like Marilyn Monroe whereas the bigger size image looks like Einstein. The best way to see this version of the illusion is to take a picture of this on your phone. The thumbnail image on the phone will show up as Marilyn Monroe whereas when you open the image it will turn out to be Einstein. Pretty cool?

What is running track constructed out of?

2008-08-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

Watching Usain Bolt shatter the world records this olympics and seeing the close up of the track he is running on, has made me wonder what that track is made of? I did a google search but the results were not immediately available. Finally I found the answer on this site. To quote from that site: "An all-weather track is one that is topped with a coating of rubber chips that are bonded together with a cementing agent. These rubber coatings are installed to a depth of 3/8" to ½" over an asphalt or concrete base to provide a soft running surface. "
There is also more information on the Beijing running track here.

200 meters race is run at faster pace than 100 meters

2008-08-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to New york times and their beautiful charts I discovered today that the 200 meters track and field race is actually run at a faster pace than the 100 meters. The current world record for 100 meters is 9.69 sec. The world record for 200 meters is 19.32. Probably the momentum of crossing the 100 meter mark in the 200 meters is just enough to make this happen. No wonder though that this year (2008) the 100 meters world record was shattered by Usain Bolt who is actually a 200 meters racer.
I wonder if the same would be true for swimming. For a fair comparison though the swimming track would have to be really long. For example we could compare 50 meters pace versus 100 meters pace in swimming if one lap in swimming was actually 100 meters. So we basically discount the part where the swimmers have to decelerate and bounce of the walls at the 50 meter mark.
Or make the 200 meters track and field such that the runner runs 100 meters till a wall, touches the wall and runs back :)

How long for swimming world records to plateau?

2008-08-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Olympics 2008 in Beijing saw the most world records ever set in swimming events. And it seems like these records are not going to hold up for too long either. Why? Here is a hand waving proof.
The extreme case of a race is that an athlete completes an event and drops dead (i.e he has spent all his energy in the event). Now currently in this olympics, an athlete like Michael Phelps can set a world record and come back after 30 minutes to take part in another event. It seems possible, theoretically, that there is still room for some more energy expenditure. So it should be possible for an athlete to expend more energy than Phelps, i.e such that the athlete takes maybe a day to recover back his lost energy and not 30 minutes like Phelps.
My prediction is that until we reach a day where each event has a different winner swimming world records have not plateaued.

Olympics 2008, Microsoft Silverlight and fullscreen mode

2008-08-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

If you are trying to watch olympics online using IE7 on NBC you might have downloaded Microsoft silverlight. You might also have tried the enhanced player mode of the video player only to discover there is no full screen mode. And this can definitely be annoying if your computer is also connected to a TV. So if you are trying to figure out how to get full screen mode then you have come to the right place. I will give you a short and long version of the solution to see the Olympics videos on NBC full screen.
Short version is: Press F11 after starting the enhanced player (This puts your IE v7 browser in full screen mode). Then magnify the browser window (usually present at the right bottom) from 100% to 150%. Then you have an almost full screen experience.
The long version: The IE v7 browser has a full screen mode which basically gets rid of the toolbar/titlebar at the top of the browser. To enable this mode you can press F11 with the focus on the browser. The silverlight enhanced player opens in a browser window with fixed size (so you cannot resize it). But F11 still works on the browser window in which the enhanced player is opened in. So you can use F11 to make the enhanced player browser window full screen. Then you can magnify the video by changing the zoom level (bottom right corner) .

Tailor made musical instruments

2008-08-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

You can walk into a department store and pick up a t-shirt that fits you perfectly. You can also go to a tailor and have a shirt stitched up for you with your body measurements. So is it possible to have a musical instrument built just for you?
If you look around the world of musical instruments you will see that there are so many musical instruments ranging from piano, violin, flute, guitar. Now each of these instruments require a different technical/physical aspect to be mastered to ensure you to play the instrument well. For example in case of piano, you need to master playing with both hands. In case of violin you need to master finger positions and bowing. In case of flute you need to master breathing. Now given this wide spectrum of instruments, you would wonder how they came about? My hypothesis is that each instrument got created by someone to match their most natural ability to play music. So when you go to join a school to learn a musical instrument, you are trying to master an instrument that might not be the most natural fit for your ability. So that begs the question whether it is possible to make tailor made instruments that suit your physical ability the best? After all eventually the music that all these instruments create is what matters...