April 2006

On the IMDb top 250, you normally see a correlation between the number of votes and the rating for a movie. Better rated movies are more watched. The outliers are interesting. The movies that are popular despite not having a high rating are: The Matrix The Sixth Sense Gladiator Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith Pirates of the Caribbean I can understand why The Sixth Sense, Pirates of the Caribbean and especially The Matrix are on this list – geeks would have watched these and voted on IMDb, though their voting need not have been high. But why are Gladiator and Sixth Sense on that list? ...

Google Related Links. Google’s following Yahoo’s lead in Y!Q.

Chennai on Google Earth in high resolution. Mylapore and other areas near the coast are not yet in hi-res, though.

The sun and moon look smaller than you think. The apparent large size of the Sun and Moon as we see them in the sky is a psychological illusion. There are several different explanations for this. If you take a picture of the moon with a camera lens that has the same field of view as Celestia, you may be surprised at the small size of its image. Here is something you might try: a finger at arm’s length is about two degrees wide for most people. That means that you can fit four moons side by side. Go outside and check it. Now have a direct look at your finger indoors. Can you still believe that four moons will fit on it? ...

Why people rush out of a plane at Bangalore but not at Delhi. via Kaps

Marriages in Britain are lasting longer. But part of the reason is that there are fewer marriages. More people just live together. The ones that do marry are older (30 years, as against 26 years a decade ago) and probably more religious.

Domain name analysis. All two-letter and three-letter acronyms are taken. About 80% of 4-letter acronyms are taken. All common names are taken. 90% of common full names are taken. And more.

Stock transactions by Bill Gates. He periodically sells a few million of Microsoft shares. Wonder what he does with the $300 million or so every week.