The Golden 80s

The human nose can detect at least 1 trillion different odours, much higher than the 10,000 scents earlier estimated, says the Nature magazine . The noted science magazine also says that the human nose has around 400 types of scent receptors.

Have you ever wondered what constitutes a crime committed by an editor or a reviewer? In the days of proofreading, there were standard symbols associated with the changes to be made in a copy or manuscript. When it came to desktop publishing, the editor or reviewer used to turn the Track Changes feature in a word processing software like Microsoft Word on. Technical writing tools such as Adobe FrameMaker and Madcap Flare enable commenting on a document. Adobe Acrobat allows comments in PDF docs. So, despite all these modern facilities, what if someone goes to the extent of editing text on the sly in a document? Edits that the poor writer discovers later and finds them damn wrong. One reason may be overconfidence. The reviewer would have been so overconfident and would have never imagined that the edits would be wrong. The reviewer must not be knowing that industry practice provides the benefit of doubt to the writer. The mantra, "When in doubt, check it out." applies to...

If you believe that human beings are the ultimate species on earth bestowed with all the qualities that can ever be imagined, please think twice. BBC reports that elephants can recognise human voices and also differentiate the voice of a kid from that of an adult. And the reaosn why they can or have learnt to recognise human voices is that they are scared of human beings. For the poor elephants, human beings are the most feared predators. As human beings, we all know what that really means.

1 I love cricket. I like to waste time by watching cricket, even though the results many not be in line with what I want or like. Indian cricket fans know that. Team India will lose when we expect them to win; the team will win when we expect them to lose. Just like the lives of millions in this "developing" country and also the "Next Big Thing" in the world, we are used to frustration. Usually, the teams had the dressing room where the team, next batsmen, coach, and the 12th man used to sit and watch the game. But, somehow T20 heralded the arrival of a new term to cricket: Dugout. On checking at M-W.com, Dugout is "either of two low shelters on either side of and facing a baseball diamond that contain the players' benches." The key thing is "baseball". Yeah, baseball. With T20, cricket is or resembles baseball. Because, here, in T20, what matters is over the top ecstasy. Whether the batsmen can hit the maximum number of balls out o...