The more I learn, the more I realize that I know nothing.
As another Gregorian calendar year draws to a close, ‘tis time to draw up the list of some totally irrelevant, some funny and some interesting things (or not) which I learnt during its course (or rather remembered to list). So without much ado, here goes #TYIL (or This Year I Learnt), featuring amongst others the usual suspects - Numbers, Economics, A Japanese term and a big German word.
- The IKEA Effect – People tend to value an object more if they make/assemble it themselves. [Decision Lab]
- Vellichor – The pleasure of smelling the odour of old books, especially is old bookstores [Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows] (A sibling of petrichor). [Aside - there is a dictionary of obscure sorrows!)
- Raketa Watches – A Russian watch company who replace the number 12 by 0 on their dial. [GQ]
- 381 km by 381 km – The Maximum possible size of a pdf page, imposed by Adobe Acrobat software. Now if only someone could find a printer for it! [YCombinator]
- The famous white symbols on green screen from the movie Matrix are actually a Japanese text for a sushi recipe [Wired]. It was once a very popular screensaver.
- The names Chital & Cheetah come from the same Sanskrit root Chitrala. [Link]
- Dutch Disease - When countries experience a sudden large increase in income, the consequences can be harmful. Increased income from a resource boom leads to inflation [Link]
- The name jeans comes from the city of Genoa. French “bleu de Genes” or blue of Genoa. [Link]
- In the initial years, certain Lok Sabha constituencies had 2 MPs elected, one General and one Reserved.[Moneycontrol]
- Umarell – old men who spend their time watching construction sites, usually with hands behind their backs. An Italian origin word, there has to be an Indian equivalent for people watching JCBs at work! [Wikipedia]
- Ganko Keitai – the ‘wild-geese-flying pattern’ of economic growth, whereby production shifts from the lead goose (advanced nation) to the next flock of geese (developing nations) [Wikipedia]
- India’s first Director Identification Number (DIN) was issued to Ratan Tata [Link]
- 2^136279841 – 1: The largest prime number discovered till date, with over 41 Million digits. It took 6 years to get to the new record. [Mersenne]
- Dunkelflaute - a period of time in which little or no energy can be generated with wind and solar power, because there is neither wind nor sunlight. The killer of renewable energy! [Wikipedia]
- The 1st item in UK supermarket to have a barcode - A box of teabags (Guess can’t go more British than this) [BBC]
- Cushy – an English word used to describe an easy job environment comes from the Hindi Khushi. Probably how some Brits saw their India posting!
- And to round it off, today 23rd December is marked as Christmas Adam - The eve of Christmas Eve (24th December), because as per Christian tradition Adam came before Eve. I guess in some time we will know what happens to 22nd December! [Grammarist]
P.P.S Seems the lists are getting smaller every year. Need to get better at recording them.
