Fingerprints - there for a reason

Fingerprints Are Tuned to Amplify Vibrations and Send Info to the Brain | 80beats | Discover Magazine

After all the hype about the appendix being useless, did it ever occur to you that the fingerprints must be somehow functional, beyond being a convenient means of getting caught? After all, natural selection would seem to favour adaptation against being identified (although you could probably put together a convincing counterargument, involving selection on a societal level).*

Well, as it turns out, there was a point to the things on your fingertips. When your finger brushes something, lots of vibrations are excited in the skin, at myriad frequencies. Something about the separation of the ridges ensures that only vibrations around 250Hz, which are able to be picked up by receptors under your skin, survive. The rest are attenuated. The whorls and loops make sure that there isn't any directionality to the amplification: no matter which direction you're going, you still get the filtering effect. Notice that the patterns really extend to your whole palm, but not beyond. That's the reason for the extra sensitivity of the hands, especially to strokes and caresses, and that sort of thing.

Neat, huh?

*The double "after all" use is intentional. And different in meaning!

Happy New Year!

We celebrate with a demonstration that every video can be improved by putting a cat in it (although, preferably without captions). YouTube - Interactive LED Coffee Table Demo

Made steamboat tonight, with one side tom yam soup and the other ikan bilis stock. Turned out pretty well, although we were expecting a few more people so a fair bit of food got left behind... The bright side is that there are enough prawns left over for hokkien mee! Or maybe hokkien koay teow/tang hoon, since we ate all the yellow mee... Heh.

Incidentally, when I opened the tang hoon packet I was very amused to read the (Vietnamese) brand name "Lungkow". I'm pretty sure that's 'Long' as in dragon, and perhaps 'kou' as in mouth (but it could be something else). However, my Hokkien brain couldn't help translating it as 'drain'...

Happy CNY!

Self-organising/self-advertising

The Star reports that the NY Times picked Penang one of its top 44 destinations for '09... and 'NY Times Readers' voted Penang the #2 spot. Why the inverted commas? Cos I suspect 70%(+-30%) of the voters don't read the NY Times.

Timeline:
6 days prior (t=0hrs): Penang Facebook group admin sends out a call for members to vote for Penang (then in 33rd place)
t=1.5hrs: Penang #13
t=24: Penang #8
t=36: Penang #3
t=48: Penang #2

I wrote a substantially more detailed/verbose analysis of the situation earlier, but Safari died... so here's the short version. There are just over 4000 people in the group, but additional calls went out via blogs etc (Google and you shall see). So a good deal of support was probably drummed up. Malaysians also appear to be the ones most interested in this article, as Googling any of the top few places (Beirut, Buffalo, Metz) together with 'NY Times' and 'destination' inevitably turns up either the report of Penang's achievement in The Star, or else sites reporting the Star article.

Inference: Penang's #2 position is not due to a representative sample of tourists loving Penang, but instead due to Penangites being kiasu

Aside from the likely bias in the voting for Penang, there seems to be evidence that either there aren't enough voters to get a fair assessment, the NY Times people have no idea what they're writing about, or both (and possibly other flaws). Actually, I'd lean towards both, seeing as firstly, there's a lot of disparity in the Times vs voter rankings (aside from Beirut, which is #1 in both, the top 4 reader choices jumped between 10 and 20 places), and secondly that the Times blurbs on the destinations embody the most awful contradictions.

Penang is listed on the 'foodie' and 'frugal' lists - it would be unthinkable if it weren't. It's fair to leave it off the 'eco' list; there are more beautiful nature spots, even in Msia. I'd say it could stand to be on the 'family' and 'culture' lists though... together with virtually all the other spots. What really offends reason is the presence of Las Vegas and 'Castles in Britain' on the 'frugal' list. I mean, $90 hotels, $75 restaurants and $13 drinks advertised as frugal? Even with free caviar, that's nonsense, when compared with $2 Penang street food. I'll admit airfare is expensive, but if you consider how 'economical' it is to stay for three days in Dover Castle (£387 for six), and that people still have to fly from NY to Britain (not counting the expensive British food, which we all know is no competition for laksa and char koay teow), the sanity of the writers is really called into question.

Oh well. For the sake of perversity, let's do our best to mess up their poll. Vote for Penang! Heh.

Chemists trump John Swift

So... you thought a book about giants and tiny people was a great work of satire... Well, this one isn't satire... but I think it's arguably greater! Then again, actually it's much tinier...

Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules: The NanoPutians

sanlotsaints on deviantART

Water sculptures: Coolest photos EVER!

White Halloween

Actually it will have melted by then. Hopefully this snow is a preview of skiing conditions come January!

Helicocranchia

Helicocranchia

Also known as the banded piglet squid. See the photos to understand why. It's too freakin amazing/cool/cute. And you thought the Marshmallow Swine was creative...

Thanks to Shi Hsia for the original link to the now-deceased specimen at the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.