Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Eggplant has nicotine, there is water on the moon and googol is a very large number

Just some random and trivial items I discovered.
Eggplant belongs to the same family as that of tomato and potato. It is botanically classified as a berry.  It is a distant relative of tobacco and contains insignificant amount of nicotine that it would take 9 kilos of eggplant to equal the nicotine content of a standard sized cigarette.  This seems a good excuse for me for not eating eggplants.
Very recently, on November 13 2009, NASA announced the discovery of water on the moon.  NASA Spacecraft LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) discovered beds of water ice when it impacted the moon on October 9, 2009.  According to NASA LCROSS Project Site, “The Mission Objectives of LCROSS include confirming the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the Moon’s South Pole.”  It also mentioned that “the identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the Moon.”   I suppose there is a hope that in the very near future, astronauts will be able to take a good shower in the moon.
The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros.  In mathematical terms, one googol can either be represented either as 10100 or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Due to its popularity, the company name Google became widely used as a verb that it was officially added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary.  Merriam-Webster Online defines Google as “to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web.”  Of course, I was able to get this information by googling it.

 

Monday, November 16, 2009

Monday blues

What is it with Mondays that it always seems difficult to wake up early?  Time seems to slow and I can’t wait to get out of work.  The chocolate in my cup is cold and almost half empty. Or half full if one wants to imply a positive outlook by means of measuring the liquid contents of a glass, or cup for this matter.  I need another cup.

 

The task I’m doing at the moment seems to be taking time.  I have done this before, the same day and time as last week.  But it seems that the more I do the same activity, the more it becomes boring.  Perhaps I should be drinking coffee instead.