Playing with Data

There was a time when I was passionate about figuring out the actual situation of social and economic development of India. I would set up alerts, and find how India compares with other countries in news about GDP., cotton exports, anything. The results were a huge let down, if you put up a chart we'll be somewhere near mean, and sometimes, below mean. I got bored, and stopped doing this.

So, when I came to know about Google Public Data Explorer, I couldn't resist checking some boxes and see what comes up. This is what you get-

This is urban access to sanitation facilities- mostly toilets, I think-



And this is contraceptive usage among women of the age of fifteen and forty-nine:



We need to bridge a large gulf to catch up with Sri Lanka, way ahead of us.

Do play around with Google Public Data Explorer- let's see what you get.

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Nuts

I am late in on this- Randiv bowled a no-ball to deny Sehwag his century, and every paper I read excoriates Randiv and Sri Lanka, and sermonises on something called sportsmanship- an endangered beast, if not yet extinct.

I think the administrators need to take some of the blame: okay, India needed one to win, Randiv bowls a no-ball, one run given, match over, no matter that Sehwag hit it for a six.

But what if India had needed two at that stage, and the same thing had happened? Sehwag would have got those runs, right?

The rule is clear on that score- at least in Wikipedia when I last looked at it: "The run awarded for the no ball is not credited to an individual batsman's score but is tallied separately as part of the team's score. Any additional runs scored by the batsman off the bat, whether by running or by a boundary, are included in the batsman's score."

It is not right that the same action yields two different results under different conditions- they should change these rules, unless they are playing God, imho.

How to Add the Official Retweet Button into Every Post of Your Blog

Twitter has come up with an official Retweet button, you might probably know that. There is an advantage to it: the link is shortened, but you get an idea of the exact location of the shared page, see Techie Buzz. That is the general idea, though it did not work that way in a tweet that I shared.

I found a way to add that button to this blog: it is right here, down every post.- if you want to know how to add the official Twitter Retweet Button into your blog so that it shows up under every post like it does here, here is how I did that. I am a total idiot when it comes to html, javascript etc., but if I can find a way to do it, so can you.

Thanks to Anshul Dudeja, I made a few changes to the script he provides in his page, added it to the HTML the way he says it should be done, and voila!

This is the script:

<div style="float: right;
margin-left: 10px;"> <a class="twitter-share-button"
data-count="none" data-via="yourtwittername" href="http://twitter.com/share">Tweet</a><script
src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" type="text/javascript"> </script>

Please replace your twitter name for "yourtwittername"

Compare this version with that given by Anshul Judeja, where the code is displayed better.

How this script should be added to the blog is at this page:  How Add Retweet Button to Blogger Blogs at Anshul Judeja.

If there is any better way, please let me know, and I'll adopt that.

The Deccan Chronicle: a Repulsive Instance of Cultural Cringe

Look at this screenshot from Deccan Chronicle:

Mau-mauing the ‘ground zero’ mosque | Deccan Chronicle | 2010-08-11 via kwout

Now compare this with what Christopher Hitchens has written in The Slate:

The dispute over the "Ground Zero mosque" is an object lesson in how not to resist intolerance. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine via kwout

This is the cultural cringe that Christopher Hitchens was speaking out against in the first place!

(In case you didn't look close enough, "Muslim cultural blackmail" has been emended as "cultural blackmail," and an entire sentence, calling 9/11 a genuine outrage, has been deleted)

A Curveball

Wonder what this is?

Oh yes, Google has come out with a feature called Curve in Google Documents, and this is my attempt to paint something with it. I know this is not pretty, but at least it is something.

I should have tried different colours,  it might look better then.

Who are They?

I think now that I am dry, I should perhaps make a translated post out of what I read in the Tamil blogs.

Here is a piece of Sujatha.

In Delhi, while I was riding back home in my scooter, there was a man lying in the middle of the road. I stopped to look at him, and found he was very much dead.The cars that come and go, they all hesitate, edge round the man in homage, and accelerate away. No one stopped. They never do. I noticed the porcelain phone at the house on the other side of the road, told them the news and got the advice, "Why do you bother? They will see to it"

Who are they?

via Balhanuman Blog

Apples and Oranges

Image via Wikipedia

I am happy to be writing a post here at last- this is not much, but at least it is a beginner.

Please look at the left sidebar. What do you see? Something called Apples and Oranges, right?

I am proud to say that I turned developer and built that widget, right from scratch, thanks to Wolfram Alpha. It helps you compare two objects of the same class: apples and oranges, nile and amazon, london and paris, sampras and nadal and so on.

But Soulberry and Balajhi, I am sorry to say you can't compare Tendulkar and Dravid with this widget: it is perhaps a silent acknowledgement from Wolfram Alpha that the two belong to a different class.

Wolfram Alpha, gentlemen, seems to be deaf and blind to what you'd expect the ordinary American is deaf and blind to.

Rather unfortunate, you'd accept, when  you consider that China and India together would generate many more queries that what United States of America does now or in some future time.

Let's hope they go global.

In the meantime, enjoy - I compared Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt and came up with some pretty meagre results: a couple of photos would have enriched it, I think.

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