This Week I Learned -
* The Azure Spring Cloud offering is created and managed jointly by Microsoft and VMware, the company that builds the Spring Framework. Spring Cloud provides support both for OS and JVM updates and patches, such as Azure App Service, and for advanced Spring services.
* Data stories are similar to just regular stories. You see a question and try and answer it with data. Sometimes the data to answer that question exists, sometimes it doesn’t.
* An analysis of 24000+ Bollywood songs from 1950-2017 with D3.js
* The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars that gives browned food its distinctive flavor. Seared steaks, fried dumplings, cookies and other kinds of biscuits, breads, toasted marshmallows, and many other foods undergo this reaction. It is named after French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, who first described it in 1912 while attempting to reproduce biological protein synthesis. In the cooking process, Maillard reactions can produce hundreds of different flavor compounds depending on the chemical constituents in the food, on the temperature, the cooking time, and the presence of air. These compounds, in turn, often break down to form yet more flavor compounds. Flavor scientists have used the Maillard reaction over the years to make artificial flavors.
* Cataract is responsible for about 51% of world blindness. Cataract is the leading cause of reversible blindness and visual impairment worldwide.
* Cucumbers look enough like a snake to have the cat's instinctive fear of snakes kick in. This instinctive fear of snakes can cause cats to panic. Snakes, on the other hand, tend to become frightened with cats and will try to avoid them if they can.
* Sri Lankan cartoonist Awantha Artigala relies heavily on the use of symbolism and idiom to voice his largely wordless critique of government. The politicians often don sunglasses, look well-fed and smug, while their constituents stand deprived and quivering – they never know everything that’s going on, but they know enough to be afraid. He is an optimist at heart, and wants nothing more than to make his readers think. Artigala says he relishes the prospect not only to change minds but have his own changed in return. Artigala, who knows his chosen profession is one unlikely ever to pay well, says they intend to live a simple life. Back home in his village, however, his neighbours haven’t quite reconciled themselves to his profession – on this last visit, one told him gently, “son, its time you get a real job.”
* Sri Lanka's largest ethnic group is the Sinhalese, constituting 74.9% of the population of 21 million. The Sri Lankan Tamils are the largest ethnic minority at 11.1% of the population. The Muslims are third at 9.3% and the Indian Tamils amounting for 4.1% of Sri Lanka’s population. Smaller minority groups include the Malays, Burghers (descendants of Portuguese, Dutch, British and other European settlers), Chetties and the Veddahs. 70.2% of the population practice Buddhism & it is considered as the "official religion" of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese follow Buddhism while Tamils are Hindus in Sri Lanka. The Portuguese were the first European colonial power to arrive in Sri Lanka in 1505. Sri Lanka gained independence from the British in 1948. Sri Lanka’s first Prime Minister was D.S. Senanayake, a Sinhalese Buddhist. Sri Lanka's more recent history was marred by a 26-year civil war, which began in 1983 and ended decisively in 2009; when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Grizzled giant squirrel is Sri Lanka's national animal.
* Sri Lanka is the world's 2nd largest exporter of tea.
* "In these days of oversharing, if you're planning to browse the "memoir" listings on Amazon, make sure you're in a comfortable chair, because that search term produces about 40,000 hits, or 60,000, or 160,000, depending on how you execute it. Memoirs have been disgorged by virtually any-one who has ever had cancer, been anorexic, battled depression, lost weight. By anyone who has ever taught an underprivileged child, adopted an under-privileged child or been an under-privileged child. By anyone who was raised in the '60s, '70s or '80s, not to mention the '50s, '40s or '30s. Owned a dog. Run a marathon. Found religion. Held a job." - Neil Gezlinger, New York Times Book Review
* Historically, companies had to prove their profitability before they could attract massive outside funds from investors....now global venture capital and private equity funds (like Softbank) have sprung up, ready to channel trillions into promising start-ups across the world that have the ideas and verve to become giants. This enables them to grow at breakneck speed, and some reach billion-dollar status in just seven years. They focus on expansion without having to worry about profitability. The new breed of investors is betting on revenue growth that entails huge losses in the short run but massive profits in the long run. ....fast growing start-ups called unicorns...have an estimated worth of over a billion dollars even before listing on stock markets....Many of the most promising unicorns are in the Software as a Service (SaaS) sector, also called cloud application services....an Indian company, Freshworks, which provides Software as a Service (SaaS), had an initial public share issue in the US at a price instantly making crorepatis of 500 staff members owning shares, of whom 69 were under 30 years. Within days, the market price rose from $36 to $47, creating even more crorepatis. Far from concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, the explosive growth of unicorns is spreading wealth in ways earlier inconceivable. The world has over 800 unicorns. India has over 50 by conventional measures. Many critics think India (and the world) have too many billionaires and want to reduce the number to check wealth disparities. I would go in the opposite direction, creating thousands of new crorepatis year after year. That too will reduce disparities, and reduce the Gini coefficient (which measures inequality). It means levelling up, not levelling down - Swaminomics
* Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire in the 14th century that ruled for over 200 years. The Vijayanagara Empire was defeated by a coalition of Muslim Sultanates; its capital was conquered, pillaged and destroyed by Sultanate armies in 1565, after which Hampi remained in ruins. Hampi's ruins are spread over 4,100 hectares (16 sq mi). The ruins of Hampi were surveyed in 1800 by Scottish Colonel Colin Mackenzie, first Surveyor General of India.
* The activist misanthrope is driven by hope despite his negative appraisal of humanity. This hope is based on the idea that it is possible and feasible for humanity to transform itself and the activist works actively towards this ideal. Misanthropy has also been ascribed to a number of writers of satire, such as William S. Gilbert ("I hate my fellow-man") and William Shakespeare (Timon of Athens). Jonathan Swift is widely believed to have been misanthropic (see A Tale of a Tub and, most especially, Book IV of Gulliver's Travels). Poet Philip Larkin has been described as a misanthrope.
* 95% of Egyptians live along the fabled Nile river's life-giving banks and arc-shaped delta. While the official national dish is koshary (a vegetarian medley of rice, chickpeas, macaroni and lentils) most Egyptians consider molokhia ("mo-lo-h-i-a") to be the country's emblematic meal. The earthy and grassy flavoured at-home dish is ordinarily eaten in the evening – paired with rice, bread or meat. However, some purists (and children) will consume molokhia neat, as a lunchtime soup. Originating from the word mulukia, which means "that which belongs to the royals", legend has it that a healing soup made from the molokhia plant nursed an Egyptian ruler back to health in the 10th Century. - BBC Culinary Roots
* One definition of vegetarian - "if it had a mother, it was not getting eaten"
* Meat consumption in South and Northeast India is highest in the country, while it is lowest in North India.
* While most common spices were brought into the country by explorers and invaders (chilli from South America and cumin from the Eastern Mediterranean region, for instance), turmeric is native to India. Turmeric, which is from the same family as ginger, is cultivated in several states in India, with the country accounting for more than 75% of the world’s production. Turmeric gets both its bright yellow colour and its purported health benefits from the chemical component called curcumin.
* Vada pav is believed to have been invented in 1966 by a Mumbaikar, Ashok Vaidya, who opened the first vada pav stall opposite the Dadar train station, through which hundreds of thousands of workers – often in need of a quick, inexpensive snack – passed every day on their way to the textile mills in suburbs such as Parel and Worli. Both of vada pav’s main components – the potato and the bun – are European imports, brought into India by the Portuguese around the 17th Century.
* In the town of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, a dosai recipe is depicted on the walls of Varadaraja Perumal Temple. Dosai has been part of the Indian temple cuisine for a long time.
* Egypt was continually governed, at least in part, by native pharaohs for approximately 2500 years. As ancient Egyptian rulers, pharaohs were both the heads of state and the religious leaders of their people. As the religious leader of the Egyptians, the pharaoh was considered the divine intermediary between the gods and Egyptians. Tutankhamun who is considered one of the greatest pharaohs died when he was 19 years of age. Cats were not worshipped as gods themselves, but as vessels that the gods chose to inhabit, and whose likeness gods chose to adopt
* Khufu (Greek form: Cheops / Suphis I) built the Great Pyramid of Giza. Khafre's pyramid is the second largest in Giza. Ancient Greek authors describe Khafra as likewise cruel as Khufu. Menkaure's pyramid is the third and smallest in Giza.
* In modern usage, the stand-alone use of "Cleopatra" with no ordinal number usually refers to Cleopatra VII, the Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, and its last active ruler. Committed suicide. Cleopatra VII had affairs with Roman dictator Julius Caesar and Roman general Mark Antony, but it was not until after her suicide (after Mark Antony was defeated by Octavian, who would later be Emperor Augustus Caesar) that Egypt became a province of the Roman Republic in 30 BC. Subsequent Roman emperors were accorded the title of pharaoh, although exclusively while in Egypt. Although most likely later pro-Octavian propaganda, it was reported that prior to Octavian setting out to invade Egypt, Cleopatra started testing the strengths of various poisons on prisoners and even her own servants.
* The word quixotic ("kwuhk·saa·tuhk") is not pronounced like Quixote ("kee·how·tee") because it is an anglicization of the Spanish spelling, the English word obtains only its etymology from the name of a character from Spanish fiction.
* Onomatopoeia ("o·nuh·ma·tuh·pee·uh") refers to the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g. cuckoo, sizzle ).
* A reductive argument won't win a debate, because it tries to make a complex issue much too simple.
* Enunciation is from the Latin word enuntiationem, meaning “declaration.” Enunciation is more than pronouncing words clearly; it’s expressing them well, too. No one would mutter a declaration! People with excellent enunciation (also known as diction) are likely to end up broadcasters, announcers, actors, or in other jobs that require public speaking. Politicians need to have good enunciation. People who mumble or speak too quickly have poor enunciation: it's hard to understand them, because their words slur together.
* Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings
* "The more we have, the more we want" - Dan Ariely
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