Birthdays

My friend bragged about the people she shares her birthday with. That prompted me to look up who share my birthday with. It was interesting to note a pattern. For example, among the worthy people who share my birthday, many were artists - painters, musicians, etc. On the other hand, my friends' birthday is shared by a lot of notable mathematicians.

I didn't look deeper but is there any correlation between the date of birth and field of excellence? Some work has been done to explain say why lot of the professional athletes were born earlier in the year. Taking cues from that, may be due to the weather say around a baby's 1st birthday, he/she was either playing outside, or painting the landscape or learning math because it is gloomy or thinking of stories inspired by the snow. May be.
Again, this theory needs to be vetted by comparing people with birthdays in the same month. Which would only validate the sun signs claims of people behaving in certain manners based on the date on which they were born.

To check who were born on your birthdate, check here. Wikipedia rocks. Can't imagine any other site having this information for every day in a year.

Sports Entertainment

Should athletes play their game or entertain? While Pete Sampras played the best possible tennis, Andre Agassi entertained. Andre had a personality and I wanted to watch him play. He winning was not given. He had to fight for it. He went up and down during the game and as a fan of his, I participated in his mini wins and failures. He was a human who was struggling and yet, through his efforts, did pretty well for himself. Also, his off court performances only added to his personality and his likability.

Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, on the other hand, are almost like god created. They come to a match. They go through their motions. They win. They played and play the best damn tennis possible. Great. I don't know about others, but I am not looking for tennis lessons or how to hit the perfect cross court inside out fore hand. I am looking to be entertained. And I am going to vote with my remote. The US Open mens finals was not fun to watch. I channel surfed occasionally dropping by to check the score. Roger Federer, with his skills and records, sucks the suspense out of the game. It is almost given he will win. Instead, I really liked the game between Tommmy Haas and James Blake (round of 16 - 4-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-0, 7-6 (4)) where Blake lost after having 3 match points. That is what I call a true thriller that no Hollywood can make with any amount of retakes and scripting.

The purest might balk at this, but a perfect athlete is not very entertaining. Rather, a good entertaining athlete is one who is not too perfect. Some one who sometimes lets his emotions take over. Some one who knows how involve the crowd, provide the surprise element even in routine affairs. Some one who wins most of the time, but not always. Some one who is not too far above the 2nd best.

iPod Touch & Starbucks

Much is going to be said and written about the latest offering from Apple. While the wifi connection, the interface, etc. are impressive, one thing that stood out for me was the ability to sit at a Starbucks, listen to the song being played there, click an icon on my iPod and buy it instantly. That is instant gratification. I think that is closest we are today to thinking about buying something and executing it online with a single click. One click on your music player and boom you own a song that you were listening to on a public system - no knowledge of the song, artist, etc necessary. That is awesome.
Of course, some months back, this technology was introduced by Motorola:
MotoID: "The application works like this. If you are at a club or in your car and a song comes on that you like, but you don’t know the name, you hold up your phone, open the MotoID application and click the identify button. Motorola said it takes only a few seconds to identify the song, artist and album. Then if available, the user will also have the option to download the song’s ringtone, screensaver or wallpaper."

So, looks like Apple could have done better. I am wondering why this tie up with Starbucks and not something like MotoID over wifi - connect to iTunes over wifi (when available else remember the song till wifi is available) and give the option to buy the song. Now, that would be way cooler.