If you want to know what it means, read this paper. It's one of the reasons why I am grateful I am not a male.
And guys, if you have an urge to do manly home improvement stuff, dispose of the flammable stuff properly before snuffing out your cigarettes. Your buttcheeks will thank you.
So if you have bacillophobia, kindly remove all those romantic notions of capturing snowflakes on your tongue or scampering about in the rain a la Gene Kelly.
Yesterday morning, I was caught in an explicable jam along a 1 km stretch long enough to read at least 80 pages of my novel. If you saw a female person who was absorbedly reading while bopping her head absently to whatever was on the speaker while driving in Petaling Jaya, it is likely it was me.
I am sure that many of us, when caught in a traffic snarl, often wishes we were on the other lane. The magical lane next to ours are often moving at a miraculously speedier clip than our own sluggish ooze. But somehow, once you changed lane into said magical lane (after suitably indicating with the car signal, naturally), the magic disappears and the lane you vacated appear to be moving faster than when you were queueing along in it.
Why does this happen? Is it Murphy's Law? Is it God's wrath?
Mathematically, this is the explanation.
In other words: You can never win in a traffic jam.
Ever feel like the information overload is avalanching you? The Internet has changed the way information is being disseminated and traded. Add something like Wikileaks to the mix and you have a real smorgasbord of information and data to analyse and process; some of them more raw than a mooing steak on a plate.
Those in the scientific field are quite used to this; after all it is their job to generate data and then crunch it to create another piece to the puzzle of the universe (and then bend over backwards trying to fit it into the story). Most of us are the end-users who swallow and accept whatever conclusion that has been generated by someone else; be it political information, or economic and financial tips or even sports statistic.
Data crunching oftentimes lead to dry numbers and incomprehensible graphs.
Displaying information in a way that is attractive, elegant and comprehensible takes a great deal of patience, creativity and hard work. Thus, I doff my hat off to Mr. David McCandless. His ability to condense a great deal of information into concise, attractive graphics that convey the message directly with clarity and objectivity is amazing.
Here are some of his work (ganked from his website) for you to enjoy and admire.