Author: navin

What waterboarding feels like

Waterboarding is a torture technique that has been in the news recently because the United States Justice Department authorized the use of this technique by the CIA to interrogate suspects. This person on the Straight Dope message boards tried it upon himself and reports on the experience:

So much talk of waterboarding, so much controversy. But what is it really? How bad? I wanted to write the definitive thread on waterboarding, settle the issue. Torture, or not?

To determine the answer, I knew I had to try it.

[…]

So, here’s what I would do. First I would google waterboarding to understand the basic concepts than I would try it on myself. First, self inflicted and then, if necessary, inflicted by my wife.(she has no problem torturing me. We’ve been married almost 15 years.)

These are the results of my research and experience:

I am not going to give away the suspense – read the article yourself.

Babajobs: Linked-in for maids and drivers

Webyantra reports on babajob a site that you can use to find domestic help in your area:

Many urban families are looking for good, trustworthy maids, drivers, chauffeurs and crib they don’t get one, whereas many unskilled laborers are desperately looking for some job. He decided to bridge this digital divide with Babajob, a rural version of LinkedIn. Conceptually all of this looks pretty simple, but operationally, it’s a challenge to bring internet to the local Laxmi or Latha, who can’t even read vernacular, let alone reading English or using computers.

How are they tackling this problem? They pay (INR 200/-) anyone who registers the potential worker; may it be a net café owner, or an NGO, or another employer of the maid. The fees for posting a job is 500/-, but again there is a smart caveat here. They first charge 800/- from you, and only when you inform them whom you hired, they return 300/- out of it, so that they can pay 200/- to the mentor. Moreover the site is also available in Hindi and Kannada, and will be available in other languages as they expand to other cities. As expected, there are a few glitches with font and linguistics there, but they should clear up after a few releases. They have also thrown in a neat Google Maps integration to find maids in your specific area.

Found: here. See this International Herald Tribune article for a fuller treatment.

The secret science of restaurant menus

This is how restaurants get you to spend more:

Smart chefs (or their menu consultants) know that when most of you open a menu, your eyes go right to the top of the page on the right side. And, armed with that knowledge, chefs place the menu item that will give them the most profit at the top of the page. Hence, it soon becomes their biggest seller. Then, your eyes normally drift to the center of the page. That’s where many chefs place their absolutely most expensive item. They do that not because they expect you to buy that item, but because the psychology of menus indicates you’ll probably then look at the items immediately above and below the high ticket item and order one of those. Again, those two items rank second and third for generating profits.

I’ve tested this in a dozen different restaurants – and then asked the chefs about their menus. Sure enough, they’ve admitted the practice. “Millions of dollars have been spent to understand what makes a profitable menu,” one chef told me. “By rearranging the order and relaying it out, it can mean tens of thousands of dollars of additional revenue. It has to do with everything from wording or naming, length of description, the number of columns, visuals of icons and pictures, price points, and not using dollar signs.”

See full article. (Found on Shantanu’s blog.)