Further, with the spread of IT influencing the daily life of individuals, there would be a devastating effect if there were any small shift in the business practice involving these proprietary solutions.

A worthwhile New Year resolution would be to read the book, because when 2004 is born we would be closer to the 2020 deadline.

Info for your database

THE only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable. If you mouth the word `colourful' to someone, it looks like you are saying, `I love you'.

Just one thousand words make up 90 per cent of all writing. No word in the English language rhymes with orange, silver or month. `Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters `mt'. Queue is the only word in the English language to be pronounced the same way even if the last four letters are removed. There are only two words in the English language ending in `gry': hungry and angry.

You can find all this and more in That Book by Mitchell Symons, from Bantam Press. A book `quite unlike anything you have ever read'. It is `frighteningly addictive and almost entirely useless information is packed onto every page.' Try some more:

Stewardess is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. Ophyron is the space between your eyebrows and rasceta are the creases on the inside of your wrist. Armsate is the hole in a shirt or a jumper through which you put your hand and arm. Columella is the bottom part of the nose that separates the nostrils.

French fries originated in Belgium not France. 7-Up was named so by the inventor who had already rejected six names for his product. The funny bone isn't a bone, it's a nerve. Guinea pigs aren't pigs and nor are they from Guinea; they're South American rodents. Peanuts aren't nuts, they're legumes.

The average person's heart beats 36 million times a year. A quarter of 206 bones in the human body are in the feet. The average person is a quarter of an inch taller at night. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

The human sneeze travels at 600 mph. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. Your tongue-print is as unique as your fingerprints.

If you yelled for eight years, seven months and six days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. When we blush, our stomach lining also turns red. On one square inch of our skin there are 20 million microscopic animals.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee; of these, only 26 have been tested, and half of them caused cancer in rats.

Cut an onion in half, rub it on the sole of your foot and an hour later you'll taste onion in your mouth. Britney Spears and Anna Kournikova have both had computer viruses named after them.

If you believe information is power, you would know where to find this book.

Men in doubt

DOUBT means hesitation, uncertainty, reservation, misgiving, distrust, disbelief, qualm, suspicion, scepticism and so on.

But Jennifer Michael Hecht celebrates it as "an engine of creativity and as an alternative to the political and intellectual dangers of certainty". Her book Doubt: A History, from HarperSanFrancisco, is about the great doubters and their legacy of innovation. A quick tour:

In fact, there is no reason for them not to be happy. Death is no problem, he said. Because when we are alive we are not dead and when we are dead we don't know it. So long as you can possibly worry about it, you've got nothing to worry about.

As Marcus Aurelius explained, the brains that got you through the troubles you have had so far will get you through any troubles yet to come.

Any doubts?

(Books courtesy: Landmark, Chennai. www. landmarkonthenet.com)

Tailpiece

"When the tail wags the head... "

"That is when you need to cut off the tail!"

"No, we need to swap the head and the tail."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication