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Life Magazine has picked the best photos of the year. The squeamish may wish to avoid the Science section featuring the birth of Sarah. You have been warned.

Word detective traces the origins of strange words. For instance, Yahoo means an ignorant brute. Hamburgers have nothing to do with ham — they’re so called because they come from Hamburg, Germany. Beefeaters are the guards at the The Tower of London (Yeomen guards). Word detective doesn’t know why they’re called that, but I can confirm first-hand that the Yeomen guards don’t know why themselves.

I haven’t done ANY work in the last week, except play Moria. I’ve deleted it. But not before I got to Level 26, could cast a Fire Bolt spell, and slayed a few dragons.

Since 1995, I’ve been playing a game called Moria. It’s based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It’s a text-based game, but it’s amazingly addictive.

A busy weekend ahead. A night of Antakshari, followed by a day at Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, an evening at The Phantom of the Opera, and to cap it off, Madame Tussauds and the London Planetarium!

I hope to tour Europe next week. The Backpack Traveller tells me about rail travel, and Eurolines about bus. Of course, there’s a lot to see in London.

A whole new range of domain names, ranging from .museums to .sansansan have been bid for. I wonder who .biz and .xxx will go to.

Business Week’s B-School rankings ranks LBS as the #2 non-US school (behind INSEAD). IIM-A is not listed even in the third tier, while IIM-B is not even included in their survey.

ePrarthana.com lets you do your puja online. That’s what I call true disintermediation. No pujari anymore — they do the puja for you, and you get the benefit. More details at CNET.

Business India’s business school rankings seem surprising. I’ll check with LBS and ask them what they think.