Archive for October, 2009
The world’s most expensive objects: by weight (II)
The search, it seems, may be at an end. Two months ago, we compared the cost of several high-value objects - the Gherkin, a Trident nuclear missile, truffles, etc - by their weight, and discovered that diamonds, at £34,450,000 per kg, comfortably held off Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks as the world’s most expensive stuff.
So [...]
How the Times predicted the World Wide Web in 1968
Hindsight can be very unfair.
The above graph - from a 1968 article in The Times - shows the predictions made by one UK computer company about when the nation would hit certain milestones along the way to its bright, digital future.
There are, predictably enough, a few clangers. International Computers Limited (ICL) foresaw a ‘national data [...]
Uganda: a ticking population timebomb
In the Eighties, when his country was at war with Iraq, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, spoke of wanting to create an army “20 million strong”, and implored Iran’s women to reproduce. A decade later, officials realised it may not be wise to have an apparently infinite flow of people into the country’s labour market, [...]
Why we think honey and coffee smell unpleasant
There are two evolutionary reasons for having a nose, runs one theory. The first is to ascertain whether it would be safe to put something in your mouth - to gauge edibility. The second is to advise about whether it would be a good idea to run away - to sense danger, in other words. [...]
How many BNP members in your constituency?
Yesterday, for the second time in as many years, the full details of the current BNP membership list were leaked online.
Reporters, predictably, had great fun picking through it. (What are the five most common names of BNP members? David, Paul, John, Michael, Peter etc.) From a data point of view, though, there were some unique [...]
Subscribe to Times Labs RSS feed
