News Bites

Sudoku Championships
The independent Newspaper launches its second Sudoku championships in Great Britain. The article claims that the Sudoku craze that swept the nation in 2005 is still going strong and shows no signs of flagging. Channel 4 notes that Sudoku is the "seventh most popular" search term on the internet. The ever popular rubiks cube has had a Sudoku make over and the M4 motorway has been graced with its own statue of the worlds largest Sudoku grid 275ft by 275ft. My question though is who is helping to sustain this popularity? For the past n number of years there have been reports about the decline of mathematics in schools and Universities. Some have claimed "We are less and less numerate as a nation, just at the time we need mathematical skills to stay competitive in the global market." whereas other have professed that "In fact, mathematics in Britain could become extinct over the next few decades because fewer people are studying mathematics as each year passes, which means there will be fewer people who can teach it, so even fewer will be able to study it and eventually the tradition of Brits doing clever things with numbers will disappear forever". So I have to really ask myself who are these 'Sudokuist' that are driving the craze? Is Britain really brainier than it thinks? Or is it that maths as a subject bores us but as an art form it excites us? PS Im into Kakuro. More info on maths decline here or here or here.

Easter Egg scam

So you pop over to the local grocery store/supermarket to grab the Sunday paper when you notice that Easter eggs are on a promotion. Oh you say to yourself, my little cousins would love these. So you pick up three boxes and head for the tills. You pay for the eggs and the paper and the store clerk packs then into a bag for you. "Oh" she says the eggs are bigger this year so we can only get two boxes in a carrier bag. "Score" you think to yourself. Not that you bought Easter eggs last year or you remember how much it cost last year, the main fact was that it is bigger than last year's and it is on promotion. So you get home put two aside for your cousins and leave the third in the living room. After dinner you are feeling a peckish and your eye darts over to the Easter egg. Well you could have half now and half next Sunday you tell yourself as you tear open the box. You open the box only to find out that the box maybe bigger but the actual egg has reduced in size. Yeah you have been had in the great Easter egg scam.

£85 Sandwich
Now I have had some expensive sandwiches but £85 for a sandwich? Apparently the sandwich is made of Wagyu beef that demands it its hefty price tag. Full story here. Photo from Yahoo.

Men think about sex whilst women think about?

Their bodies. Yep their size and shape. Researchers at Grazia magazine claim that the average woman thinks about her body more often than a man thinks about sex. According to the article in the Metro the least popular parts of a woman's body was her thighs and 7 out of 10 women think their lives would improve if they had better bodies. While men were suppose to think of sex every 20 minutes, women worried about their shape every 15 minutes. Interestingly Nike just put out an advert about thighs as shown in the photo. Click photo to zoom