Mark, mummy and the mystery millions
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When detectives raided Sir Mark Thatcher&#39;s R30-million mock-Tudor mansion in Constantia, the first thing that would have raised eyebrows was the size of his personal safe.
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Iâm suspicious of sequels. They can be rotten at their core, like reeling in a wealthy elderly spouse - not to carry on a legacy, but to carry off the money.
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Thu 25th Nov, 11:25 AM. Orienteers love a puzzle and a fascinating new theory has highlighted a centuries old enigma on the doorstep of next yearâs JK.
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In March 2002, I made a bet with Martin Nisenholtz about the relative importance of weblogs and the New York Times. I was and am a blogger, and Martin worked then, as he does now, for the Times. For the actual terms of the bet, read the piece on the LongNow site, and a story I wrote to announce the bet. A few comments.  1. It seems now is the time to decide who won the bet, if either of us did. 2. The world that I hoped would come about did not. While blogs have broken many stories, they have not, in general, turned into the authoritative sources I hoped they would in 2002. When the blogosphere resembles journalism it's often the tabloid kind.  3. I wouldn't mind losing the bet. That is, I wouldn't mind if the Times fully embraced the web, and I suspect Martin wouldn't mind if blogs rose to the quality of the Times. 4. If the bet had been held a year later, it seems there would be a pretty good chance that Martin would have won the bet because they recently took down the firewall at the Times, allowing search engines to index the full content. In the past, articles would remain visible for a couple of weeks then you'd have to pay money to access them. I believe they have a special deal with Google and other crawlers that allow them to get past the membership wall. For most of 2007 the Times articles were behind the firewall, and were less likely to be pointed to (which is how they rise in rank at Google). 5. It certainly is fun to speculate, but the decision about who won belongs exclusively to the Long Now Foundation. They have to decide who determines what the top stories of 2007 are, and imho they should consult with search experts to determine how to do the queries. Apparently it makes a difference how you do it.  But ultimately it's their decision. 6. Whether Wikipedia has more or less results seems to be a sidebar to the bet, which only talks about blogs and the Times. 7. Another interesting sidebar is rich media. In 2002, before podcasting had taken hold, before YouTube existed, it would have been hard to forsee the story of the South Carolina beauty queen, or the Don't Tase Me Bro guy. Questions about the future are always framed in the context of the past. Did the question Martin and I asked have any value in 2007, or did it just say something about the world of 2002?   Update: Paul Boutin who arranged the bet, apparently in conjunction with Google (I didn't know this) in 2002, weighs in.
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A tooth found in a relic box led archaeologists to identify a long-overlooked mummy as that of Egypt's most powerful female pharoah &#151; possibly the most significant find since King Tutankhamun's tomb was uncovered in 1922, experts said Wednesday.
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Kid Nation premiered last Wednesday, and the show was, for lack of  a better term, fascinating. It was formulaic and, well, just plain bad. But it was also fascinating. In case you missed it, the premise revolves around sending 40 children to a ghost town in New Mexico for 40 days. The ages of the children range from 8-15, with the majority lying somewhere in the 10-12 range. Once there, the kids will have no supervision beyond that of a couple of camera crew and the host, Jonathan Karsh, who comes and goes randomly, but always to help the kids on their path.    There's all kinds of hullabaloo about whether or not it's ethical to take kids and simply drop them off in the middle of nowhere. Though they immediately showed the largest factor in the parents' decision to let these kids on to a TV show that could do a mind job on them for years: A gold star (cute) worth $20,000. A star is handed out by the "town council" at every meeting, so presumably about 5 kids will go home with prize money. My guess is that at least one of them will also win some ridiculous prize at the end of the show...say a million bucks.    I'd like to say that's where the show gets "better", but it doesn't. On this show no one gets voted off, and everyone's going home a winner.
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By Tom LochnerLegend is full of unsolved mysteries of ships that vanish without a trace. Port Costa offers a variation on the theme: the ship that appeared, apparently out of nowhere.
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The PM&#39;s populism, and his place in history, has been challenged by Mark Latham, writes Robert Manne. One of the most curious features of the current election campaign auction - where the bids of both main
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A fabled fossil goes on view for the first time in decades  -  and ignites a controversy
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The Uefa president gets up to a lot more than we thought according to your efforts. This week's lucky winner is David Squires, who wins a Â£100 bet with BlueSquare. Second prize, Carlton Books's The England Cricket Miscellany, goes to John O'Reilly. Next week we want to see your takes on Lord Coe's Olympic logo shenanigans. Send them to gallery@guardian.co.uk by 6pm on Tuesday June 12 as a jpeg or gif, complete with a TITLE and CAPTION. Anybody who forgets will be made to listen to Sir Alex Ferguson's iPod.
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Gordon Rugg cracked the 400-year-old mystery of the Voynich manuscript. Next up: everything from Alzheimer's to the origins of the universe. By Joseph D'Agnese from Wired magazine.
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By NO BYLINE  Some of our favourite things on the world wide web at the moment...   WHEN KILLER PLANTS RULED BRITAINwww.youtube.com/watch?vPART two in an occasional "when they made proper scary telly" nostalgia series: Day of the Triffids.
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The scientific world has just been given an amazing new insight into the complexities of human evolution. A team of Indonesian and Australian scientists has discovered fossils of a new human
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HAMISH ROBERTSON: Now to new claims this morning linking the deadly cancer mesothelioma to a commercial organisation. But in this case it&#39;s not James Hardie that&#39;s under the spotlight, but the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories.
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Forensic science experts from the Metropolitan police have been helping Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann to compile the sort of evidence from mobile phone records that solved the Soham murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
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A single tooth and some DNA clues appear to have âpositively identifiedâ the mummy of Hatshepsut, a great queen of ancient Egypt, who reigned in the 15th century B.C.
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A cat cloned to replace a dead pet for a Texas woman stirs ethical debate. Also: Scientists discover monster cockroach and mini crab in Indonesia.... EU caves in on stronger fishing limits.... and more.