Good news! I’ve done the brainmails for last September and October!!!.They’ll be up next week, but in the meantime here’s a few highlights from the numbers section.

BTW, if you are a regular reader of brainmail (or you were until I got so busy I missed 5 issues!) then I have a question for you. Which bit do you like best – the very short summaries of new ideas and thinking or the statistics?

GO FIGURE:

African farmers grow around 40% of the world’s cashew crop, but only around 10% of the crop is processed locally.
Ref: Economist (UK)

In Mozambique, treatment for diabetes costs 75% of the average wage.
Ref: Prospect (UK)

There are 18.7 million vacant homes in the US.
Ref: Financial Times (UK)

Around 5% of the US population consumes almost 50% of US healthcare spending.
Ref: National Journal (US)

Since 1980, the occurrence of obesity has more than doubled.
Ref: Prospect (UK)

21% of the clients of Dignitas (a Swiss organisation that helps terminally ill people and people with severe mental or physical disabilities to die) have nothing wrong with them. They are simply tired of life.
Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK)

The average fish travels 1,000 miles before it reaches a supermarket shelf in Britain. No human being in Britain lives more than 70 miles from the sea.
Ref: Daily Mail (UK)

On average, every 60-minutes watching TV after the age of 25 reduces a viewer’s life expectancy by 21 minutes.
Ref: British Journal of Sports Medicine (UK)

There are 800 self-storage facilities in the UK, the same as the rest of Europe combined.
Ref: BBC News website (UK)