David Barber
No image available
/ 21 July 2005

Duh! Study shows TV really is an idiot box

That television set in the corner really is an idiot box, New Zealand researchers have found. A 30-year study of more than 1 000 children has found that those who watch the most TV are least likely to go to university and get a degree. The seven percent of children who watched the box for under an hour daily were the most qualified by the time they were aged 26.

No image available
/ 5 February 2004

In the grip of orchid madness

Why would two highly respected men — one a professor of medicine, the other a government inspector — travel halfway round the world to dig up plants in a foreign country and risk spending three years in jail? The answer is that they were in the grip of ”orchidelirium”, an obsession with orchids.