Fine art and British Rail may not seem like they have much in common, but for several decades British Rail, through its pension fund, was a major player in the world of fine art. From the
NY Times (Apr 5, 1989):
Between 1974 and 1981, British Rail became Britain's first (and it is believed only) large pension fund to enter the collectibles market, acquiring more than $70 million worth of paintings, prints, drawings, furniture and other top-flight works to supplement more conventional investments as a hedge against inflation, which was extremely high in Britain at the time.
The pension fund began selling its art in 1986, and sold the last of it in 2003.
The Wall Street Journal reported in 1996 that the pension fund made a return of 13.1% per year on its art. Which doesn't seem bad at all. However, its stock portfolio, during the same period, returned 22% a year.
If you're looking for a coffee-table curiosity, there are several books dedicated to the artwork owned by the British Rail pension fund.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority visitor center sells souvenir glass containers full of shredded paper money. Each container (costing $100 HKD) is advertised as containing 138 complete $1000 HKD banknotes.
Researcher Chunt T. Kong set out to determine whether he could use "computer vision" to reconstruct the shredded banknotes. If he could, this would mean that for an investment of $100 HKD he would be able to reconstruct notes worth $138,000 HKD.
He determined that, yes, in theory the banknotes could be reconstructed. But he encountered a few problems:
First, the souvenir containers often contained far fewer than 138 notes. Some had as few as 20 notes in them. He found stones hidden in some of the containers. This, he complained, was false advertising. He noted, "it appears that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has broken the law."
The second problem: "even though the shredded banknote pieces could construct a complete banknote, the serial number may not have come from the same banknote, and there is a high chance that it could not be exchanged for real money."
He didn't address how all the little pieces would be stuck back together. With scotch tape?
But, of course, it was all just a theoretical exercise. Though he says that, having informed the Hong Kong Monetary Authority visitor center of what he did, they're now no longer selling the shredded money.
Aug 1947: Clarence Ellsworth had been saving pennies by dropping them through a crack in his attic floor. Finally, when the number of pennies reached 1,672, the weight of the pennies broke through the ceiling and landed in his living room.
This raises the question: how much did 1,672 pennies weigh?
According to Wikipedia, pennies issued before 1982 each weighed 3.11 grams since they were made from 95% copper. After 1982, the U.S. Mint substituted a copper-plated zinc penny that weighed less.
3.11 times 1,672 comes out to 5200 grams (rounding up) — or approximately eleven and-a-half pounds.
I'm surprised that was enough to break his ceiling. Perhaps there were other issues, such as water damage, that contributed to the break.
According to an online inflation calculator, $16.72 in 1947 money would be worth $234.18 today. And the repairs would have cost approximately $175 (in today's money).
Is a coin toss truly random? Not according to the "D-H-M model" which proposes that a tossed coin is slightly more likely to land on the same side that it started.
To test this model, a team of researchers at the University of Amsterdam arranged for a group of subjects to flip coins a total of 350,757 times. Their conclusion: "the data reveal overwhelming statistical evidence for the presence of same-side bias."
What this means as a money-making strategy:
If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss (i.e., paying 1 dollar to enter, and winning either 0 or 2 dollars depending on the outcome) and repeat the bet 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you 19 dollars on average. This is more than the casino advantage for 6 deck blackjack against an optimal-strategy player, where the casino would make 5 dollars on a comparable bet, but less than the casino advantage for single-zero roulette, where the casino would make 27 dollars on average.
Mention to any friends who are bankers or accountants that science has shown they could have a frontal lobotomy and still do their job, and see how they react.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.