World Athletics Championships 2007 in Osaka - Jamaican 200 metres runner Usain Bolt. Author: Eckhard Pecher (Arcimboldo)

In the wake of the Usain Bolt’s amazing race earlier this week in which he smashed the world 100m sprint record with an incredible 9.58 dash, we thought it would be interesting to crunch some numbers on the fastest men in history.

Who, we wondered, has run the most of the top 50 100m sprint times in history, and how do the rest compare. The first graphic shows you that a handful of runners dominate this top 50 list.

The next graphic is worth having a look at as it groups the athletes who have run the top 50 times and you can see how Bolt is in a completely different league to rest. It is also interesting to note that the much touted Tyson Gay seems to be a bit of an also ran. It is incredible to see the performance of Asafa Powell in these graphs. Not being much of a sports fan, I wonder if his achievements in history have been properly recognised?

It makes you wonder. Should we recognise people for a single great achievement or for the sum of their achievements?

Popularity: 3% [?]

click to see this shocker!

I have terrible news. The Gods of Twitter have given me the snip. I’m outta there. I’m gone. And I don’t know why.

The first hint that something really bad had happened came when I tried to check on my Twitter buddies from twhurl on my office PC. I kept getting a “can’t authenticate” error. After head-butting my monitor a couple of times I logged on to my Twitter account using a browser – and discovered THIS! (see screengrab)

My account has been suspended for “strange activity”. I can tweet no more it seems.  Of course, I surfed like lightening over to the support page to find out what the hell was going on. There I learned:

1. Account suspension occurs when an account is flagged for suspicious activity. One or more of these things may cause an account to be suspended:
2. Terms of Service Violations
3. Technical Abuse
4. Spam Investigation

As far as I know I am not guilty of any of these horrid tweets against humanity. But I did notice over the last 24 hours that somehow tweets claiming one could “gain 500 followers in a day” were emanating from my account. There were two of them.

I have not had a chance to investigate how this as happened. I didn’t figure two of these things could get you suspended – 200 for sure, 50 maybe, 20 perhaps. But two?

I presume this is what has caused my account to be suspended but I cannot be sure. Did I maybe auto-tweet one blog post too many or what?

Now, in the society where I live – even here in deepest, darkest South Africa – there is something called natural justice. If I am accused of something,  I can expect to be presented with the charges. I can mount a defence or provide an explanation. But not, it seems, in the Twitterverse.

I have no idea what I am guilty of and have been provided with no opportunity to defend myself. I have sent a beseeching “ticket” to Twitter support. Will they respond? Gods of Twitter, can you hear me?

I have spend dozens of hours building my Twitter audience of over 1000 followers and now that is all gone it seems in a single arbitary moment.

I will report further from the wilderness as I attempt to find my way back into the Twitterdom.

Farewell, fair cruelty. I know not if we shall meet again.

By Andrew Trench, husband to Grubstreet Gal, Daily Dispatch editor – and formerly a twitizen known as @trencha

Popularity: 7% [?]

A lot is said about the different leadership styles and personalities of former SA president Thabo Mbeki and the man who tossed him out and became president, Jacob Zuma.

Mbeki is seen as an aloof, international stateman, disconnected from domestic issues and his constituency while Zuma is regarded as a man of the people with a more down-to-earth style more concerned with basic issues than global affairs.

Grubstreet crunched two key speeches of the two producing a Word Cloud showing the emphasis on ideas and words within the two speeches. The speeches we chose were Mbeki’s famous "I am an African" speech from 1996 and Zuma’s inauguration speech from May 2009 which also received favourable commentary.

 Comparing the two in this way is quite fascinating. Are they as different as we think?

Give the visualisations a couple of moments to load once you have clicked on them.

Popularity: 74% [?]