According to a recent book, there are only 22 countries that Britain hasn’t invaded, our of the 196 or so in the world. So they’ve invaded the vast majority. The author defines invasion as military presence, including state sanctioned piracy. It’s an impressive/depressive record, depending on how you look at it.

Halik’s been on a good blogging run lately, check him out for good street and high-level ecoenomics. On the latter, this is his infographic on the state of Sri Lankan trade in 2012, so far. Basically we import a lot more than we export, which isn’t exactly new. It’s just that this year the balance of trade is worse than the last.

This meme by Nadun Basnayake, via Sri Lankan Memes, isn’t stunning, but it describes the state of Sri Lankan higher education pretty well. The social contract is basically broken. The more educated you are, the higher you’re unemployment. Basically, if you study hard and do what you’re supposed to, you’ll be screwed. It’s crazy pants.

Halik has made this great infographic on Sri Lanka’s GDP growth in the first quarter of 2012. It explains, what GDP growth is, how we compare to other countries, and how individual sectors are doing (services, manufacturing, agriculture). I’ve featured only a section here. Please check out the whole thing, it’s enlightening.

This fascinating graph shows the relative shares of world GDP since Jesus. What’s interesting is that in the literal anno domini, India was the world’s economic superpower, followed by China (insomuch as those modern borders existed). Then gradually Europe rises and the colony of America blows up out of nowhere. The Atlantic has an interesting, multi-part analysis of this data, but I think they leave one thing out. They never discuss colonialism whereby the European went to India and China and took a lot of the wealth out.

Boycy was asking me if Christianity or Islam was bigger (it’s Christianity). Looking it up, I was shocked at what’s number 3. Irreligion. What?

The Wiki page on Sri Lanka’s 14th Parliament doesn’t just list the party MPs are in, it lists what party they were elected under as well. There are so many crossovers, largely because the opposition is so deeply fractured. Traditionally, the UNP (despite also being involved in the 1983 riots) is the UNITED NATIONAL Party, ie, at election time, most minority parties come under their umbrella. Under seemingly permanent bad leadership, however, these parties have left the tent.

In Asian or Sri Lankan cooking, we put a lot of diverse ingredients into a dish. Salt, chili, curry leaves, coconut milk, onions, garlic, green chili. That’s just the base for many Sri Lankan recipes, before you start adding distinctive stuff. In western food, by contrast, the base is less, and less diverse. This seems apparent anecdotally, and also now scientifically. A chemical study has shown that Asian dishes incorporate more diverse flavors than western ones.

As a bit of a data geek, I found this hilarious. This graph from Businessweek shows examples where correlation (two trends that look similar) is not causation (trend A did not cause trend B). I’ve included the funniest one above, but there’s more.

Consider this an info-layout. This shows the size of India’s Internet population, how many are on mobile, Facebook, and a map showing electrification for color.