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Culture
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South Africa Might Still Get A Warship
19 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
And guess who’s got a finger in that pie? None other than convicted fraudster, Tony Yengeni. Granted it probably won’t be a very big warship, if we can really even call it that, but it has the potential to cost even more than the four frigates we bought as part of the controversial 1999 R60 billion arms deal.
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Brazilian Police Equipped With Facial Recognition Glasses For 2014
19 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
This is sort of like Robocop! Brazilian police forces are testing out glasses fitted out with cameras linked to a central computer network that stores a database of criminal suspects’ faces, so that they’ll be able to arrest people during the 2014 World Cup without having to ask them their names.
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Desmond Tutu Says Johan Kotzé Is No “Monster”
18 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has today written a letter published in The Star newspaper asking that we no longer refer to Johan Kotzé, the Limpopo rape and murder accused, as “the monster from Modimolle”. He says Kotzé is still one of God’s children “with the capacity to become a saint.”
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Google Blacked Out For SOPA Too
18 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Google has joined Wikipedia, BoingBoing and a number of other popular websites in the SOPA protest – not just by ‘blacking out’ their logo, which is cute but largely ineffective, but by putting together a comprehensive and informative infographic on the SOPA bill and piracy, along with access lines for voters to contact members of Congress through.
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Wikipedia Still Accessible, Just Hit ‘Esc’ Key
18 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Wikipedia joined a number of other websites by going offline for 24 hours in an attempt to protest against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. Users see a black screen and a political statement: “Imagine a world without free knowledge,” but if you really need to access the website, just hit the ‘Esc’ key when you land on your desired Wikipedia page.
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Israeli Hackers Take Down Saudi Stock Exchange
18 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In retaliation against Saudi Arabian hacker 0xOmar, who leaked the credit card details of 15 000 Israeli nationals and took down a secondary Tel Aviv stock exchange site last week, Israeli hackers calling themselves the #IDF-team have targeted stock exchanges in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates yesterday.
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Mbeki Questions Twitter’s Social Usefulness, Twitter Flips Out A Little
17 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Following his opening address for the International Knowledge Conference at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, former president, Thabo Mbeki voiced some concerns about Twitter as “a great conveyor of reliable knowledge,” pointing to Gaddafi’s overthrow as a consequence of “false knowledge,” rather than the social media. Mbeki immediately started trending on Twitter.
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Dog Whispering Shaman Exposed
17 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 11 Comments
James Lech, the dog whispering shaman, and so-called “dog behavioural specialist,” appears to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. His pilot television series never made it to air, and a number of incidents of animal abuse have begun to emerge – all painting a dismal picture of the man.
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Rihanna Snapped Smoking A Joint In Hawaii [PICS]
17 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 2 Comments
Pictures of what appears to be Rihanna smoking weed in Hawaii were taken yesterday. Whilst she was puffing the magic dragon, Rihanna also tweeted the lyrics to a Drake song that deals with the world’s most beloved green herb: “Kush rolled, glass full…I prefer the better things!”
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Samsung’s New “Smart Window” [VIDEO]
16 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
There have been plenty of tech announcements over the past few days, what with the Consumer Electronics Show going on in Las Vegas, each one claiming to be more exciting than the last – which gets tedious. So I mean it when I say that, Samsung’s new “Smart Window” is the most exciting thing to come out of CES 2012.
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UK Student Faces Extradition To USA For Copyright Infringement
16 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A UK judge ruled this week that Richard O’Dwyer, an English university student, can be extradited to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement – O’Dwyer being the former administrator of TVShack, a website that linked to pirated content. This sets a dangerous legal precedent for anybody who does anything fun on the internet.
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Top South African Dog Whisperer’s Rottweiler Responsible For Clifton Attack
13 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 47 Comments
Morning spice reported that a dog attacked a two-year-old girl at Clifton’s first beach on Wednesday this morning. It turns out that the same dog whisperer, James Lech, responsible for a dog that mauled a girl in a similar attack last year, is responsible for this latest incident too.
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Dictator Forced To Eat Nando’s At ANC’s Centenary Celebrations
12 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Not everything went according to plan at the ANC’s centenary celebrations over the weekend. Dictator, and Ugandan President, Yuweri Museveni, had to get his security guards to buy him some grilled chicken from Nando’s because there was no food at his accommodation.
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Barack Obama Sings Born This Way [VIDEO]
12 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Once again, YouTube user barackdubs has come up with a winner! This time he places super cut video clip-grabs, featuring Barack Obama, over the backtrack of Lady Gaga’s Born this Way. In other words, it looks and sounds like Obama is actually singing the song. Video after the jump.
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Should We Farm Rhino?
11 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 12 Comments
On the back of the dreadful news that eight rhino carcasses were found in the Kruger National Park within the space of 24 hours the day before yesterday, a South African columnist and well respected journalist has asked whether we should be farming rhino.
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‘Doomsday Clock’ Moved Closer To Midnight
11 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
I’d forgotten that this was something people still did! That metaphorical ‘Doomsday Clock,’ that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists uses to represent the threat of nuclear war, was moved to five minutes to midnight, the closest to doomsday it’s been since North Korea’s 2007 nuclear weapons test.
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iPad Survives 30km Drop From Space [VIDEO]
10 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 8 Comments
It’s nice that companies are willing to go to insane lengths to try and make us buy their things. Take G-Form, who wrapped up an Apple tablet in their ‘Extreme Edge’ case, and launched it into space on a weather balloon before dropping it back to earth to prove how extreme their case really is.
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Greece Classes Pedophilia, Exhibitionism, And Kleptomania As Disabilities
10 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Greek disability groups expressed anger yesterday at a government decision to expand a list of state-recognized disability categories to include pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs. No news yet as to whether or not these people will also qualify for special parking close to schools, playgrounds, and shopping malls.
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NASA Goes Open-Source
09 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
NASA has launched an open-source portal to make it easier for agencies to evaluate and improve upon its projects. The initial setup works as a simple directory of open-sourced projects in development, which is hoped to expand into a platform for tracking, hosting and planning the various pieces of software created by the American space agency.
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Nelson Mandela TV Series On The Horizon
09 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Nelson Mandela’s life story is to be turned into a television mini-series, entitled “Madiba”. Mandela has given his personal approval for a series that will follow six decades of his life, but there’s been no word yet as to whether or not Matt Damon or Morgan Freeman will be involved.
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Full Gallery Of Titanic Items To Be Sold 100 Years After Sinking (PICS)
06 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Titanic has been lying at the bottom of the ocean for nearly a century. On 15 April this year, 5 000 items from the world’s most famous shipwreck will be auctioned off in one lot – on the 100th anniversary of the disaster that took place on April 15, 1912. See some of them after the jump.
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Russian Satellite Will Fall To Earth Next Week
06 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Phobos-Grunt, the 13-ton, US$ 170 million Russian space probe that was launched into orbit and promptly crippled by failed auxiliary engines, is due to crash back onto Earth soon. Russian space authorities have named January 15th as the likely re-entry date. In case you thought that your fears of high-speed orbital debris ended with 2011.
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Rebekah Brooks Is In Cape Town
06 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Rebekah Brooks, the former News International chief, and News of the World editor, is enjoying a sabbatical in Cape Town. Cutting a notably different appearance from the fiery redhead we’re used to, the media mogul has been escaping the phone hacking and corruption scandal that’s followed her around for months.
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Rhino Hunting Permits Are Common Practice In South Africa
04 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
A public and media outcry followed the release of information that a KZN businessman, who has not been identified, made a winning bid of R969 150 for the right to hunt a male white rhino in Mkuze Game Reserve. Rhino hunting permits are actually issued far more often than you might think.
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Mitt Romney Wins Iowa Caucuses By Eight Votes
04 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In one of the closest candidate-selection ballots in US history, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney won out over Rick Santorum at the Iowa caucuses, the nation’s first major electoral event of the year. Santorum and Romney switched between first and second frequently during the night, but a last-minute eight-vote tie margin put Romney ahead.
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Upcoming Apple Event To Revamp iBooks
03 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Apple is holding a product event later this month in New York – and since the Christmas buy-a-palooza is just past, it’s looking unlikely that they’re going to be announcing any new hardware just yet. Instead, Apple seems set to refurbish iBooks, their eBook retail platform, with a couple of new publishing options.
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Roelof Van Der Merwe Faces Australian Drink Driving Charge
03 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
As South African cricketing legend, Jacques Kallis makes his 150th Test match appearance during the third Test against Sri Lanka at Newlands this week, another international South African cricketer faces a court appearance in Australia for failing a roadside breath test on New Year’s Day.
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DJ Starts Mandela Hospital Rumour After Watching E-TV Year In Review Special
30 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Social media feeds, especially Twitter feeds, started buzzing with a rumour that Nelson Mandela had been admitted to hospital a few hours ago. It appears a DJ just happened to watch a programme airing on E-TV about the year that’s passed, and saw old visuals that prompted him to think Madiba had in fact been hospitalised.
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Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2011
29 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
It’s the 29th of December, which means we are all now sick of Top 10 lists. There are Top 10 lists of Top 10 list. Except this particular Top 10 list is actually pretty informative, collating the year’s illegal torrent data to tell us which films people wanted to see but weren’t willing to pay for. #1 is really awful.
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Japan Has Wi-Fi Vending Machines Now.
29 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Any article discussing some fun new tech in Japan is liable to be instantly out of date, because those guys have everything. Voice synthesizers, Olympic robots, eco-friendly Christmas lights – whatever. But this is new, and probably practical enough to port overseas: vending machines that sell Wi-Fi accessible within a 50m radius.
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