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Culture
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Welsh Coaches Considered Faking Injury For Uncontested Scrums During Semi
18 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
This really isn’t the sort of thing you should go around admitting, even if you were disappointed with a poor refereeing decision. The Welsh coach, Warren Gatland, has publicly admitted that the Welsh coaching staff deliberated faking an injury to one of their props so as to force uncontested scrums during their semi-final clash on Saturday against France.
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Scrabble Player Demands Strip Search At World Championships After “G” Goes Missing
18 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
A missing letter “G” has led to accusations of cheating, and a demand for a scrabble competitor to be strip-searched at this year’s World Scrabble Championships in Warsaw, Poland. It is the biggest scandal to rock the event since a player accused another of eating a tile.
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RIM Offers Free Apps To Apologize For That Whole BlackBerry Crash Thing
17 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
While Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, has already publicly apologized for last week’s three-day BlackBerry outage, the PR guys figured that that probably wasn’t enough. Which is why they’ve announced that they’re offering BlackBerry customers a bunch of free “premium apps,” in the hopes of winning back some love. Check the app list after the jump.
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YouTube To Sell Merchandise, Digital Downloads And Event Tickets
17 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
YouTube is launching something they’re calling the Merch Store. From it, the online video giant will sell all kinds of music paraphernalia like band merchandise, event tickets, digital music downloads, and even band meet-ups.
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Rio de Janeiro Has Set Up The World’s Largest Urban Surveillance System
17 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Janeiro has established a huge state-of-the-art surveillance space, boasting 80 interchangeable digital panels, 450 cameras, 80 square metres of surveillance screen space, and an awesome Batcave-esque name: the Control Room. I don’t know how they paid for it either.
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Broadway Standoff Ends In Wall Street Protesters’ Favour
14 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Brookfield Properties, owners of the Zuccotti Park at the OWS protestors are demonstrating in, had called up the NYPD for “ assistance during their cleaning operation”. There were concerns that this would bring the protest to an abrupt end. This was prevented by a last minute statement from Deputy May Holloway, insisting that the “cleaning” operation be postponed.
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Subway Surfing: New York Underground Style
14 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
It is claimed five million people use the New York subway system on a daily basis. The majority, as you’d imagine, choose to sit or stand inside, not ride on the outside, as this chap did. He has, however, become the subway’s latest celebrity passenger, and authorities are hoping he doesn’t incentivise copycats.
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Fashion Designer By Day, Wannabe Superman By Night
14 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Herbert Chavez, a Filipino fashion designer, has taken his love for Superman a little further than most of us could possibly imagine. When I say a little, I mean he’s spent a decade undergoing plastic surgery to make himself look like a feminine Clark Kent. Let’s face it. People are weird.
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Virgin Atlantic Wants to Circle the World on Second-Hand Carbon
13 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Virgin Atlantic announced that their planes will soon be able to fly from London to Hong Kong on fuel that produces half the carbon of regular jet fuel – which is sort of huge news, given that flying is one of our most carbon-intensive activities, enough to offset any good otherwise done by unplugging unused appliances or whatever.
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Italy: The Next European Accident Waiting To Happen
13 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Italian debt crisis has the potential to make the Greek crisis seem small. It must be reiterated that Italian debt makes Greek debt look laughable. It currently stands at some €1,8 trillion. That’s excluding the purported €175 billion the Italians need to keep their country running until the end of the year.
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EU Bans Young Children From Blowing Up Balloons And Blowing Party Whistles
11 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The European Union has banned children under eight from blowing up balloons unsupervised. Not only that, but it has chosen to ban traditional toys like party whistles, magnetic fishing games and other harmless toys that children have enjoyed for decades because regulators say they’re an unacceptable safety risk. Cuddly toys like teddie bears have also not escaped regulation.
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Iranian Actress Given 90 Lashes For Being In A Mildly Subversive Film
11 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
More specifically, Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr was sentenced to 90 lashes for starring in “My Tehran For Sale,” a movie about how Iran mistreats its actresses. The actress was arrested for being in the film – which was never officially distributed in Iran – in July, and her sentence was handed down this weekend.
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BlackBerry Services Collapse Worldwide
10 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
Millions of BlackBerry users from all over Europe, Asia and Africa have been without online services such as email and BlackBerry Messenger for the last few hours. A spokesperson for RIM has not yet passed comment, but we do know a major fault at the RIM data centre in Slough is responsible.
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Archbishop Of Canterbury Lambastes Mugabe In Powerful Sermon To 15 000 Zimbabweans
10 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Dr Rowan Williams, otherwise known as the Archbishop of Canterbury, delivered what some of his aides are calling the “sermon of his career” when he addressed more than 15 000 Anglicans during his controversial visit to Zimbabwe yesterday. He told them that Mugabe’s tyrannical rule was no better than the colonial rule it had replaced.
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Artist To Give Birth Before Audience At Art Gallery
10 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
A pregnant American performance artist is planning to have her baby in an art gallery in front of an audience as part of a piece examining childbirth. She will also live in the gallery until the baby arrives. Her “artwork” is called “The Birth of Baby X”.
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Snoop Dogg Gets Cultivation Tips From Welsh Veggie Grower, Share Smoke
10 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Ian Neale holds the world record for growing the heaviest swede, weighing in at 38kg. Last week, the 68-year-old from Newport in South Wales, received a special video message from Snoop Dogg. The rapper wanted specific cultivation advice in return for some VIP passes for one of his gigs. The record-breaking vegetable grower accepted Snoop’s invitation.
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Samsung And Google Scrap Nexus Prime Launch
07 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
The companies jointly announced in a statement released a few hours ago that they have scraped the widely anticipated October 11 San Diego launch of the Nexus Prime, Samsung’s Android-based smartphone running the new Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. Does it have something to do with Steve Jobs’ passing on Wednesday?
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The Occupy Revolution Has Hit South Africa
07 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 8 Comments
It looks like the tides that swept up the Occupy Wall Street protest campaign – ongoing after three weeks – have broken national boundaries; ‘Operation Ubuntu’ has been set up to launch a simultaneous protests on the 15th of October in Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Grahamstown, as part of the global Occupy Revolution campaign.
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Let Them Eat Cake – In A Jacuzzi Hanging 153 Metres Above Ground
07 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
This shitcrazy group of extreme jacuzziers have just made your Friday. The group, who are members of the organisation, jacuzzi.ch, suspended themselves 153 metres in the air from the Gueuroz Bridge in Switzerland, with naught but cables and ropes keeping them up. They then proceeded to set up a special platform where they chilled, ate cake and drank champagne in a mid-air jacuzzi. Definitely bucket list material.
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Ridiculously Well Hung Squirrel Overshadows Great British Bake Off Finale
06 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
There has been a mild outcry from some of the five million BBC viewers who tuned in on Tuesday night for The Great British Bake Off finale. They’re not that impressed that they had to witness a relatively prolonged close-up shot of a squirrel that had quite a large package.
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Britain: Illegal Immigrant Spared Deportation Partly Because Of Pet Cat
06 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
British politics is theatrical at the best of times. They’re dealing with cat-gate at the moment, so it just became even more theatrical. A judge has actually ruled that an illegal immigrant could avoid deportation partly because the judge feared separating him from his pet cat and partner risked “serious emotional consequences”.
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The Taj Mahal Will Cave In Between Two And Five Years
06 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
India’s most famous tourist attraction, the 358-year-old Taj Mahal, will collapse within five years unless something drastic is done. The wooden foundation is becoming brittle and disintegrating due to a lack of water. This is because the river crucial to its survival is being blighted by pollution, industry and deforestation.
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Here’s How You Can Wish Desmond Tutu Happy Birthday
05 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
The majority of the furore surrounding the Dalai Lama not coming to South Africa is beginning to blow over, so let’s take a moment to remember what this was all about to begin with – the Arch’s 80th. You want to wish him, don’t you? Have you ever met him? How has he impacted your life? Well, wish him happy birthday, and you could be on CNN for your efforts.
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Studying Klingon Helps People Cope With Dyslexia
05 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Klingon is a fictional language spoken by an alien warrior race in the Star Trek series – those guys that look like they have six-packs on their foreheads. But, according to Jonathan Brown from the UK, it also has some other uses. Although getting laid is not one of them, he does claim it can help people suffering from dyslexia.
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Coke Tries Something New, Replaces Brand Name With Fan Names
05 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Coca-Cola Australia has launched an innovative campaign called “Share a Coke”, by replacing its brand name on its bottles and cans with 150 different ordinary names in the run up to Christmas. They’re hoping it will go “viral”. “Cool”.
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How To Escape The Next Tsunami: The Noah Disaster Shelter
04 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Japanese have proved that they are some of the most resilient people on earth. With the earthquake and tsunami that struck earlier this year, numerous acts of heroism emerged. Now they’ve invented the Noah Disaster Shelter as a very probable device for protection when particular natural disasters strike.
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Record 7,9 Million Litres Of Beer Consumed At Oktoberfest
04 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
With another Oktoberfest coming to a close in Munich on Monday, the hung-over locals deserve to start boasting about their accomplishments. 7,9 million litres of beer were consumed by festival goers, despite this year’s price per litre rising to 9 Euros (R96, 00). Beeeeer.
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Naspers Buys Russian Gumtree
04 Oct 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The South African media giant, Naspers, has bought the Russian version of Gumtree: Slando, for an undisclosed amount. The original founders of Gumtree, Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall, confirmed the deal overnight. The site has 11 million users, and has sold items including Stalin’s clothing, a slew of diamonds, a MIG 21 aircraft and one whole oil refinery.
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Is The Kindle Fire Worse Than Facebook And Google When It Comes To Privacy?
30 Sep 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Terms and conditions: we never read them, but we know we know should. Here’s what you should know about Amazon’s Fire and the new Silk browser it comes with: they make it clear that the company is entitled to retain your tablet’s unique ID, plus the URL’s of pages you have visited, for up to 30 days.
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Scientists Win Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize For Wasabi Fire Alarm
30 Sep 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
How do you wake a deaf person, especially if the building that they are in is on fire? You squirt a puff of wasabi at them, obviously. Seven Japanese researchers were awarded the Ig Nobel prize for chemistry in the 21st annual Ig Nobel awards, a spoof of the real Nobel awards, at Harvard University last night for their invention.
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