Remember that defunct NASA satellite that was going to fall to earth some time, they just couldn’t tell us when or where? Well, don’t worry – they’ve told us that it’s definitely going to come screaming down to the planet’s surface some time this week. This Friday, actually.
The upstart German Pirate Party took just under 9% of the electoral vote in Sunday’s Berlin elections, winning 15 seats in the 149-seat state parliament. For the most part, they’ve been campaigning on a platform of free Wi-Fi, free public transportation, and a lower voting age. Just like real pirates.
The University of Washington has finally found a way to make us of the mental energy expended by online gamers – recruiting them to decipher the structure of monomeric enzymes, found in retroviruses like HIV, by playing an online game called Foldit. Researchers had been working on it for the past decade; the collective gamers did it in three weeks.
Lesego Malatsi is a young fashion designer from Soweto. The driving force behind Mzansi Designers Emporium, he has also just made his debut at London Fashion Week. By all accounts it looks like he owned the show! His clothing range was very popular on the ramp and he received high praise for his work. Make it work!
Awesome. Women on the Philippine island of Mindanao, growing tired of the continuing separatist warfare interfering in their everyday goings-on, decided to take matters into their own hands. And by hands, I mean pants. They organized a “sex strike”, which brought a quick end to fighting between the two villages.
Would-be ginger sperm donators are being turned away from genetically-picky sperm banks in droves. It’s practically an orange tide of rejection. Citing “minimal” demand for the love seed of ginger-crowned males, the world’s largest sperm bank, Cryos, has been turning fanta-pantsed donor applicants away at the front door.
Do you remember the old adverts that pitted the Duracell bunny against other batteries at massive distances? Well, Panasonic is actually doing this now. They’ve designed robots, and entered them into a rather large triathlon taking place in Hawaii next month, in which homo sapiens will compete.
Independent and Evening Standard owner, Alexander Lebedev showed up in an interview on Russian TV with fellow super-rich-Russian, Sergei Polonsky last night. Apparently Polonsky came off threatening, because midway through the interview, Lebedev’s KGB training kicked in, at which point he proceeded to beat the Russian oligarch.
I’m not clear on where the time and money required to make these things is coming from. Following last month’s OK Go-themed video, a new The Muppets trailer has been released, this time playing off David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which makes sense given how much common ground the two franchises share.
Because what every good recession needs is a plan to go to space. NASA today announced their new launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), which should be able to take astronauts past the moon to near-Earth asteroids, and eventually to Mars some time in the 2030s.
Hoo. So American Apparel wanted to inaugurate the introduction of an XL size into their clothing range by holding an online model search for plus-sized women to promote the new threads. Enter Nancy Upton, who, offended by the contest, sent in photos of herself gorging on ice-cream on her kitchen floor. And then won.
Joshua and Jacob Spates are twins who were delivered by emergency caesarian in January this year, six weeks before they were due. They were also conjoined at the base of their spines. The two brothers have now been separated by life-saving surgery and introduced to each other – face to face – for the first time in their lives.
I’m not clear on why we would still need travel agents or anything, but if we do, Google Flights, launching today, is up to the task. Initially only available in a couple of US cities, Google Flights is the first result we’ve seen of Google’s acquisition of travel software company ITA back in April.
23-year old Croatian entrepreneur Mate Rimac unveiled the Concept_One electric supercar at the Frankfurt Motor Show yesterday – a 1,099 horsepower machine that can go a little under 600 km per charge, and can get over 300 km/h on a stretch. Is that enough car numbers? I’m not great at car numbers. Take a look at the thing though, it’s sexy.
More than 1 000 gingers held a massive confidence-boosting weekend in Breda, Holland, to celebrate International Redhead Day this last weekend. News reports coming out of the area have been slow because national news agencies were weighing up whether or not such distressing information would serve the public interest.
Screw climate change, we’ve found a new home. Well, I mean that’s my attitude whenever astronomers says they’ve found new planets within the “Goldiclocks zone” of core temperature – like the one European astronomers announced yesterday, the catchy-sounding HD85512b, which fits life support parameters, and is a little over three times the size of Earth.
Click through for a glimpse of the eternal Riaan, nailing it in a jacuzzi, 2oceansVibe style.
Vodacom has popped a cap in the bandwidth of Blackberry Internet Service (BIS) subscribers who exceed a monthly data limit of 100mb – cutting the speeds from 3G to 2G. Vodacom claims that this should only affect around 5% of the user base, as the rest are all using the service “fairly”.
If people keep telling you that drinking alone is a sign of alcoholism, then you either need to drink less, or find a way to make sure that there are people to drink with all the time. The geniuses behind the social network app ‘Let’s Drink Tonight’ figured the latter choice made more sense too.
Greenpeace! What a dumb idea. That giant recreation of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man is going to disappear as soon as that iceberg melts – OH. Oh gosh. You’re trying to put together some sort of heavy-handed metaphor about ‘mankind,’ ‘melting,’ like some sort of iceberg, because of ‘climate change.’
Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming film, ‘Contagion,’ needed some promotion because apparently Marion Cotillard’s presence isn’t enough. So, reasonably, Warner Bros hired a couple of microbiologist and immunologists to create billboards filled with growing bacteria and fungi that would spell out promotional messages. Please save your ‘viral marketing’ comments for after class.
Awesome. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), NASA’s defunct, 60 000 kg baby, will be re-entering Earth’s atmosphere sometime later this month or in early October, and NASA doesn’t really know when or where it’s going to happen. What they do know is that it’s going to leave a 800km-wide debris footprint, somewhere. Heads up.
In the aftermath of last Friday’s plane crash off the island of Robinson Crusoe, Chile, officials have stated that no effort would be spared in the rescue/recovery of the 17 passengers. This apparently includes using the Find My iPhone app to isolate the coordinates of one of the passenger’s last known whereabouts before the crash.
Hello, internet people. Google Takeout has been launched for you – a “data liberation platform” that lets users export their data from a number of Google products. It’s an importance service! If all your information is on Google without a backup, then you don’t have much control over it. Click through and learn things.
‘Nett Warrior,’ the military program that aims to give soldiers the tools for communications and mapping with each has been put on ice. It seems the US army have decided to cut a couple of kilograms in the solider’s kit and go with civilian technology. And they’re going Google.
Swedish designers have made a cycling helmet that isn’t totally obnoxious, which is pretty great. It won an award. Understand that no matter how nice this helmet is, it still isn’t okay to wear this guy indoors, because that’s rude. Still, it just won the Index:Award, the largest monetary prize for design in the world.
A million dollars? Please. That’s not cool. Helicopter rides. THOSE, those are cool. “But Helicopter rides are so expensive!“, I hear you whinge. That is true, but you and I both know that it’s not a matter of price when it comes to experiencing the wonder of flight as a homo sapien. The price doesn’t […]
Do you know what day today is? Google knows what day today is – which is why their latest animated doodle pays tribute to the legendary Freddie Mercury, who would have turned 65 today, had he not made an early exit. Click through to take a look. Please insert your favourite Queen song title here.
I know, I know; can you really steal art from somebody as dangerous and transgressive as Banksy? Two of his pieces, put together during his 2007 project on the West Bank, Bethlehem Santa’s Ghetto, have popped up in a show called Banksy: Original Street Works, at the Keszler Gallery. In the Hamptons.
Sleek, compact design, leather seats, carbon fiber chassis. This is what a baby needs in a stroller today, right? This is the future? Swedish designer Dawid Dawod thinks so, having collaborated with Porsche Design to put together the P’4911 for parents with their fiscal priorities in order.