Tuesday, January 21, 2025

This Is How Bad South Africans Are At Driving [INFOGRAPHIC]

South Africa’s roads are treacherous, we all know that. From the potholed one-lane nightmare-roads in the Eastern Cape, to the isolated N2 of the Karoo, staying alive on the road is never more important than it is within our very own borders.

Google’s New Project: To Make You Live Longer

Google has always prided itself on trying for the extraordinary. Having succesfully mapped a massive chunk of the world above sea level with driven vehicles, they’ve turned their attention to the oceans. When they aren’t photographing the Great Barrier Reef or translating the web into 64 different languages, they’re trying to make you immortal. Meet project Calico.

This App Will Tell You How Long You’ll Live For [VIDEO]

Based on the ancient adage of “you are what you eat”, this app called IGNITE tracks the day-to-day your life, from the meals you eat to the amount of exercise you do, and computes that info into an estimation of how long – or short – you’re likely to live.

Google Builds Tool To Safeguard Your Data After You’re Dead

What happens to your data when you die? That question has become increasingly mainstream over the last two years. Thankfully, Google has launched a new tool that will enable users to determine a sending destination for their data in the event that they die.

US Soldier Killed Following Botched Attempt At Scaring Away Hiccups

Getting rid of a bad attack of hiccups can be a real bitch. You try everything – drinking a glass of water, holding your breath or counting back from 100 while jumping on one leg. A classic method is getting a friend to scare you suddenly. Pulling a gun on them should do the trick.

R.I.P. Fleetwood Mac Guitarist Bob Welch

Bob Welch, formerly Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and succesful soft-rock soloist of the 70’s, was found in his Nashville home yesterday, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 65. Police reports say that Welch’s body was found by his wife in the mid-afternoon, along with a suicide note.

Former Minister Sicelo Shiceka Dies

Troubled former South African Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, passed away in an Eastern Cape hospital this morning after a long illness, according to an ANC press release.

U.S. Lawmakers Consider Facebook Post Mortem Law

What happens to your social networking presence after you die? Who does the online you belong to? These are pressing issues being deliberated by at least two U.S. states this week as more and more pressure is being applied to social networking platforms like Facebook to allow the relatives of users that have passed away to directly access their late loved ones’ profiles.

‘Doomsday Clock’ Moved Closer To Midnight

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.

Florida Funeral Home Offers ‘Liquefaction’ Services

A Florida funeral home has unveiled an ‘alakaline hydrolysis’ unit, which dissolves dead bodies in heated alkaline water. Which is, apparently, something you might want to do; the process is being billed as a far greener alternative than cremation, producing far less greenhouse gas and requiring far less energy.

80 Killed In Bombing Of Pakistan Military Base

Around 65 military recruits and 15 civilians were killed in the twin bombing of the military training centre in Shabqadar, Charsadda – the first attack in Pakistan since the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death. The Pakistani Taliban claims to have carried out the attack to avenge bin Laden’s killing.

RIP ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ Actress Dana Wynter

Man, we seem to be running out of classy damsels nowadays. Dana Wynter, 1950’s starlet, best known for starring as the token distressed heroine in low-budget science-fiction film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” died May 5 of congestive heart failure in Ojai, California. She was 79.

RIP Photojournalist Tim Hetherington

British filmmaker and photojournalist, Tim Hetherington, who co-directed the Oscar-nominated documentary on the Afghanistan War, Restrepo, was killed yesterday in Misrata, Libya, following the firing of an RPG at a group of journalists. He was 41 years old. Three other journalists were injured in the attack.

RIP Dave Brubeck Drummer Joe Morello

Joe Morello, virtuoso drummer to the Dave Brubeck Quartet and contributor to such legendary recordings as Blue Ronda a la Turk and Take Five died at his New Jersey home on Saturday at the age of 82. No cause of death has yet been announced.

Oral Sex Will Give You Cancer

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you read that right, oral sex will kill you. According to scientists, who are yet to get past first base, people who have had more than five oral-sex partners in their lifetime are 250% more likely to have throat cancer than the orally celibate.

Woman Jumps Off 23-Storey Building And Survives

A woman in Argentina flung herself off the top of a 23-story hotel, but her suicide attempt was unluckily thwarted when she landed on a taxi cab, thereby prolonging her life. The lesson being, if you ever find yourself plummeting towards the earth, try locate an empty taxi and get into the ‘bum-first’ position, unless you actually want to commit suicide.

Rob Taylor Took The “Ultimate Jump”

Soon after we published the story that property development tycoon, Rob Taylor, was suspected of having perished by suicide by leaping off Table Mountain, online conversations around the incident began to reveal a number of curious, if not unnerving details of the circumstances leading up to Taylor’s death.

Seven Creatures That Prove Nature Hates Us

For every cute little kitten, there are at least a million other animals out there that will literally eat your face off. Why? Because nature is an asshole, that’s why. While things like parktown prawns, great white sharks and rain spiders scare the bejezus out of me, they are nothing compared to these 7 creatures that prove that nature hates us and we are all going to die.