Peace and quiet can come at a premium, especially if you live and work in a busy urban environment. However, a new study shows that the biggest actual threat to our hearing is one we deliberately expose ourselves to every day.
Following hot on the heels of South African tourist Nobanda Nolubabalo’s dreadlock cocaine bust in Thailand, reports today reveal that at least three other SA citizens have been busted for drug trafficking in the last week. So if you’re travelling internationally this holiday, don’t drop dead with surprise if you’re searched at customs, particularly if you’re a young female.
North Korea has begun two days of funeral services for its late leader, Kim Jong-il, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend in Pyongyang. Mourners can be seen bowing in the snow, and reporters can barely contain their tears, as the procession makes it way through the streets.
As North Korea lays to rest their Dear Leader, we should not forget that the ANC Youth League wished to show Kim Jong-il their appreciation for all that he has done for the struggle of the North Korean people, as well as his many achievements. The Youth League will miss their other Dear Leader.
Shell has just alerted Nigerian coastal communities that up to 40 000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday off the coast of the Niger delta while it was being transferred to a tanker about 120 kilometres off the coast. The spill is likely to be the biggest in a decade.
An annual report from comScore on what happens online has shown that 1 in every 5 minutes of time online this year was spent on social networking sites – as compared to the 6% of internet time that went to social networking in 2007. By all accounts that sort of growth is expected to continue, and speed up, in 2012.
A team of scientists has finished developing a cheaply manufactured paint-like product prototype that they hope you will eventually be able to put on the outside of your home. The paint will generate electricity from light – electricity that can then be captured and used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside of your home.
Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago, has warned that the gay movement could morph into Ku Klux Klan. In a breathtaking display of logic he has said that, in the past, both the KKK and the gays have protested against the Catholic Church. Therefore gays equal the KKK.
Driving over the holiday season can be hairy at the best of times, but imagine what it’s like for parents who cannot afford to transport their families safely. Road safety organisation Drive More Safely has launched a new children’s campaign which calls for donation of old car seats which can be used to help more families transport their kids safely.
One would assume that when one blacklists a phone, one could take it for granted that the phone is, in fact, blacklisted. Mobile phone networks also like to offer their assurance that when one blacklists a phone, that’s actually what happens. However, this isn’t the case for a BlackBerry user who’s found out this chap is now using it.
Miami taxidermist, Enrique Gomez De Molina, is facing five years of jail time and a quarter million US$ in fines for importing body parts of rare and exotic animals to build a series of bizarre hybrid taxidermy sculptures.
Yes, you read that correctly, the “occucopter” is a drone that is being used by protestors to monitor the police. As the 99 per cent continue their protests around the world, they’ve acquired their own surveillance drone. Tim Pool, an Occupy Wall Street protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he amusingly calls the “occucopter”.
A Brazilian woman has given birth to a baby with two heads this week. The boy has two brains and two spines but shares one heart, lungs, liver and pelvis. In the spirit of Christmas, she has decided to call her son(s) Emanoel and Jesus respectively.
I thought it was very considerate of Victoria’s Secret to get a whole bunch of their angels together to sing Jingle Bells. The video includes our very own Candice Swanepoel, as well as the other usual suspects, like Adriana Lima. Follow the link and check out the video!
Two female sailors yesterday became the first to share the traditional “first kiss” on the pier following the repeal of the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. And because people are clever about these things, they took a couple of photographs modeled after that post-WW2 first kiss photo. It’s very cool.
It hasn’t been Woolworths’ finest month in retail relations. At the beginning of the month, the retailer abruptly announced it would be relieving Jupiter Drawing Room of its advertising business. Then, allegations of product counterfeiting and imitating began to emerge yesterday. Now, another small business owner has come forward and identified Woolworths as selling a knock-off of his product.
This just happened at Cape Town International Airport. For the older folk, that’s “DF Malan Airport.” We are not sure how this happened but assume it has something to do with the driver wanting to avoid the airport parking scam. Follow the link to enlarge the photograph.
Score one for creepy technology. Vocaloid, a voice-synthesis brand owned by Yamaha, has come up with a process by which to “resurrect” any singer’s voice for use in synthesized songs, without requiring the vocalist to build up a painstaking voice library first – so they could be doing that Kurt Cobain/Michael Jackson duet album pretty soon.
Canadian researchers recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to commence testing an HIV vaccine on humans.
In previous columns here I have gone on ad-nauseum about us needing to be more interested in wine. But I thought, maybe I can attack this from the reverse today. If I can get someone to consider the aesthetic of a wine, then maybe it will result in more of an interest. It’s a long shot. You may be thinking that I am being a pretentious wooly-hat-wearing hipster knob-end talking about the aesthetic of wine. I may have to give you the benefit of the doubt; although the wooly hat is very comfortable. Sod it, I’ll give it a go.
Kim Jong-un, son and heir apparent to his father’s North Korean throne, may have to share rule of the isolated country with the North Korean military and his uncle, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing has said today.
A recent national census in the Czech Republic turned up some interesting news that might be of interest to the Empire – there appears to be a small population of traitorous Jedi living in the country – approximately 15 000 of them.
It’s that time when all the companies that collect your data start parceling it out to tell you what the year’s really been like – we’ve already had offerings from Facebook and Twitter. What makes Google’s version – Zeitgeist – a little different is that they offer pretty particular data about South African search trends.
Banks know they make too much money, and South African banks could learn a thing or two from this. Five of the UK’s biggest banks, including Lloyds, Barclays and RBS, as well as other credit card companies, have agreed to scrap the charges associated with buying currency with a card while abroad.
IBM have released their annual predictions for the future of technology, via the IBM “5 in 5” project, which looks at five innovations which they figure will transform modern life within the next five years; these include mind-reading computers, human-generated electricity, and biometric scanning replacing passwords.
This is the Wazuma Lazareth – the world’s most expensive quad bike. It combines the engine from a Ferrari with BMW handlebars and the gearbox from a BMW M3. For a mere £170 000, you can have one too!
A small city in southern Spain, Juzcar, was used as the film location for the The Smurfs film, and painted blue to fit the theme. Once shooting had wrapped up, Sony Pictures offered to repaint the place – except residents voted yesterday to keep the place Smurf-coloured.
Saab Automobile has spent the last two years fighting to salvage the iconic brand that manufactured cars for six decades, but today announced that it had filed for bankruptcy in a Swedish district court. General Motors, who still had control over technology licenses, had disapproved of negotiations with two Chinese firms that sought to save Saab.
2010’s Dinner For Shmucks introduced us all to the wonder of “mouseterpieces”, recreations of famous artworks using taxidermy mice. Now, it seems that not only is the practice of mounting rodents real, for one man it’s a flourishing business.
Five years ago, TIME magazine American edition had 15 journalists of colour working for the publication. Now, they’re all gone, and the last remaining black correspondent, Steven Gray, who joined the magazine in 2007, and works in the Washington bureau, has announced that he too is leaving.