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.
When imagining which words or phrases have been used most on TV during 2011, you would be forgiven for thinking “Gaddafi”, “Bin Laden” or “economic crisis” might be contenders for the top spot. You’d be wrong, though. Because in our fabulous celebrity-driven world, there are two phrases that have been much more frequently used than any of those boring “real life” issues.
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.
As you know, two naked people together in a photograph (okay, sometimes three or four) is called pornography. But 1 000 naked people snapped together equates to “art”. And Spencer Tunick has made an entire career out of doing just that. His latest picture features 1 000 naked Israelis posing in the Dead Sea – the ocean where everything floats…
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.
The ratifying of the Protection of Information bill may be delayed. Opponents of the so-called Secrecy Bill – 3 000 of whom took to the streets of Cape Town on Saturday in support of the Right2Know campaign – may have claimed a minor victory in their battle against the controversial Bill. Further vigils will take place across the country tonight.
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.
Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood is notoriously inscrutable about a lot of topics. This time however, Dirty Harry came out firing for gay marriage, or, to be specific, against those opposed to same-sex nuptials.
A probe into the SABC has revealed that the national broadcaster has been paying for its employees’ M-Net and DStv subscriptions. You can’t really blame the SABC’s employees for preferring non-SABC programming. But it does seem a little silly for the national broadcaster to be forking out for its own staff’s subscription television “privileges”. Especially when online TV is cheaper.
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.
Just yesterday I introduced you to our latest addition to the Boss Hall of Fame – an Indian tea pourer. How it gladdens my heart to let you know that we’ve found three more fine examples less than 24 hours later! These are guys who excel at transforming everyday tasks into something spectacular. See how this trio pack playing cards in a Chinese toy factory…like bosses!
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.
Here’s a plan to avoid prosecution – just use your dad’s ID every time the cops come looking for you. It almost worked for Siphiwe Tembe, from Soweto, who was finally arrested yesterday in connection with a murder which dates back to 1996.
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.
Time to ditch the Farmville, folks! Mini have just released a Facebook game powered by the mighty forces of Flash and Google Maps that allows you to motor a mini.. er Mini across the global destination of your choice.
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.
The dispute between Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg has still not been put out to pasture. The disgruntled Winklefaces are currently starring in a terribly clever TV ad during which they take a dig at Zuckerburg for stealing their social network idea. In other news, the ad is for pistachio nuts.
Just how big will the biggest airport in the world be? Daxing airport is expected to handle 120 to 200 million passengers a year. That’s about three times the capacity of Heathrow’s current annual passenger flow. It will occupy a total of 54 square kilometers and boast nine runways. That’s almost Mark Wahlberg size!
New oil leakage has been spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, near the BP well that burst 15 months ago; the oil currently covers an area about seven kilometres long and 50 metres wide. It’s not clear if the oil is coming from the reservoir itself, or if’s been trapped in last year’s damaged rigging.
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.
Really not exaggerating in that headline. Two days ago, blogger Shoshana Hebshi, a self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife,” found herself cuffed and thrown off a Frontier Airlines flight and strip-searched – because she was seated next to two Indian guys she didn’t know, and another passenger had found that suspicious.
As you know, here at 2oceansVibe we celebrate guys and girls who are able to transform everyday tasks into something spectacular. Take this oke for instance – in all honesty, how exciting can pouring tea in a restaurant be? But this boss has developed it into a fine-tuned, multi-tasked, balancing act. Well done!
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.
Hollywood’s pathological lack of imagination/lust for audience dollars gathers force as it continues to pilfer the back catalogue of fan favourite flicks. This time not to re-make, or reboot, but to re-D into 3D. Reports have emerged that both Top Gun and Titanic are to receive the 3D treatment and be re-released to audiences around the world as early as next year.