The sirens go off, the lights flash, you blink in disbelief as you try to comprehend what has just happened – you’ve won the slots jackpot at a casino! Your mental shopping list is already on its third page when an elegantly dressed gentleman taps you on the shoulder to inform you it was a system glitch.
Regis McKenna has very kindly donated rare vintage footage of Steve Jobs giving a presentation in the early 1980’s to the Computer History Museum. It shows Jobs discussing the early history of Apple, and speaking in his usual inspiring manner.
Last night Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill Clinton and Hilary Clinton, made her debut as a reporter on NBC. Yes, I know it’s weird to think that Bill and Hilary actually have a child, but she’s pretty good.
True to the pledge it made back in July to digitally archive images of the parts of Japan affected by the March earthquake and tsunami, Google has uploaded imagery of post-earthquake Fukushima to Street View. They’ve also set up a ‘Build the Memory’ website which compares before-and-after shots of the affected towns.
Pockets Warhol is white-capped capuchin monkey. He has been given that name because he uses his tail, hands, feet, and of course, a brush, to daub canvases with his own unique artistic paintings. Pockets has become a money-spinning machine for bosses at at Story Book Farm, a primate sanctuary in Canada, with his paintings selling for as much as R3 500 each. See examples of his work after the jump.
Santacon is a thing that happens in San Francisco every year; people dress up as Santa Claus and get very drunk. Public nudity is also legal in SF. So it makes sense for this year’s Santacon to have been an attempt at setting a Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of naked Santas ever.
This clip, taken last year, is believed to have been filmed at the Olympic Game Farm in Washington. It features a huge Kodiak bear waving back at sightseers and has quickly become a hit on the internet. Viewers are particularly delighted by his cheery demeanour. I love how he gives that, “OH IT’S YOU!” look before waving back.
Police in Britain will soon be testing a shoulder-mounted laser that is capable of emitting a blinding wall of light from up to 500 metres away. It’s hoped the laser will help repel rioters and other troublemakers in an effort to prevent a repeat of the rioting that took place there earlier this year.
If someone walks onto Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and starts shooting a gun, he won’t be taken that seriously. And that’s what happened on Friday in Hollywood when people mistook a lone gunman for an actor – thinking that it was surely a film being made. According to Masslive: A broken heart may have fueled […]
A highly embarrassed Dutch architectural firm has had to apologise for its design of twin skyscrapers in central Seoul, South Korea, because they look pretty much like freeze frames of New York’s late World Trade Center, as both towers exploded. The design for the luxury apartment buildings has enraged families of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
Not only are the beds about 77 000 years old, but it appears they were also designed to ward off insects like mosquitoes. The fossilized material has been found at an ancient cliff shelter known as Sibudu, which is near to Durban on our east coast, and continues to fuel the debate that modern man evolved out of Africa.
Rick Perry, you silly Republican. A few days ago, Rick Perry released a campaign video making his views of gays in the military very clear. The video is now second only to Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as the most disliked video on YouTube, overtaking Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” The full video after the jump.
The world’s largest search engine is busy rolling out technology that can track your face. Facebook has been doing this for a while, so this sounds like Google playing catch-up, but there is a neat difference: unlike on Facebook, Google+ users get to opt-in to the facial recognition feature, instead of being automatically dragged into it.
US officials previously confirmed that an RQ-170 Sentinel, otherwise known as a drone, did, in fact, crash land somewhere in Iran. They however weren’t keen to confirm that the footage Iran broadcast on state television yesterday was in fact real. In other news, Russia and China want to inspect the US craft.
There’s a Red Cross committee presently debating whether or not people playing war video games should be subject to the same humanitarian laws as people involved in real wars with real people and real weapons. So far as I can tell they’re doing this entirely seriously.
An Islamic cleric has said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, because it can lead to “sexual thoughts.” He has also suggested that should females wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them should cut the items into small pieces for them.
A few months ago Apple announced their plans for their new headquarters in the Silicon Valley, and submitted plans to the Cupertino City Council. The late Steve Jobs claimed the spaceship-like structure would be “the best office building in the world”, and judging by these recently released documents, he wasn’t kidding.
The crew of the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters blasted a house in Dublin, California with a cannonball yesterday. I mean, not on purpose; they were trying to fire a homemade cannon at huge containers of water, because a canon’s ability to bust huge containers of water is a myth that needs busting, but they missed.
Rhea Page from London was viciously attacked by four other girls last year. They dragged her to the ground by her hair then beat her with kicks and punches. During the act they kept screaming, “kill the white slag”. However, they won’t be punished after a judge heard that the Muslim girls “were not used to drinking alcohol”.
Love is in the air at Yunnan Wild Animal Park in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, as millions of Chinese internet users have flooded staff at the park with requests to keep a very odd couple together.
The Nigerian legislature is pushing ahead with a new bill which aims to limit gay rights, including banning gay marriage. And it’s paying absolutely no attention to Western nations’ concerns about this.
Following a publicity stunt gone wrong, an Australian PR agency was left fumbling for words after dozens of media agencies received dead fish in the mail.
Facebook yesterday released a big ol’ lump of data about the most shared content of 2011, both globally and for specific countries. Osama Bin Laden’s death was far and away the most popular status update topic, followed distantly by the Super Bowl results and and the Casey Anthony trial for second and third most popular, respectively.
The new Prime Minister of the previously rudderless Belgium is 60-year old, Elio Di Rupo from the Socialist Party, who was sworn in yesterday. Di Rupo is also openly gay, making him the world’s first full-time openly gay male head of state. Go Belgium!
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was put on hold for six months due to lack of funds – but, following donations from the public and the US Airforce, SETI’s Allen Telescope Array in northern California is operational again. So man, we’re going to feel pretty stupid if aliens called at some point during those six months.
Would you consider it a selling point for an alcoholic beverage to depict Adolf Hitler on its label? Didn’t think so. Which is why it’s so fascinating that a man, who goes by the name Rolande Marte, is attempting to sell bottles of wine and Schnapps with an image of the dictator gracing the bottle. Swastika, and so on.
You can say a lot of things about South African politics, but the worst we do to bloody agents is chase them from our revolutionary houses. In Russia they get thrown into the St Petersburg River.
Ever since James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster Titanic captured the hearts of romantics around the world, fans have been fighting to keep that flame alive. Now, for a lucky few, they could experience the majesty of the sunken loveboat face-to-hull.
Hello, future. A group of autonomous flying robots – “quadcopters”- have been used in an installation by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to construct a six metre tall tower out of 1 500 foam bricks. The robots are completely autonomous, with a networked computer vision system directing the placement of the bricks.
The old saying goes that you shouldn’t bring a gun to an Ultimate Fighting match. Anthony Miranda, the guy in the picture, learned that lesson the hard way over the weekend when he tried to rob the wrong guy.