Zimbabwe is introducing a bank note worth 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars, to help consumers as inflation exceeds 1,000%.
The note will be worth about $1 at the official exchange rate, but only $0.30 on the informal market.
The 50,000 Zimbabwe dollar bill, introduced only four months ago, is not enough to buy a loaf of bread.”
Good going Bob!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5032826.stm
For the last six months the Labrador is getting two insulin shots, one in the morning with breakfast and the other in the evening with dinner. Now our one cat also has diabetes, I mean what are the odds? Two pets with diabetes, costing me an arm and a leg in insulin and syringes.
Now the thing that I find interesting and very annoying is both these pets are eating the very expensive vet approved pet food. The cats and dogs enjoy the Hill’s range of foods that are unavailable from your local supermarket or pet shop. You know the kind of food I mean, the type that is perfectly nutritionally balanced – so why the pancreatic melt-down? Growing up we had 2 Rhodesian Ridgebacks that both lived to be older than 13, they ate Epol from the supermarket – cheap dog food.
Go figure!
R133m state housing scam uncovered
Gauteng’s housing and local government department might be investigated for R133-million in fraud, reportedly involving the illegal allocation of housing subsidies.
Shout it from the rooftops, time to pillage the bandwidth!
For a bit of fun this morning I found this link to oblivion dominos. This guy used the oblivion world editor to create a 3 minute long domino run that includes falling swords and swinging spiked balls. Do some people have way too much time? Link
Two interesting articles today trace the origin of HIV to Chimpanzees in South-East Cameroon:
Chimpanzees in south-east Cameroon were found to have the viruses most similar to the form of HIV that has spread throughout the world.
The researchers say that, as well as solving the mystery about the origin of the virus, the findings open up avenues for future research.
But SIVcpz has not been found to cause any Aids-like illnesses in chimpanzees, so researchers are investigating why the animals do not suffer any symptoms, when humans – who are so genetically similar – do.
It’s funny how often I think of something and it appears that day in the news. This morning on the way to work I was pondering the coming years when my son starts learning to drive. After hearing another horror story about a 21 year old who was driving too fast and died in the following accident, I thought about how future monitoring technology might be available 13 years from now on that dark day I send my son out for the first time with the car keys. Today in the news, vehicles in London may automatically be fitted with a device to slow you down if you are driving too fast.
Transport For London, or TFL, said it is investigating the technology and plans to run a trial next year in an attempt to cut road traffic deaths.
“We’ve got to the point where we need to look at new ways of reducing road deaths. This technology exists in the early stages of development, and we are looking at this now,” a TFL representative told Silicon.com
A trial of speed-limiting technology is likely to take place next year with 10 TFL vehicles. The idea is that if the vehicle exceeds the speed limit, the engine revs are automatically limited so that it slows down again.
This is excellent news indeed, here is the link. Now all we need is a tube you need to blow into before you can start the car to monitor blood alcohol and we’re set!
Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country’s top Muslim religious authority, last month issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, condemning the display of statues in Egypt.
Gomaa said he based the edict on texts in the Hadith, a record of the sayings or customs of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. The hadith declare the exhibition of statues in homes to be un-Islamic.
The fatwa did not specifically mention statues in museums or public places. But many academics and art lovers were outraged.
Critics say the ruling could encourage militant Muslims to attack Egypt’s thousands of ancient statues, which are a mainstay of the country’s tourist industry. Link
President Bush has called for a ban on any experiments for creating human-animal hybrids, mostly citing religious grounds. The creation of these chimeras is seen as a threat to “human dignity and the integrity of the human species” yet the human genome project and the sequencing of other primates point to the fact that the ancestors of modern humans and the ancestors of chimpanzees were probably inter-breeding for a period of 4 million years. Does this hurt idiotic human elitism. a prevalent and destructive human characteristic – probably not. More here at the Loom
I far prefer offline blog tools to the clunky web interfaces employed by the majority of weblogs. I have till now used BlogJet, however Chronotron suggested we all try BlogDesk and so far I am very very impressed. It has all the usual WYSIWYG capabilities of the top blog editors as well as comprehensive spell checking and picture upload capabilities. Try it now, this is a keeper.
This seems to be the latest and biggest buzz in the blogosphere at the moment and as of now it is generating a lot of speculation. Technorati is the web’s best blog search engine beating it’s competitors by miles and miles. Many of the big companies have had an eye on Technorati for quite sometime according to various reports, interviews, etc. David of Zdnet blogs was one of the first to report it and he seems to have proof too. When was surfing through technorati and clicked a couple of backlinks, he saw an error page. Ofcourse error pages are very common in Technorati, but this error page was clearly generated by Yahoo!.
Does this mean that Yahoo! has acquired Technorati? Technorati would make a perfect addition to Yahoo!’s web 2.0 team and since Google is out of the question, MS is not concentrating on the blogosphere, Yahoo! seems to be the most likely candidate as along with the blogosphere, Technorati is getting very popular. This move will definitely be a big blessing to Technorati as it’s servers can no longer handle the heat and Technorati is definitely not rolling in money right now.
What was Google sleeping?
130 Filesharer Homes Raided in Germany
“Today, 130 homes have been raided in Germany under the allegation of filesharing. Law enforcement agencies had been monitoring an eDonkey-Server for two months. 3500 identified users are being investigated. Searches took place when users shared more than 500 files. Partners of the music industry helped identifying copyrighted material, but monitoring of the servers was solely done by law enforcement.”
Take a peek at the amazing sculptural work and design of Richard Sweeney. All created through the cutting and scoring of paper. Amazing stuff.
Namibia to copy Zim expropriation policy
The speed with which Zimbabweans took back their land from white farmers is “commendable” and Namibia wants to do the same, Namibia’s deputy land minister has reportedly said. “We feel that the speed they took the land is commendable and we would like to see how they did it,” said Isak Katali. Katali is on a five-day official visit to Zimbabwe, according to the state-owned Herald newspaper.
Holiday town reels after night of crime hell
The murder of a 78-year-old woman and the rape of her 25-year-old pregnant neighbour have shaken residents of the quiet holiday town of Gordon’s Bay near Cape Town.
Land reform – new mindset needed
A possible land revolution will only be avoided if white people change their attitude to land reform and transformation is drastically speeded up, the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces’ land committee has said.
This is according to ANC MP and chairperson of the National Council of Provinces’ land committee Peter Moatshe, who was speaking during debate on the department of land affairs’ budget.
"Moregellons Makes Your Skin Crawl With Threadlike Strings Coming Out Of Sores
(CBS) LOS ANGELES It's a mystery disease straight out of the "X-Files." But those who suffer from it will tell you it's painfully real.
Imagine sweating beads of a black, tar-like substance; pulling colored threadlike strings from sores all over your body; or feeling like your skin is crawling with bugs. Worst of all, not only are doctors unsure of what it is, many tell patients they're making it all up.
Sufferer Annette Riaubia said, "They start out like little pimples or something and you scratch them, and they bust open and they spring forth these weird fibers like a strand of a piece of cotton. "
"I saw white fiber on my face," said one woman who only wanted to be identified as Marcella. "I saw black specks coming out of what looked like pimples, really. "
It sounds like these people are talking about something out of a science fiction movie, but they're not. They're describing the painful symptoms associated with a mysterious skin disease called Morgellons. "
It appears that more people may have Variant Creutzfelt-Jakob disease (vCJD – aka Mad Cow Disease) than previously thought and it can be passed on through blood transfusion. Link
“The Vatican said Friday it had asked the Mexican founder of the conservative order Legionaries of Christ to renounce celebrating public Masses and live a life of “prayer and repentance” following its investigation into allegations he sexually abused seminarians.”
Link [Well that sort of reprimand is definitely going to dissuade further abuse, well done Mr. Pope]
A robot in Italy has carried out a long-distance heart operation by itself. Apparently containing the expertise of several human heart surgeons and experience gathered from 10,000 operations, the robot successfully completed surgery on a 34 yr old patient suffering from atrial fibrillation. Link
Critics have slated the Da Vinci Code movie which is a shame. The book, although not a fantastic piece of literature was definitely an enjoyable page-turner with much potential to make a good movie (provided it doesn’t take itself too seriously) however I suspect that much of the explanations of the book just wouldn’t translate visually. Well I will have to see it anyway, no accounting for taste but I’ve enjoyed the strangest of movies that very often didn’t get the hat tip at the box office. See the review on rottentomatoes.
Snipers used in Cape taxi war – Rasool
Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has said that professional snipers have been recruited to target people in the recent wave of taxi violence in the province.
“PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) — In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren’t focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They’re looking at tongues.
By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.
Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy SEALs to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater — turning sci-fi into reality.” Link
Sounds a little like Sarajevo or Beirut? Nope this is the tourist hub of good old SA – Snipers are operating for taxi bosses involved in the latest round of taxi violence. A special national task team has been appointed to help provincial police deal with the situation over the next two weeks. Frakkin morons!
Link
StuartForsyth.com
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