It’s the end of the world as we know it

And I feel fine.

Robert Sefatsa of Soweto feels rather differently though:

T he Constitutional Court has received an “extremely urgent court application” for the appointment of an “investigative task team” to prepare for the end of the world on December 21, according to a report on Wednesday.

Robert Sefatsa, 38, a Soweto resident, also stated in papers handed in at court that the government needed to form a new department to prepare for judgement day next Friday, Beeld reported.

He suggested that the new state department should be called the “department of paranormal and esoteric sciences”.

Sebatsa pointed out that according to the Mayan calendar, judgement day would be on December 21, and it was therefore a matter of extreme urgency that South Africa and other countries make their preparations for the apocalypse.

A commission of inquiry should include geologists, statisticians, astronomists, economists and extra-terrestrial technologists, and should be competent to cope with evacuation procedures, sea and air logistics, and resettlement, he said.

Seriously, Robert? What’s the point of all this expense if the world is going to end next Friday. Then again, I suppose there’s no point in saving any money if the world is going to end next Friday. And if the world is really going to end next Friday, where exactly are you planning to evacuate to and resettle in?

In other news, the rest of the world has known about this whole Mayan Calendar nonsense for years and years now. Has news of our impending doom really only just reached Soweto? Perhaps the most laughable thing about this application is that he expects the Government to actually do something inside a nine day timeframe.

Of course, Mr Sebatsa, as a South African citizen and taxpayer, is completely within his rights to make this court application. Just as the Constitutional Court is completely within their rights to throw it out and then pop down to the Mystic Boer to laugh it off over a few brandies.

However, this is South Africa, and thus I fully expect to be blogging tomorrow about the new DPES which is hastily being set up in Pretoria.

Slice Rotary Keyboard

This looks interesting.

Time to retrain our brains people. Just as touch-typing has become something of a sport, with lightning fast texting and constant keyboard contact, a new app is looking to change the paradigm. The Slice Keyboard app is a new on-screen rotary board that redefines typing by creating new finger movements.
The idea is the typer will always have certain fingers on the touchscreen of their device. Depending on which circle the users’ fingers are on, a rotary wheel appears with certain characters that allow the user to quickly access via simple taps.

The question is, can we handle a change in such a fundamental and important means of interaction with our devices?

image

I already use Swype, which makes my typing lightning fast. Even that, using a standard Qwerty keyboard, took some getting used to. But I’ll give this a go and report back. Better still, of course, would have been to actually use Slice to write this post. But ain’t nobody got time for that.

Local dating site warns you to “be alert” if wind picks up ahead of concert

This just in ahead of the Lady Gaga concert that no-one everyone is talking about:

I can only guess that this is in reference to the incident at the Linkin Park concert in Cape Town last month in which a scaffolding tower blew over and killed a woman. And forewarned is forearmed, right?
But are people really more at risk of injury and/or death from objects being blown over at events occurring at the Cape Town Stadium?

If they are then how comes there was no warning on the Dating Buzz SA twitter stream for patrons heading to the recent Cape derby on November 23rd? True, almost half a million football fans survived the World Cup 2010 completely unscathed, but that was before the Linkin Park incident, which showed just how dangerous events at the Cape Town Stadium can be.

Look, maybe it’s not a Cape Town Stadium thing. Maybe it’s a wind thing, but in that case, the apocalyptic Friday 30th should have been a bit mental for tweets from Dating Buzz SA. But it wasn’t. There were a couple of Lady Gaga tweets and a retweet of someone asking how Matt was.
I’m not sure who Matt is or what happened to him – perhaps some sort of wind/scaffolding related injury?
Tenuous at best.

All in all, I think that the tweeted warning is pretty much needless. Like me saying, “Don’t get run over tomorrow”.
(Although, don’t.)

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t always be on the look out for large tubular metal structures crashing down on them, but it seems to be a bit of a stretch to suggest that they should be specifically more alert at tonight’s concert. Common sense should prevail.

Oh, and it certainly doesn’t deserve three exclamation marks. Nothing deserves three exclamation marks.

Cape Town has no idea that Lady Gaga concert is happening after newspaper blackout

Capetonians were left utterly bemused as to what on earth is going on at the Cape Town Stadium this evening after local newspapers chose to boycott coverage of… well… whatever is happening at the Cape Town Stadium this evening.

MAJOR Cape newspapers have supported a call to withdraw coverage of the Lady Gaga concert at Cape Town Stadium today.
Gaga’s management team confirmed to the SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) that no news photographers would be allowed to cover the event.

Ah there it is. A Lady Gaga concert.

And, true to their word, looking at today’s Cape Times, you’d be hard pressed to work out that there was any sort of Lady Gaga concert happening tonight if it wasn’t for the page three piece telling you about them not telling you about the Lady Gaga concert happening tonight. Well, that and the City of Cape Town ad for the transport arrangements on page five, but money is money and media freedom ethics go out of the window when you’ve got the offer of cold hard cash, right?

Right.

Sanef said last week this attempt to control coverage was “unprecedented”. News photographers were usually allowed to at least take shots of the first three songs.

Unprecedented.
un·prec·e·dent·ed
Adjective: Never done or known before.
Synonyms: unexampled – unparalleled – unheard-of

Yes, of course it’s absolutely unprecedented. Except for the international precedent set by the rest of the Lady Gaga tour, which has sparked outrage… er… nowhere. Oh, and the other local precedent set by U2 last year (a concert much covered and adulated by the local press):

Publicists for Big Concerts, Pamberi Communications, said yesterday the ban extended to all countries involved in Lady Gaga’s global tour.
The city’s Tourism, Events and Marketing director, Anton Groeneweld, said this was not the first time a ban on news photography had been imposed: “It was the same request at the U2 concert last year. The artists have a right to accredit the photographers they want.”

How very dare they choose the photographers that they want to accredit? Next they’ll be charging people to go into the stadium to see the artists. And what comes after that? Where do we draw the line?

Ridicule aside though, much like the claims that the concerts should be cancelled “because she is a Satanist“, I think we can all see that  this boycott will hit Lady Gaga hard. I find it unlikely that we will hear anything at all about the concert now that Die Burger isn’t reporting on it. I can’t see her selling any more tickets for gigs in South Africa this year simply for the reason that the Weekend Argus isn’t going to tell us if she was any good. I, for one, don’t go out buying tickets for concerts that the Daily Voice haven’t specifically (and positively) vetted.

I hope that other artists coming to Cape Town in the near future will take note of this very mature attitude from our local press. Because yes, their dad is bigger than your dad and it’s their ball and they’re taking it home and you can’t play any more and you smell.
So don’t you come over here with your international rules and norms and expect us to simply comply without a belated press boycott of your concert so only the 58,000 concert goers, that strange Afrikaans lady and everyone else will know that it’s happening.

That’ll teach you.

Blow job

Sorry about that title…

Busy, busy here ahead of a summer weekend, but it’s (literally) blowing a gale in Cape Town today.

Watch it love – someone’s going to have that handbag. This is South Africa.

Here are some more pics. Gusts of 164kph (102mph) were recorded at the Upper Cableway Station and that cruise ship that was meant to leave on Wednesday evening hasn’t gone anywhere.

The winds are due to subside over the next few days, but in the meantime, take care out there peeps.

UPDATE: And now. The video!