After an intensive design quest where 4000 different designs where considered from 526 designers, the British Mint has finally minted a new set of coins to be distributed in the UK soon.
I have stumbled across a site called Uncyclopedia. This is an absolutely brilliant idea and encompasses the wiki technology that we have all come to love but with a twist.
Nothing on this is true. It's an alternative view on just about any topic and makes for an absolutely hilarious read. If you think that you can write pretty funny articles, you are welcome to contribute to the content.
Below is an extract about George W. Bush
"George 'Wookiee' Bush (born on December 43, 1900 at a temperature of 30C) is the current president of the United Dodgeball League. He has superhuman psychic powers and used them to melt Bill Clinton to death in the 1998 Janitorial campaign. This makes him a superhero according to some, though a supervillain according to others. A third group thinks he is Michael Jackson in disguise."
Load-shedding is on everyones lips nowadays along with Zimbabwe and petrol prices. With all this misfortune going on, I must admit that i have been VERY impressed at ideas that South Africans have come up with. Besides the usual Zapiro pencil sketch, I have seen tons of hilarious emails knocking these problems. Not to mention the 1000's of hilarious Zuma emails doing the rounds!
The company that stands out most for brilliant turn arounds with their ads is Nandos. Currently running the ad of the Bafana Bafana fan kicking the ball, and his boots are too big so it ends up going in the wrong direction!
This ad below is just one of the many hilarious Nandos ads. Please watch it to the end for the punch line, you will LOVE it!
For the first time in 8 consecutive years, the South African average home price has shown a drop in value. Based on year end results the index which is an average of home prices shows that the average price of a home in SA fell from R570 000 to R550 000. Showing a negative inflation of 5.2%.
This is good news for young up and coming couple who are looking at buying their first home, as the dream of becoming a home-owner seemed to have been fading away recently as home prices sky rocketed.
Of course these values will not apply to any specific region, as the gap between low cost houses and the luxury mansions found in SA's premium suburbs is phenomenally huge.
Please click on the image to view it bigger if you can not see the words.So Eskom is still playing peek-a-boo with our lights! Good thing that they have solved the load-shedding warning system by publishing the schedule on their website. They have launched a fairly easy to use system on their site.
So click here to access the ESKOM LOAD-SHEDDING SCHEDULE. It is of course not very reliable, but we will nag about that next week perhaps ;)
So click here to access the ESKOM LOAD-SHEDDING SCHEDULE. It is of course not very reliable, but we will nag about that next week perhaps ;)
I'm no political analyst, so my views are to be treated as exactly that, my views!
This past weekend saw elections in Zim go off with little violence. Naturally, there was the classic "I will not cheat!" speech from Mugabe, and then hours later, he banned the Electoral Commission from releasing results until it passes through his offices. No Bob, it doesn't smell fishy! ;)
Anyway, I've come up with a few things that need to be corrected in order for Zimbabwe to get things on the right track.
Facts:
- Zimbabwe suffers from a major hyperinflation problem, due to the fact that the Reserve Bank keeps churning out trillions of newly printed dollars whenever the government has a bill to pay. This has led to a major devaluation of the currency and thus the plummet of the economy.
- A law was passed a few years ago stating that 51% of all mining shares are to be reclaimed by the government, thus hugely impacting on mining and other related industries, which ended up with most of them closing shop, adding to the huge unemployment issue and kick the economy in the proverbial balls.
- There was the much publicised land ownership issue where Mugabe reclaimed farms and distributed it randomly to uneducated, untrained and unmanaged war veterans, which saw a major drop in the nations produce as well lost quite a few international friends.
- In 1999 he lost a US$193million from the IMF because he failed to meet basic conditions of the financing.
- He unleashed violence against supporters and members of his political competition, which resulted in tourists being scared away, which led to the collapse of the tourism industry.
As an example of how bad it is, The US suffered a loss of 30% of its GNP during the depression, Zimbabwe is currently 40% lower that its GNP values for the year 2000.As a further example of the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe, 8yrs ago Z$14mil could buy you a mansion in a posh suburb in Harare, 3 weeks ago Z$14mil bought you a can of coke. By yesterday, the 31st of March 2008, a can of coke cost Z$56mil.
The biggest question that comes out of this elections, is "How do we fix this mess now?"
Humbly, I suggest
Step 1: Shut down those printers at the Reserve Bank. Printing more money is only devaluing the currency and adding to laughing inflation rates. This of course leaves Zim with the problem of who will pick up the bills... Simple, in 1999 Mugabe signed a deal with the IMF for funding as long as Zim kept their end of the bargain, this deal is still valid as long as the new leadership manages to fulfill the requirements. (I might be wrong, but I think that the deal breaker was that Zimbabwe was spending more money on its military than on health care and the IMF asked them to change this.)
Step 2: Give back ownership of the mines and hope that the mining companies do come back to open shop again.
Step 3: Return the reclaimed farms to the legal Title Deed holders, and encourage the employment of the new land dwellers by the farmers, perhaps by providing farming subsidies to these farms.
Step 4: Get a new currency! C'mon, no respects a Zim Dollar anymore and it will be cheaper to convert all of the existing currency into toilet paper than try to save the existing currency.
Step 5: Job creation and solving the unemployment issue. This can be helped by step 2, but the problem is more deep rooted than that. Honestly, I have no suggestions how to solve this.
Step 6: Stop the violence and go back into being the peaceful Southern Africa neighbour that you used to be, and watch the tourism industry find its feet again!
The problems are of course deeper rooted into a policy level, and hopefully with the right assistance from major world organisations and leaders, Zimbabwe will find its way back to being a respectable nation! Sphere: Related Content
It's not new news that Google has been speculated to be slowly entering the OS market, and recently made the biggest step towards this goal by releasing its offline platform called Gears.
But now, Google has made its Google Docs available for offline use. It can be seen as the most natural progression since Google Docs is so successful, but lacks the offline ability that makes MS products superior and more convenient to business travelers.
Google makes the Docs available and its spreadsheet app available immediately for offline use, but will postpone the release of its slide presentation application due to technical testing.
To make use of the offline availibility, users will need to install a plugin into their browsers, known as Gears, and then visit the Google Docs page. Expect your Docs folders to be synced as soon as you have internet access again.
Check out this video by the Product Manager for Google Docs
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