Entries from April 2006 ↓

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“All successful people have a goal.
No one can get anywhere unless he knows
where he wants to go.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

To many people, South Africa’s past only contains painful memories, but for David Kau his past is a social weapon he uses to heal the wounds of others.

David Kau is probably the only man in South Africa who can publicly ridicule a taxi driver and survive to tell the joke a second time. Actually, nobody has been safe since David was unleashed onto the South African comedy scene, whether it be Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Tony Yengeni, Winnie Mandela, Mzwakhe Mbuli, Bulelani Ncguka, Shabir Shaik, Desmond Dube or rehabilitated soccer players. Even close relatives have felt the wrath of the small man with a big mouth. Controversy slips off David’s tongue.

Yet with each cheeky radio stunt or outrageous television skit, David Kau ’s reputation as the most successful homegrown comedian has grown. His stories are almost always inspired by real life and perhaps this is the reason why we continue to be so affected by his brand of stand-up. As he holds up the mirror to his audience, we see our faults, our weaknesses and even the horrors of our past. David could blurt out the things we felt we could only say behind closed doors. At a time of a new political dispensation and tense social climate, this was how David was reintroducing South Africans to one another. David could turn our cries of pain into cries of laughter.

“When I was seven I was always running away from tear gas. I look back now and think if I were to watch a movie with a seven-year-old running away from tear gas, I would laugh.” he says.

Like the majority of South Africans David comes from a history of struggle. As a youngster David used to dodge police vans in the sleepy township of Maokeng in the Free State where he was born. His mother was a prison warder and he never knew his father. As quite as its kept, David attended a Roman Catholic school in the township. His grandmother hoped that he would one day become a priest. After matriculating in Pretoria, David tried to do the responsible thing by studying maths and science at Pretoria Technikon as part of the requirements for a degree in electrical engineering. When it wasn’t ‘fun anymore’ he decided to pursue a degree in the performing arts.

Campus was the ideal breeding ground for his style of comedy and it’s where he could test the nerves of his fellow varsity students. In an interview he recalls one of his first gigs as a performer. At the opening of a mega-store at Cavendish Square, David got dressed as Michael Jackson and performed in a band of ‘bad musicians’. The object was to encourage customers to buy the genuine thing inside the store.

David was discovered by accident while doing a corporate gig and in less than a year he took his own solo stand up show – The Rainbow Nation Tour –to the Grahamstown Arts Festival and nicknamed himself Previous Lee Disadvantaged. High profile gigs ultimately led to international tours. Bent over in laughter, audiences were beginning to understand the true character of a South Africa that was marred by hatred and ignorance. David Kau has proved to us that with diversity comes colour.

Today, he has used his childhood experiences and unique brand of humour to help us face the realities of our society with a smile. His style and approach to life, in the face of adversity, is a true reflection of South African character. He deserves our ultimate respect.

Thanks to Castle Lager. Copyright SA Breweries South Africa

With tongue firmly planted in its cheeks, Rogue Ales has posted on-line its intent to form a 21st-century, voluntary micro-association of people who share values and desire a chance to inhabit an independent Country that embraces change. Located to the left of Boredom and to the right of Irresponsibility, the Rogue Nation is a centerpiece to the celebration of American Beer Month.

There have been many Rogues throughout history — Rogues who have said, “Maybe everyone is wrong?” — Rogues such as Henry Ford in regard to the auto industry, Albert Einstein looking at time and space, Columbus facing the horizon, Galileo whilst looking at the stars. In October, 1988, Rogue Ales faced the brewing industry and said, “What if people want beer with taste?”

Click the ROGUE sign to read more

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 12, @09:29PM
from the now-that’s-sticky dept. missing_myself writes:

“Yahoo news reports the world’s strongest glue is made by bacteria. “The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it.” Time to get rid of the duct tape? ”

The bacterium Caulobacter crescentus uses the toughest glue on Earth to stick to river rocks, and now scientists are trying to figure out how to produce the stuff.

The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it. That’s two to three times more force than the best retail glues can handle.

The single-celled bacterium uses sugar molecules to stay put in rivers, streams, and water pipes, a new study found. It’s not clear how the glue actually works, however, but researchers presume some special proteins must be attached to the sugars.

“There are obvious applications since this adhesive works on wet surfaces,” said study leader Yves Brun, an Indiana University bacteriologist. “One possibility would be as a biodegradable surgical adhesive.”

Engineers could use the superior stickum too, Brun and colleagues say.

But making it has proved challenging. Like a mess of chewing gum, the gunk globs to everything, including the tools used to create it.

“We tried washing the glue off,” Brun said. “It didn’t work.”

The research, announced by the university Friday, will be detailed in the April 11 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

High-Tech Dinosaurs Had Tails Like Fiberglass
The Real Spider-Man Creates Tough Fiber in Lab
Abalone Armor: Toughest Stuff Theoretically Possible
New Glue Derived from Clinging Mussels
Vines Make Their Own Glue

Infantalising Africa:Gordon Brown’s Paternalism
Ploughing ahead with the wrongheaded assumption that African Welfarism will ease the problems of education et al within the continent the British Chancellor is leading the charge to educate the mostly African worlds poorest. A grand gesture it may be but have we not been down this ineffectual path before? The Telegraph states “…the subsidies will confirm the view of many Africans that they should look to the outside world, rather than to themselves, for betterment. Put another way, they will allow corrupt and inefficient governments to remain in office, shielded from the consequences of their own mismanagement. Third, as well as infantilising Africans, they infantilise British taxpayers…”

Check this out! And you thought it was only in America that kids….’

Schoolchildren have exploited loopholes in Britain’s arms controls by importing torture equipment including thumb and wall cuff restraint devices and a Chinese “sting stick” - a metal bar covered with spikes.

All that teenagers from Lord Williams’s school in Thame, Oxfordshire, needed was a letterhead, a mobile phone, an email address, and a little money. They also set up a separate company in Ireland to avoid British controls on the sale of small arms.

The government says it is opposed to any trade in torture equipment, but bans only those items mentioned on a published list. The wall cuffs from Poland, thumb cuffs from Taiwan, and sting stick from China do not appear on the list.

The pupils set up two companies, Williams Defence and Williams Defence (Eire). Through their Irish company they arranged deals to destinations covered by British and other national trade embargos, including the sale of Pakistani grenade launchers to Syria, Turkish guns to Mali, and South African rifles to Israel.

The Thame children got quotes but did not go ahead with the deals. However, children from a school in Portloaise, near Dublin, succeeded in buying electric shock batons from Korea and leg irons from South Africa.

The ease with which British controls on trade in torture equipment and small arms can be evaded is exposed in a Dispatches programme, After School Arms Club, presented by Mark Thomas, to be broadcast on Channel 4 next Monday. “It should not be legal, and yet we’ve proved that children, who by law are not allowed to drink alcohol, can broker arms from countries along a trade route from Poland to China, Israel to South Africa. And many of these arms are used against - or tragically even by - children,” said Maddy Fry, 16, a pupil at Lord Williams’s school.

How’s the golfing? Is the handicap down or back up in the plenties? Did Hilary reject your offer yet to manage her presidential campaign? From 1997: What do you think the American people thought of the presidential campaign in which a day at the White House was sold for $250,000 a couple, and the Republican Party sold a season tickets for access to Capitol Hill for $250,000? Why did you attend a million dollar fund-raiser? What kind of an image do you think it left the electorate, and why did those donors make those big-money contributions? What did they get in return?

Is this all you gave Monica Lewinsky?:

a. A lithograph b. A hatpin c. A large “Black Dog” canvas bag d. A large “Rockettes” blanket e. A pin of the New York skyline f. A box of cherry chocolates g. A pair of novelty sunglasses h. A stuffed animal from the “Black Dog” i. A marble bear’s head j. A London pin k. A shamrock pin l. An Annie Lennox compact disc m. Davidoff cigars

Remind me to not go to a conference at which Hugh Macleod is also in attendance. I fear that I will be more interested in his cartooning than learning anything from the kvetching presenters.

Conferences for Hugh appear to be maximum cartoon productivity days. Boredom equals plenty business cards turned into collectable pieces of art.

posted by sldekoning to russia south_africa travel… bookmark this

Quote from Moondust by Andrew Smith:

So I told him what I wanted to know: the fourteen minutes he spent on the lunar surface on his own, utterly alone, staring out at a meticulously shifting Universe, full of unimaginable forces and giant inscrutable, unstoppable bodies, but no mind like his….was the feeling like any he’d had before? Like sex? Like swimming in the sea at night? Going out without your parents on Halloween for the first time? Like he’d imagined all along, with no surprises? Did he feel alone, like a representative of the Earth, or closer to the stars? Did he leave us for a moment and feel like Dave Bowman in 2001, or want to tell Houston to fuck off and shut up and let him be there for a while? Did he feel adrift, or cosseted, or get the urge to do anything mad, like when you’re standing waiting for the subway and get a fleeting impulse to jump and test the truth of morality? Did he feel nothing at all?

I am down with the 100 Day Cough virus. Sorry no really interesting posts. Feel like death! Am going back to bed.

Bye!