It would be really easy for me to go into a tirade about the secrecy bill / info bill / save our backsides bill – whatever you want to call it. . . But I’m not going to.

Except for the one thing, off course.

It is absurd for a bunch of MPs who couldn’t be bothered to attend half the parliamentary sessions per year (which they are paid for), and who are largely guilty of dodgy dealings with the state, Travel gate and Arms Deal included, to vote on something that will aid them in burying their wrongdoing.

The joys of being your own Judge and Jury, and then keeping the truth from the public, eh?

Other governments (past and present) who have enjoyed this privilege include the peace-loving saints from Zimbabwe, Syria, Iraq, North Korea, the old Soviet Union, China, Afghanistan, Apartheid-era South Africa and so on.

You get the idea I’m sure: Hooray for these upstanding governments, known for their humane treatment of citizens and transparent dealings.

It’s never going to get past the Constitutional Court anyway . . . However, the mere thought that 200+ souls (whom I wouldn’t trust to run a bath with any measure of success) have the arrogance to think they can decide the fate of 50 million gets under my skin in a way that no crap election slogan, no faded, empty-promise-promoting poster, no baby kissing, cracks painting, juvenile delinquent politicking has ever managed to do.

Politicians. . . HUMPH! Too kak to get real jobs and that’s a worldwide phenomenon ladies and gentlemen.

ANYWAY. Anyway.

The point of this final diatribe also serves to remind the fourth estate, owners and publishers specifically, that you cannot shout for freedom on one hand and then curtail those exact freedoms on the other because an impending piece of truth may offend a large advertiser.

The same is true for the large client/advertiser.

You cannot stand shaking your head in dismay at Governmental secrets when you, yourselves, are guilty of acting like the kid who owns the ball on the playground – willing to remove it should things not go your way.

Nah, citizens of South Africa, if we want to have freedom then we must be mature enough to accept that, sometimes, freedom bites you in the backside by revealing the ugly truth.

We respond to those truths by rectifying the problem areas raised and (if need be) punishing those responsible for it.

We do not shoot the messenger.

Not in politics. Not in business. Not in media.

We need to grow up now. We need to take hits on the chin when deserved. We need to apply ourselves to fixing problems with governance, products, whatever – at root cause.

We need to all accept consequence of foolish actions and, even more so, we need to EXPECT consequence.

So here’s to freedom in 2012.

May you be free to point out my mistakes and may I be afforded the opportunity to rectify and apologise should I stray. May Sunday papers hunt down and expose the corrupt who steal from the public, who underperform and renege on promises made.

May ads not be pulled when products or campaigns are slated as sub-standard.

May we take things in our stride over the coming year.

May the dream of an open, fair and just society remain within our reach.

May we never fear the truth, may we never grow silent.

Almost all those taking part in the Right2Know Campaign protest were dressed in black. Some had sealed their mouths with black tape. Many carried posters.

“Those who vote for the bill are criminals themselves”, “We demand the right to know”, “Black Tuesday” and “Censorship is the New Black” were among the messages held aloft.

Protesters managed to lower the flags to half mast on two of the four poles at the Plein Street entrance to the parliamentary complex before police intervened. The police then sealed off the area below the poles with tape.

Mondli Makhanya, chairman of the SA National Editor’s Forum (Sanef), told the crowd that MPs who voted in favour of the bill were betraying future generations of South Africans.

The House started its sitting at 2pm on Tuesday.

Makhanya warned of civil disobedience against the measure, should it be enacted.

“If need be, there will be people who go to jail because they will have broken an unjust law,” he said.

Later, some protesters started dancing in the road and police closed off part of Plein Street.

Tourists on the open top deck of one of the city’s red tour buses all grabbed their cameras and took pictures as they drove past.

One protester, wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt, said: “One of his first hits was Get Up, Stand Up For Your Rights. That’s why I’m here”.

• Website: www.apple.com
• Price: From R4699

Apple’s second iPad is undoubtedly one of the most-desired gifts this holiday season, and for good reason. The already-excellent user interface of the iPad is now smoother and faster on the iPad 2 thanks to a faster processor and beefier graphics capabilities, and all the tweaks and improvements present in Apple’s iOS5 operating system come standard. If you’re still not sold on the concept, the fact that the iPad 2 will allow you to read books, play games, watch movies and listen to music on the go should help convince you. If you think all of that means a short battery life, guess again – the iPad 2 works hard for up to 9 hours, even with Wi-Fi active. As a gift for yourself or a loved one, there is no other gadget available today that will inspire as much love and appreciation as the iPad 2.

Beats by Dr. Dre Beatbox iPod Docking Station Website: www.beatsbydrdre.com Price: R5799 This iPod docking station is made by Monster Audio in collaboration with famous Hip Hop artist Dr. Dre, and the sound it puts out is nothing short of incredible, especially considering the price. With its two dedicated 5.25-inch long-throw bass drivers and two 2-inch optimised high-frequency drivers, the Beatbox puts out amazingly detailed and textured sound, regardless of the genre of music being played. The bundled IR remote controls the docked iPod from a distance and the stylish body will look at home in any sophisticated home or office environment. If you don’t own an iPod, it even has an auxiliary connector that accepts input from any music player equipped with a 3.5mm jack. This is definitely one for aspiring audiophiles, and an amazing gift for music lovers.
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Website: www.sonyericsson.co.za Price: R4699 The Xperia Play is Sony Ericsson’s latest Android phone, but with a twist: it combines the beauty and power of the Xperia Smartphone range, with the controls of Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld gaming console. It’s quite a chunky phone, but that’s because it slides open to reveal familiar-looking Sony PlayStation game controls beneath the main screen. When it’s opened, the phone launches an app that takes you to your installed games, and gives you the option to browse Sony’s online store for more. 3D graphics are incredible for such a small device, and games are silky smooth to play. The Xperia Play achieves a very difficult feat – it’s both a competent phone and a very good handheld gaming console, and is able to please both phone-lovers and gamers alike.
Samsung Series 9 Ultra-portable Notebook Website: www.samsung.co.za Price: From R9999 Apple has the MacBook Air, and now Windows users have their own ultra-thin and lightweight notebook courtesy of Samsung. The company’s Series 9 13” notebook weighs in at a very pleasant 1.3kg and is only 15.7mm thick at its thinnest point. Despite such diminutive dimensions, it still manages to pack quite a punch on the hardware front with Intel’s Core i5-2537M processor, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB ultra-fast solid-state hard drive. It’s very fast, and easily able to keep up with chunkier notebooks, all the while conserving battery power. Samsung claims the Series 9’s 6-cell battery can last for up to 7 hours on a single charge, which is almost a full work day, so no skimping there, either. It might lack an optical drive, but the Series 9 is still a fantastic machine that will easily satisfy Windows fans looking for power and portability in their next work notebook.
Amazon Kindle 3G & Wi-Fi eReader Website: www.amazon.com Price: R2499 Book lovers the world over have been drawn to Amazon’s excellent Kindle eReader because of its amazing screen, superb battery life and the ease and convenience that it affords them when it comes to getting their next book fix. Now available in South Africa, it’s our local bookworms who get to experience the scintillating services offered by Amazon’s smash-hit gadget. This particular version has both Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities, so readers can connect to Amazon’s online bookstore and buy and download books from anywhere that has cellular coverage. If you know any avid readers, this device, even more so than the iPad 2, will bring a smile to their faces come Christmas morning.

Behavioural scientists and psychological warfare experts alike are in absolute agreement that the “girl who gets more for less” ad will have a significant impact on the future successes of the so-called “war on terror”.
Anti-terrorism and advanced information extraction expert, Dr. Whattakak Addthisis says, “Preliminarily tests have shown that repeated playing of the sound clip to chimpanzees and orang-utans resulted in severe nausea, erratic behaviour, loud and continuous yelling and, in extreme cases, repetitive running into holding cell walls as the creatures attempted to knock themselves out cold – a desperate last ditch attempt to escape the horrendous effects of this South African commercial.”

“We’ve never seen anything like it” the good doctor concluded in amazement.
Historians and “ancient alien” theorists have also been intrigued by this super-kak-ad-phenomena, saying that the biblical story about the “Horns of Jericho” could actually have been inspired by some sort of sound wave weapon that could, very likely, have used clips from equally disturbing advertisements (at that time) to bring down those fabled city walls. “It’s quite likely that we’ve stumbled across a pre-historic super-weapon,” says Ancient Alien proponent, Dr. OMG Canitgetanyworse. “Historical text from the Sumerians, through to the Greeks, Indians, Aztecs and Maya all refer to a weapon generating such a hideous noise, such a unbearable tremble that people would scatter in any and all directions, even off cliffs and into water wells in order to get out of earshot.”

Amazing this is then, ladies and gentlemen, that in a small country at the very tip of the Dark continent we have reinvented a technology lost to humanity for millennia.
I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate the client and its agency for conspiring to deliver unto the world the greatest crowd clearing force since Vlad the Impaler roamed the valleys of Romania, since The Third Reich marched through the cities of Europe, since Bob Mugabe’s tribe-cleansing activities in the 80s.

I will not be surprised if the use of “the kid who learns more about margarine at school with the half-stunned, clearly confused mom” ad is rushed into immediate use in places like Guantanamo Bay, the Iraqi Green Zone and various “black ops prisons” located in countries with relaxed stances on human rights abuses, torture and the Geneva Convention. I half expect a massive breakthrough early in the New Year with scores of foiled plots making it to the front pages of our newspapers. I also half expect that overuse of this new frightening technology could very well usher in the beginning of the end and that come December 2012 the world will stand unified in absolute horror as one margarine ad ushers in the coming of age of that ancient Mayan prophecy.
We could, of course, avoid the tragedy altogether and just destroy any and all copies of it.

Late last year, a man opened fire in a Connecticut beer distributor, killing at least nine people, including himself. Omar Thornton, 34, was an employee who had been asked to resign because he was a “disciplinary problem”.

In April, a man fired from his job at a Texas car dealership got back at his former employer by hassling its customer base. Omar Ramos-Lopez, 20, allegedly used a former co-worker’s password to deactivate car ignitions for more than 100 customers.
In 2008 when Marie Lupe Cooley, 41, of Jacksonville, saw a help-wanted ad in the newspaper for a position that looked suspiciously like her current job — and with her boss’s phone number listed — she assumed she was about to be fired. So she went to the architectural office where she works late Sunday night and erased 7 years’ worth of drawings and blueprints, estimated to be worth $2.5 million.
Earlier this year, a disgruntled employee who worked for the Whole Foods Market in Toronto resigned and sent a damning resignation letter to the entire company. The letter begins with a point-by-point evisceration of the grocery chain’s carefully calibrated image as an earth-and-body-friendly, organic foods paradise.
TheFreshDiet.com is in the process of trying to retrieve nearly six months worth of work because it decided to let one of its culinary workers go. Shortly after she was told over the phone that she was being fired, she dropped by one of the kitchen locations, took a box of soap, and poured it all over her computer. Luckily, it was all caught on camera.
When RLM PR fired an account executive for not performing, she first sat on the floor and began to weep and when the company refused to reconsider, she began to throw things and screaming at the top of her lungs that the company was running a “hostile work environment.”

• Website: www.beatsbydre.com
• Price: R1999

These fantastic headphones are the kind of audio hardware that committed audiophiles would buy for their significant others – while they don’t offer exactly the same studio-quality listening experience offered by the “Beats by Dr. Dre Studio” headphones, they certainly offer a better-than-average listening experience. For music-lovers into bass-heavy tracks, they are fantastic – the Solo headphones deliver thumping bass directly to your ears without distorting or masking the mid- and high-range sounds so vital to a good listening experience. DMX’s Party Up was particularly impressive, with brain-jarring thumps in all the right places. Comfort is also a crucial component to the Solo’s design, with ear cones that cover the ear and seal out enough ambient noise that the listener can insulate themselves against outside distractions. If it’s a high-quality listening experience you’re after, and you’re done with entry-level headphones, Beats by Dr. Dre’s Solo set is a great buy.

MS Touch Mouse Website: www.microsoft.com/hardware Price: R599 Apple’s Magic Mouse is a touch-sensitive mouse designed to work seamlessly with Mac OS X using multi-finger gestures that interact with the operating system. Microsoft has finally brought out its own touch-sensitive mouse, designed for use exclusively with Windows 7, imaginatively called the Microsoft Touch Mouse. Using finger motions across the mouse’s surface, it’s possible to maximise and minimise windows, snap them to the left or right of the screen, and a swipe of the thumb translates to Forward and Back commands. All of these, once the user has grown accustomed to their use, make navigating Windows 7 even easier than it was before. The only caveat is that there is no physical separation between the buttons, which makes clicking the left and right side of the mouse feel a bit odd. Still, once you’re used to it, you’ll wonder how you managed without gesture control before the Touch Mouse.
TomTom Top Gear GPS Website: www.tomtom.com Price: R2499 If you are a fan of personal navigation devices and you’ve always wanted to be guided to your destination by Jeremy Clarkson, today is your lucky day: TomTom has teamed up with the guys at Top Gear to bring you a GPS device that will do just that. No Top Gear affiliation would be complete without the obligatory insults, of course, so prepare for Jezza to mock your driving, your sense of direction and your car while he gets you to where you’re going. There is also a “Stig Mode” that makes the GPS completely silent in case Clarkson gets a bit much, and all manner of Top Gear branding is found throughout the interface. All of this is included on top of TomTom’s excellent maps, HD Traffic, very robust build quality and a 4.3” LCD screen. For fans of Top Gear, there is no other GPS to get.
Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter Website: www.logitech.com Price: R499 Playing music on your smartphone through speakers has traditionally required a cable connection between speakers and phone. Not anymore, thanks to Logitech’s new Wireless Speaker Adapter, a small black box that connects your phone to any set of speakers over Bluetooth. Once the speakers are connected to the box using a 3.5mm jack or RCA connectors, all you need to do is pair your phone with the device and hit Play. The range is excellent – music won’t stop playing when there is a wall between your phone and the adapter, and the signal doesn’t drop when the phone is moved around a bit either. It’s a novel idea, and very well-executed. It’s also impressively affordable, and is thus a good solution for anyone who favours their phone as their music playback device of choice.
Motorola Razr Website: www.motorola.com Price: RTBA Motorola’s new Razr smartphone has raised the bar in terms of what a smartphone can be. It’s almost impossibly thin at 7.1mm, splash-resistant, shoots 1080p video clips, has a quarter-HD (qHD) touch-sensitive screen, a dual-core processor clocked at a very impressive 1.2GHz and Corning Gorilla Glass covering its 4.3” Super AMOLED screen. It’s an incredible piece of engineering designed to withstand the bumps and scrapes of everyday life while also looking supermodel-hot. Android 2.3.5 is the OS behind the glass, and it’s as responsive as ever. Motorola insists users sign up for Motoblur, a social media and message aggregator service, but the payoff is all e-mails, messages, status updates and more are grouped in a central, easily-reached location on the phone. The Razr is an incredible phone, multimedia device and a brilliant way to stay in touch with friends using popular social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

“The diminutive mine-grab kid” says he is not anti-white. Tutu wants to pray for the demise of the current regime and oral sex is not as safe as it’s made out to be.

Bligme!

And all that from a three second glance at this morning’s news. . . There’s also a poll asking who website visitors think will win Idols SA. I thought the final was last night?

IT WAS last night because a few centimetres above the poll I can see an article declaring someone named “Dave” the last man standing.

I see he is of the pale male variety. I bet that Mara lady is having a triple scotch as we speak.

I also bet some people (knowing the answer to the poll) are still taking part and checking the Dave box – driven by some sad insatiable need to be right. Guaranteed the fact that, should we do a bit of research into the kinds of people who click on polls that ask questions they already know the answers to, we would find large sectors of the middle-management community.

People with the authority to make you stand and wait outside their meaningless store until exactly 08:00 (even though they can see you are in a rush) but do not have the authority to change the braai-briquette display or send a snot-faced Mary home early because she’s as sick as a dog.

This moment, right here, is what they live for. Strangely aroused by being right . . . and nobody can take it away from them.

Err…

Anyway, so, Government: upholders of our constitution and defender of our freedoms (as advertised during election time) decided not to grant the Dalai Lama a visa.

On the flipside Jean-Bertrand Aristide is welcome to stay anytime, as is Uncle Bob, his gold-digging wife, the “king” of Swaziland, Madonna, Gordon Brown and Australian rugby players.

We can/could tolerate widespread trampling of human rights by comrades in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pretoria and Tripoli (to name but a few), we can/could turn a blind eye to the dog-eating, perlemoen stealing, slave-driving Chinese in favour of selling them large swaths of our country (from under our very own feet) but – hell no brothers and sisters, I tell you this(a!) – we cannot(a!) and should not(a!) entertain the thought of allowing a murderous maniac in the shape of the Dalai Lama to our land. . .

DO I HAVE AN AMEN(A!)?

Clearly “the reverend” considers his-robe-wearing-holiness a threat to national security, much like press freedom, the truth and anti-Chinese sentiment.

Clearly we have lost the plot.

I vote for an “ugly truth” month where we all stop dancing around the issues like whiteys at a wedding and just call a spade a spade.

We did not grant the DL a visa because our “friends” from dragon land want to soil themselves every time any country it has economic ties with (and that’s everyone) entertains the thought of welcoming the holy man to its shores.

If we can start by having the balls to admit to that, at least, then we can maybe also start looking at the rest of the whoppers we are fed with every day.

I’m afraid if there’s any credence to that oral sex story this may be my last column.

• Website: www.garmin.com
• RRP: R199

The Chirp is a “wireless geocaching beacon” that communicates wirelessly with Garmin’s handheld GPS devices. It has been designed to be used in outdoor activities like treasure hunts, geocaching, orienteering and general exploring. Basically, it is used as a modern-day signpost to direct adventurers to the next location on a treasure hunt, and it does this by beaming the information that has been programmed into its memory wirelessly to a Garmin GPS device. It has a range of about 10m, and if the Garmin device has been set to detect Chirps, it will beep when one is detected. At only R199 each, it’s an affordable way to set up a fun afternoon with family or friends, directing them to interesting locations of your choosing. Norton Internet Security 2012

• Website: www.symantec.com
• RRP: R599 for 3 PCs, 1 year of protection

The slow, annoying, PC-crippling Norton of yesteryear is nowhere to be seen in this excellent new security package from Symantec. NIS2012 installs completely in less than 2 minutes (after which an update is required), and it quietly protects your PC from there on out. It silently deals with threats, unless something really bad happens and your attention is required, and the best part is you can literally install it and forget all about it. If you want to tweak things, its clean interface yields up many options to change to your liking, and it even includes a neat new option to delay the loading of demanding programs on startup to make your PC boot faster than before. Norton haters of 6 years ago should really consider giving Symantec another chance – this really is a fantastic, user-friendly and highly effective security product. Sennheiser X 320 Headset for Xbox 360

• Website: www.sennheiser.co.za
• RRP: Not Confirmed

Sennheiser brings its audio expertise to the Xbox 360 for the first time with this innovative new headset designed specifically for Microsoft’s gaming console. On offer is sterling stereo sound, a boom microphone that automatically mutes itself when moved into a raised position and the ability to adjust game and voice volume separately from one another using the in-line controls. The microphone also cancels out external noise so that only the gamer’s voice is picked up, and the quality of the overall audio experience is excellent. The headset is pleasantly large and the cups fit easily over the wearer’s ears for maximum comfort. Gamers looking for a quality headset to enhance their Xbox Live experience should definitely take a closer look at the X320s when they launch in October. TRENDnet TEW-691BR 450mbps Router

• Website: www.trendnet.com
• RRP: R999

Wireless N routers typically offer a maximum transfer speed of 300mbps, which translates to roughly 37.5MB per second. This is easily fast enough if you’d like to stream videos wirelessly across your home network, but HD movies sometimes don’t play as smoothly because the higher their quality, the more bandwidth they need. Enter TRENDnet’s new TEW-691BR router with its three aerials and rated speed of 450mbps – at 1.5 times the speed of an 802.11n router, it’s very fast, and just the ticket for streaming HD movies wirelessly between devices. It’s simple to set up thanks to an intuitive Web interface, it supports all the latest security protocols and it comes with 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports, useful for connecting up devices that require a wired connection. It doesn’t do ADSL, but can easily distribute the signal from an ADSL router through the included WAN port. FujiFilm Finepix X100

• Website: www.fujifilm.co.za
• RRP: R13 999

The X100 is a compact pocket camera that even a professional photographer would enjoy. It comes with a 12MP sensor, it can shoot 720p videos, but more importantly it has enough manual shooting options to please those looking for more control over their shots, and an image sensor more commonly found in dSLR cameras. Low-light shooting is handled particularly well, resulting in images with very little noise even at ISO 800. Experienced photographers will likely appreciate the dial that manually controls shutter speed, as well as the lens’ aperture ring that lets users manually adjust the exposure size on the fly. The retro looks are deliberate, but don’t be fooled – this is a modern-day snapper with tons of modern refinements older cameras didn’t have, like built-in SD card storage and a 2.7” rear LCD screen. ]]> http://www.pushprint.co.za/hot-stuff-gadgets-for-october/feed 0 http://www.pushprint.co.za/did-you-know-these-interesting-facts-about-stress http://www.pushprint.co.za/did-you-know-these-interesting-facts-about-stress#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:20:35 +0000 Graham http://www.pushprint.co.za/?p=8964

75% of the general population experiences at least “some stress” every two weeks (National Health Interview Survey).

Stress alters the neurochemical makeup of the body, which can affect the maturation and release of the human egg. Hence more and more couples have to turn to fertility treatments to help them conceive.
Research has shown that dark chocolate reduces stress hormones such as cortisol and other fight-flight hormones. Additionally, cocoa is rich in antioxidants called flavonoids.
An early record of post-traumatic stress syndrome dates from the eighth century B.C. in Homer’s Iliad when Achilles suffers severe battle stress in the Trojan War. Achilles complains of feeling emotionally “numb” or “dead” and expresses suicidal thoughts and rage.
The term ‘Going postal’ refers to when someone becomes uncontrollably angry, often to the point of shooting people dead, usually in a workplace environment. The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1983 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public in acts of mass murder.
Stress has been called “the silent killer” and can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, chest pain, and an irregular heartbeat.