News

Sweet Resolutions #90DaysWithoutSugar

With the start of the New Year comes the inevitable wave of New Year’s resolutions. Some of these include ‘Dry January’ in which people give up drinking alcoholic beverages for the duration of January, or perhaps a digital detox  is in order after a month of posting ‘Ke Dezemba’s highlights on the ‘Gram. Most New Year’s resolutions though revolve around diets, fasting, sleep, budgeting and exercise in order to start off the year in a healthier way than we finished the last. New Year’s resolutions are often ambitious and unfortunately have a high failure rate as most of our good intentions seem to waiver and lapse come February. Our idealistic notions of becoming […]

The Fire Down Under

Looking back on 2019’s ‘Best Inventions’

Every year Time Magazine selects 100 of the ‘Best Inventions’ from around the world. These inventions are chosen because they make the world that we live in a ‘better one, a smarter one and even a more fun one’. These inventions come from a plethora of countries, categories and functionalities – some are more superficial in terms of their purpose and category, while others can be seen as life-changing. In order to compile the list containing 100 of the ‘most ground-breaking’ inventions, Time assesses the nominations received from its correspondents, editors and the online application process by using the following criteria – the invention’s “originality, creativity, influence, ambition and effectiveness.” Ultimately […]

Beyond the Beef

Most restaurants and eateries worldwide have cottoned on to the vegetarian and vegan movements and have discovered the importance and value in catering to customers that fall under these dietary classifications. With the rise in popularity of plant-based diets, eateries and an all-round drive towards environmental consciousness, it is unsurprising that many international and local companies are capitalising on the now cool-to-be ‘meat free’ movement. A particularly popular avenue of plant-based and meet-free alternative food is through the fast food industry. Most major fast food chains now offer vegetarian and vegan alternatives, especially in burger form.

However, an important distinction needs to be made with regard to the different local and international plant-based burger offerings. […]

The making of a meme

These days you would be hard pressed to go onto any social media site without being confronted by a meme or two. Memes plague the internet and messaging platforms and form the core of the content published on websites such as 9gag, Reddit and 4Chan. When there is a particular image that goes viral, like a baby Yoda perhaps – or a ‘woman yelling at cat’, the meme opportunities appear to be endless, as they are captioned humorously again and again depending on what is pop culturally relevant.

It’s hard to imagine a social media scene without memes, but where did they come from and what do they mean? Semantically, the origin of […]

Across the world in 19 hours

With the continuous development, innovation and improvement of air travel and aircrafts – it seems that the world is not in fact so large, as continents and people can be connected in a matter of hours. Air travel and airplanes have come a long way since the inception of the Wright brothers’ (Wilbur and Orville) “Aeronautical Experiments” in 1901 which focused on “three general classes” in order to achieve successful mechanical flight. The three principles of flight encompassed the achievement of the following: the construction of the “sustaining wings”, the “generation and application of the power required to drive the machine through the air” and lastly, the ability to “balance and […]

‘Drunk words, sober thoughts’

Jamie Foxx’ lyrics: “Blame it on the booze, got you feeling loose, blame it on ‘tron, got you in the zone, blame it on the a-a-a-a-a alcohol” describes a feeling that many of us have experienced after a big night out. The alcohol was definitely to blame, right? Especially for any ‘uncharacteristic’ or embarrassing behaviour, or for things that we said that we probably (definitely) should not have. We often associate our alcohol consumption with a definite or distinct ‘change in personality’ as it has a tendency to bring out another side of us. Is any of this sounding familiar so far?

Well as it turns out, this may not necessarily be the case […]

Why SA can’t afford not to be water savvy

Water, unsurprisingly and undeniably is our most important natural resource. 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by water. This statistic on its own sounds like a pretty decent water percentage, however we need to take into account that of that 70%, approximately 97% of that water is salt water, and therefore not easily consumable. Of the remaining 3% that classifies as fresh water only an estimated one percent can actually be consumed or used by life on earth due to the fact that the rest is in solid form – in essence the ice found at the North and South poles.

Africa as we all know is a continent […]

Dr Tozama Qwebani-Ogunleye was nominated on the 12^th of August by the South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS)

Gender neutrality to become mainstream