From career guidance to substance abuse...bits and pieces to brighten up your LO classes brought to you courtesy of the Rondebosch Boys' High School Library (If you would like to receive a weekly newsletter of the latest items in this Scoop just mail me at library@rondebosch.com)
The United Nations's food agencies has warned world leaders on Tuesday that some regions would fail in halving the number of the hungry by 2015, after a report found that one in eight people around the world is chronically undernourished.
In their latest report on food insecurity, the UN agencies estimated that 842-million people were suffering chronic hunger in 2011-13, or 12% of the world's population, down 17% from 1990-92.
Society truly ignores and walks all over the homeless. To truly test this idea, Dm Pranks Productions commissioned this powerful social experiment. Under the watchful eye of their hidden camera, they had two actors with a cane purposely fall around town. One man was dressed in a suit, the other as a disheveled homeless man. Who would be helped more? Sadly, your gut feeling is most likely correct.
People with disabilities want greater inclusion in government service delivery plans. They've complained that public toilets throughout the country are too small for the wheelchair bound. But government says it has taken their issues into account.
There's no actual law against women driving in Saudi Arabia. But it's forbidden. Two years ago, Manal al-Sharif decided to encourage women to drive by doing so -- and filming herself for YouTube. Hear her story of what happened next. Manal al-Sharif advocates for women’s right to drive, male guardianship annulment, and family protection in Saudi Arabia
Martin Seligman talks about psychology -- as a field of study and as it works one-on-one with each patient and each practitioner. As it moves beyond a focus on disease, what can modern psychology help us to become?
Martin Seligman is the founder of positive psychology, a field of study that examines healthy states, such as happiness, strength of character and optimism
Documentary which follows the progress of 12-year-old Natasha and 13-year-old Naomi through their treatment at Rhodes Farm, a residential clinic which treats children with anorexia nervosa.
Filmed over four months, the film intimately depicts their painful struggle to overcome their obsessive relationship with food
No one joins Facebook to be sad and lonely. But a new study from the University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross argues that that’s exactly how it makes us feel. Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message. Kross found that the more people used Facebook in the time between the two texts, the less happy they felt
Some foods have significantly more Calories than others but what does the difference actually look like. Each of the photographs below represents 200 Calories of the particular type of food; the images are sorted from low to high calorie density. When you consider that an entire plate of broccoli contains the same number of Calories as a small spoonful of peanut butter, you might think twice the next time you decide what to eat.
Little has changed for women since 1994: worse, they face a backlash from their supposed equals.
"But in the streets and in homes, in public and in private, there has been scant progress. Women still have to battle every day for the rights they are supposed to enjoy. Casual sexism is rife, as is the extreme violence meted out on women's bodies. This is a country that seems to be at war with its women.
"We have a deep misogyny in our society and, without a doubt, a war on women's bodies," said Professor Shireen Hassim, professor of politics at the University of the Witwatersrand."
Somewhere in South Africa are two men I have grown to hate. I have never met either of them. They raped the woman who is now my wife. She was 14 at the time. They were in the army. White boys. German-speaking. Even if she wanted to, it is probably too late for my wife to lay charges against these bastards. But it is not too late to remind them of the harm they did to a child 26 years ago. Sandy (not her real name) never pressed charges for the same reasons that so many rape victims don’t. Guilt, shame and fear kept her mouth shut for way too long. It was only years later that she told her parents what had happened. She is still angry with them for not picking up the signs at the time.
She also told me that she had slept with around ten boys/men by the time she had finished matric….Sandy explained that after she was raped, she felt the only way she could hope to carry on living would be to have sex again. On her terms. She said it was a bit like falling off a horse and having to get back on to conquer your fear. Having casual sex was her way of devaluing sex, of minimising the significance of sex. By engaging in a string of meaningless physical relationships, sex to Sandy became of no more consequence than a workout at the gym. In doing this, she convinced herself that the rape itself had simply been a physical assault.
"Biology's cruel joke goes something like this: As a teenage body goes through puberty, its circadian rhythm essentially shifts three hours backward. Suddenly, going to bed at nine or ten o'clock at night isn't just a drag, but close to a biological impossibility. Studies of teenagers around the globe have found that adolescent brains do not start releasing melatonin until around eleven o'clock at night and keep pumping out the hormone well past sunrise. Adults, meanwhile, have little-to-no melatonin in their bodies when they wake up. With all that melatonin surging through their bloodstream, teenagers who are forced to be awake before eight in the morning are often barely alert and want nothing more than to give in to their body's demands and fall back asleep. Because of the shift in their circadian rhythm, asking a teenager to perform well in a classroom during the early morning is like asking him or her to fly across the country and instantly adjust to the new time zone -- and then do the same thing every night, for four years. ...
How do we respond to all the weirdness of celebrity news and failures?!? I really enjoy the way Elliot Morgan tries to draw out the humanity of all of these people and to show that they are more than just figures of ridicule or awe. This is from the Sourcefed Youtube channel, where the folks talk about "Everything that should and shouldn't matter to you explained and broken apart by people who vomit words." Check out the channel...
To say that there was an outcry when the Mail & Guardian asked readers if they would be willing to share their initiation experiences with us would be an understatement. There was a deluge of angry tweets…many accused the M&G of undermining those who follow the practice, and claimed the media was disrespecting their culture. Another reader told the reporter to "go ask the Jews". Fortunately, I don't have to go ask the Jews. I am a Muslim, and circumcision is also part of my culture.
The idea that no one should ever discuss what happens at initiation is a scary one, not least because it allows unscrupulous people to continue with dangerous practices without fear that they will be called to account.
Local filmmaker Dylan Valley’s documentary, Incarcerated Knowledge, was well received at this year’s Encounters Festival. It follows the story of MC Pote from the day he was released from Pollsmoor Prison after serving a six year jail sentence for the murder of his stepfather, to the everyday struggles he faces on the outside attempting to earn a decent wage while striving to fulfil his dream of becoming a successful musician at the same time.
In an open letter, the imprisoned Pussy Riot member explains why the brutal conditions at Penal Colony No 14 have led her to undertake a hunger strike in protest
"For the maintenance of discipline and obedience, there is a widely implemented system of unofficial punishments. Prisoners are forced to "stay in the lokalka [a fenced-off passageway between two areas in the camp] until lights out" (the prisoner is forbidden to go into the barracks — whether it be autumnl or winter. In the second brigade, consisting of the disabled and elderly, there was a woman who ended up getting such bad frostbite after a day in the lokalka they had to amputate her fingers and one of her feet); "lose hygiene privileges" (the prisoner is forbidden to wash themselves or use the bathroom); "lose commissary and tea-room privileges" (the prisoner is forbidden to eat their own food, or drink beverages)."
No matter where in the world one finds oneself, fitting in with other is always crucial. It’s part of being a normal, functioning human. But there is a delicate line between fitting in and losing one’s self-identity. Popular online personality Zefrank discusses how he dealt with fitting in as he grew up in this crazy world with this powerful new short film
Nowelile Nonkelela stays in a one-room flat with her seven children and three grandsons. The family stays in Old Flats, Langa. Their room is situated in block C on the second floor where there are 20 such rooms.
This week on Big Up, we are saluting a young lady by the name of Carmen who is part of an organisation called The Door of Hope.
This organisation helps in meeting the needs of the abandoned, abused and orphaned children in South Africa by providing a loving and stable Christian environment for them. Today we acknowledge her and the organization, the only way we know how, in music video style. To give props to this amazing individual is the ever- smiling Nothende, who will be saying Big Up to her with her song Bambelela.
I don't watch much TV, but this programme looks pretty interesting. Here's what they are about:
BIG UP, your favourite morality, youth and lifestyle magazine show with a musical twist, take viewers deep into the hearts of young South Africans who have dedicated their time and disposable income to serve their communities and share their spiritual enlightenment with others.
Each programme covers someone who is making a difference in their communities. You can catch most of the episodes on the SABC Channel here.
Leave it to Werner Herzog to take the driver safety video to new heights. From One Second To The Next is a 35-minute documentary film by Herzog on the dangers of texting while driving.
People know by now that it's a really bad idea to drink and drive, but texting and driving doesn't seem all that bad. Hey, you're still in control of all your faculties, right? This powerful movie explodes that notion..
Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives.
In her book "The Defining Decade," Meg Jay suggests that many twentysomethings feel trivialized during what is actually the most transformative — and defining — period of our adult lives
Queen Nompumelelo MaMchiza seems under the impression that polygamy is the only way, because no man can stay with one woman. STEPHEN GROOTES couldn’t resist.
I thought there was quite a lot of substance to this critique of MaMchiza's remarks. Here's a key quote:
We've now got ourselves to the point where a man is somehow judged as a good husband, a good father, if he doesn't cheat and doesn't beat. That's it. So long as he doesn't beat the crap out of his wife, and doesn't fall over accidentally one night and put his member in someone else by mistake, we'll venerate him as a good husband.
When most people hear, read, or talk about Brazil, images of white sand beaches, parties, and bikini clad women may come to mind. More recently, the world media seems to covering Brazil with excitement over the upcoming WorldCup.
But for the people living in Brazil itself, the picture is not so rosy.
As the Brazilian who starred in the recent #ChangeBrazil viral video already said, there is great unrest in the country as demonstrators protest the enormous government spending in anticipation of the WorldCup and the subsequent rise in fees and taxes to cover the bill.
Now Brazilian native Carla Dauden has gone viral after she explained to the worldwhy she is notgoing to the WorldCup. Her country is seeing so much corruption and oppression of its people, she just can’t see herself supporting a giant private soccer game that is only hurting her people.
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