Volkswagen’s designers were faced with a tough challenge when they started the input of data and ideas into their CAD-CAM software in their quest to design a new Golf. Their brief couldn’t have been easy, but once summarised, it probably went something like this: "Make the Golf grow up, but don’t lose the sporty appeal our customers have so enjoyed for the past three decades, please."
Getting around our cities can be a real drag thanks to our over-congested roads, while finding parking once you’ve reached your destination can leave you frustrated. Those commuters who are casting their gaze toward owning a motorcycle instead of a car should consider Vespa’s new Granturismo 200L.
Whatever blows your hair back — well BMW’s ever-so-suave M3 convertible certainly did, and in less than 20 seconds, too. The beauty in this masterpiece from Bayrische Motorem Werke is not just swanning past your local News Café, which is bound to draw more than admiring glances. It is how the new ragtop does it without fuss.
It is the latest version of the imported American “high five.” But it is a rather sluggish kind of “high five” to be indulging in. In other words, there are not two players to play the game. It is a one-sided kind of slapping of the palms. This is because the opponent is in fact no longer even alive. He or she is a mere passive participant in the sport. This is how it strikes me as I read about the latest in a long line of human muti stories.
The final event of the Athens Olympics was marred on Sunday when a former Irish priest leapt from the crowd on the marathon route and attacked the race leader.
Cornelius ”Neil” Horan, who ran on to the track during the 2003 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, burst on to the road near the 35km mark and forced the leader, the Brazilian Vanderlei de Lima, into the crowd.
In his article entitled ”How far have we come?”, Professor Jonathan Jansen raises the point that the first decade of democracy was successful in ”opening the doors of learning and culture, but is unable to really influence what is going on behind the doors”. I agree wholeheartedly with this point. But it is parents who need to become a pressure group if there is to be real transformation in schools.
From the permanent prison of a poster-sized photograph high on a pale wall, Freddie Mercury gazed down on a lesbian couple embracing in the haze of a bright red light. Gay icon and pop superstar Mercury took his first uncertain steps in the gardens near this bar on Zanzibar’s Stone Town’s waterfront in 1946. There is a definite lack of spice in these islands, unless you’re straight.
It is crucial to view current peace initiatives in the Sudan through the prism of its post-colonial history, which has been that of multiple and simultaneous political struggles and civil wars. The murder and mayhem in Darfur reveals many of the limitations of the agreement between the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army and the government of Lieutenant General Umar al-Bashir.
South Africa’s Olympic team arrive home from Athens on Tuesday morning carrying mixed emotions after an unforgettable experience in Greece. The 28th Olympiad produced heart-stopping moments of glory for the South Africans who won six medals, the most since the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.
Hendrick Ramaala led a kamikaze pact among South Africa’s marathon men in the Olympic Marathon as the Athens Olympics drew to a dramatic close on Sunday over the route where the marathon was born. National record holder Gert Thys, who ran in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and Sydney 2000, was the only South African home in 2:16,08 for 16th, with Ramaala and Ian Syster having bailed out on the route from Marathon to Athens.