Journalism was all people had to in the past to report, mostly papers , since the technology is growing faster now, and South Africa is one of the most growing countries, news are also growing .”News used to be for only grownups but now I can read them, because they are interesting” a University student said. in the past news were only informative, but now since most of the people have internet, things are easier to so many people, especially who are from urban areas, because they are exposed into lot of things like social media, example face book, twitter and other social networks, so most of young people read news online, and It is simple to them. The journalism today is very interesting, in so many ways because it is entertaining, informative and controversial. It is informative because we are being informed about disease that exits, like the elephant leg woman, who was on T.V and whole other things, we get education on line .Journalism today is more focused on education and that is what most South Africans need. And most of the politicians used social media for campaigns and it is very effective. But on the other side it is controversial in a way that it create debates, and leave things hanging most of the times. Entertainment is what brings people together and we all love to have fun, so journalism today introduced the other side of the news like entertainment. If it was not for journalism we would not know who is here in South Africa, doing what with who, who is new on the music industry, which movies are out, and we would not even be inspired to become who we want to become. Journalism is more productive and makes people want to know more and dream again.’”Come on, who does not read news in our days, some of our politicians are so entertaining, I always read news so that I will be updated about them, and what did they say these week, who is making headlines, news today are interesting than before. Everything is online in our days, we have social networks like twitter, face book and whole other social networks that we almost all in, so there is really no excuse for people for not reading news, both young and old are exposed to these network” Thokozile said. I think the Journalism of the future (tomorrow journalism) will be paperless, since everyone will be reading online. Reporting will be only controversial and entertaining, there won’t be more of informative news, it will lose its heart, because of the social networks, that is where people like us will come in and save the journalism world, and bring back the heart of it. I suggest that we as the South Africans we can focus more on the informative, I am not saying entertainment and controversial is bad, but information bring life out of the people and entertainment brings joy and unity, so if we can balance them, we could bring the Journalism heart into its place.

After few days of quietness, Juju has done it again, taking away the spotlight from other countries, people and things, he wants it all to himself.

It has been a crazy years in South Africa, we have seen Democratic Alliance taking over the half of South Africa and improving in other areas, like building close toilets for Khayelitshian residents and so on. And seeing relationships and friendships being broken, and top dogs or May I say leaders caught with drugs in another countries, so where is our country going!

Now here he is again, making headlines again, we really have not seen much of Him like the years they forced to removed Thabo Mbeki, but he is back with no friends to support but with half of blacks behind him, supporting him all the way, breathing with him and saying they will die with him,

So where is this issue taking us, are we really living in a rainbow nation as others  may think and say, or this Democracy of ours is made out of snow, when it is winter we enjoy but when its summer it melt, sometimes I sit and wonder if we have that Democracy of privileges.

We have seen lot of scandals in our so-called Democracy, respected people saying things and people expresses themselves in a way that is not comfortable for other racist.

Malema declares war to those who against him

The big man is once again making headlines after He was found guilty in Luthuli House; he declares war to those who oppose him. He asked Parliament to save Liberation songs.

The question we must ask ourselves is that, who is with and who is against the man, I am sure the are thousands of people who are behind him, even on the party itself, He cannot just do these things alone and say things without back up. Maybe that is a big maybe, He was hired to do exactly what He is doing, but now he is doing it to the main people. That’s my opinion firends

From the beginning it was greatly admired and much copied, and it came to be considered the prototype of the Renaissance portrait. It became even more famous in 1911, when it was stolen from the Salon Carré in the Louvre, being rediscovered in a hotel in Florence two years later. It is difficult to discuss such a work briefly because of the complex stylistic motifs which are part of it. In the essay “On the perfect beauty of a woman”, by the 16th-century writer Firenzuola, we learn that the slight opening of the lips at the corners of the mouth was considered in that period a sign of elegance. Thus Mona Lisa has that slight smile which enters into the gentle, delicate atmosphere pervading the whole painting. To achieve this effect, Leonardo uses the sfumato technique, a gradual dissolving of the forms themselves, continuous interaction between light and shade and an uncertain sense of the time of day.

Mona Lisa’s Identity Confirmed by Document

Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Jan. 16, 2008 – The mystery over the identity of the woman behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa” painting has been solved once and for all, German academics at Heidelberg University announced on Tuesday.

Mona Lisa is “undoubtedly” Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, according to Veit Probst, director of the Heidelberg University Library.

Conclusive evidence came from notes written in October 1503 in the margin of a book.

Discovered two years ago in the library’s collection by manuscript expert Armin Schlechter, the notes were made by Florentine city official Agostino Vespucci, an acquaintance of Leonardo da Vinci, in an edition of letters by the Roman orator, Cicero.

In his annotations, Vespucci wrote that Leonardo was working on three paintings at the time, including a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo.

“All doubts about the identity of the ‘Mona Lisa’ have been eliminated,” the university said in a statement.

Vespucci’s notes also “establish more precisely the year the painting was done,” the university said.

Until now, the only other source to have identified the sitter in Leonardo’s masterpiece as Lisa Gherardini, was the 16th century painter and art historian Giorgio Vasari.

In his work “Lives of the Artists,” Vasari named Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo as the subject of the portrait and concluded that the portrait was painted between 1503 and 1506.

But doubts about Vasari’s attribution have always abounded since he was known to rely on anecdotal evidence.

The work is unsigned, undated and bears nothing to indicate the sitter’s name. Attempts to solve the mystery surrounding her famous smile as well as her identity have included theories that she was the artist’s mother, a noblewoman, a courtesan, even a prostitute.

There have also been theories that the sitter was happily pregnant, or affected by various diseases ranging from facial paralysis to the compulsive gnashing of teeth.

“The German finding confirms that Vasari is indeed a reliable source,” Giuseppe Pallanti, the author of two books on the “Mona Lisa,” told Discovery News.

Pallanti was the first historian to identify the sitter in Leonardo’s portrait as Lisa Gherardini, following 25 years of research.

“Indeed, I found documents showing that Leonardo’s father — a local notary, Ser Piero da Vinci — and Lisa’s family were neighbors, living about 10 feet away from each other in Via Ghibellina,” Pallanti said. “Leonardo met a pregnant Lisa in 1500 in Florence. In December 1502 she gave birth again.”

According to Pallanti’s research, Lisa Gherardini, a member of a minor noble family of rural origins, was born on June 15, 1479, in a rather ugly house in Via Sguazza in Florence.

In 1495, when she was 16 years old, she married the merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Ser Francesco was 14 years her senior and had lost his first wife, Camilla Rucellai, the previous year.

The girl moved to Del Giocondo’s house, located in today’s San Lorenzo market quarter. Though the house was big and beautiful, the surroundings were less than ideal. Prostitutes populated the area, which was a sort of Renaissance red light district.

In that house, Lisa gave birth to five children: Piero, Andrea, Giocondo, Camilla and Marietta.

Pallanti was also able to reconstruct Lisa’s last years. She died four years after her husband’s death on July 15, 1542, at age 63, and was buried in the convent Saint Orsola.

E.H. Gombrich, “The Story of Art”:

“There is another work of Leonardo’s which is perhaps even more famous than ‘The Last Supper‘. It is the portrait of a Florentine lady whose name was Lisa, ‘Mona Lisa. A fame as great as that of Leonardo’s ‘Mona Lisa’ is a mixed blessing for a work of art. We become so used to seeing it on picture postcards, and even advertisements, that we find it difficult to see it with fresh eyes as the painting by a real man portraying a real woman of flesh and blood. But it is worth while to forget what we know, or believe we know, about the picture, and to look at it as if we were the first people ever to set eyes on it. What strikes us first is the amazing degree to which Lisa looks alive. She really seems to look at us and to have a mind of her own. Like a living being, she seems to change before our eyes and to look a little different every time we come back to her. Even in photographs of the picture we experience this strange effect, but in front of the original in the Louvre it is almost uncanny. Sometimes she seems to mock at us, and then again we seem to catch something like sadness in her smile. All this sounds rather mysterious, and so it is; that is so often the effect of a great work of art. Nevertheless, Leonardo certainly knew how he achieved this effect, and by what means. That great observer of nature knew more about the way we use our eyes than anybody who had ever lived before him. He had clearly seen a problem which the conquest of nature had posed to artists – a problem no less intricate than the one of combining correct drawing with a harmonious composition. The great works of the Italian Quattrocento masters who followed the lead given by Masaccio have one thing in common: their figures look somewhat hard and harsh, almost wooden. The strange thing is that it clearly is not lack of patience or lack of knowledge that is responsible for this effect. No one could be more patient in his imitation of nature than Van Eyck; no one could know more about correct drawing and perspective than Mantegna. And yet, for all the grandeur and impressiveness of their representations of nature, their figures look more like statues than living beings. The reason may be that the more conscientiously we copy a figure line by line and detail by detail, the less we can imagine that it ever really moved and breathed. It looks as if the painter had suddenly cast a spell over it, and forced it to stand stock-still for evermore, like the people in ‘The Sleeping Beauty’. Artists had tried various ways out of this difficulty. Botticelli, for instance, had tried to emphasize in his pictures the waving hair and the fluttering garments of his figures, to make them look less rigid in outline. But only Leonardo found the true solution to the problem. The painter must leave the beholder something to guess. If the outlines are not  so firmly drawn, if the form is left a little vague, as though disappearing into a shadow, this impression of dryness and stiffness will be avoided. This is Leonardo’s famous invention which the Italians call ‘sfumato’- the blurred outline and mellowed colors that allow one form to merge with another and always leave something to our imagination.

“If we now return to the ‘Mona Lisa’, we may understand something of its mysterious effect. We see that Leonardo has used the means of his ‘sfumato’ with the utmost deliberation. Everyone who has ever tried to draw or scribble a face knows that what we call its expression rests mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes. Now it is precisely these parts which Leonardo has left deliberately indistinct, by letting them merge into a soft shadow. That is why we are never quite certain in what mood Mona Lisa is really looking at us. Her expression always seems just to elude us. It is not only vagueness, of course, which produces this effect. There is much more behind it. Leonardo has done a very daring thing, which perhaps only a painter of his consummate mastery could risk. If we look carefully at the picture, we see that the two sides do not quite match. This is most obvious in the fantastic dream landscape in the background. The horizon on the left side seems to lie lower than the one on the right. Consequently, when we focus on the left side of the picture, the woman looks somehow taller or more erect than if we focus on the right side. And her face, too, seems to change with this change of place, because, even here, the two sides do not quite match. But with all these advanced tricks, Leonardo might have produced a clever piece of jugglery and not a great work of art, had he not known exactly how far he could go, and had he not counterbalanced his daring deviation from nature by an almost miraculous rendering of the living flesh. Look at the way he modelled the hand, or the sleeves with their minute folds. Leonardo could be as painstaking as any of his forerunners in the patient observation of nature. Only he was no longer merely the faithful servant of nature. Long ago, in the distant past, people had looked at portraits with awe, because they had thought that in preserving the likeness the artist could somehow keep the soul of the person he portrayed. Now the great scientist, Leonardo, had made some of the dreams and fears of these first image-makers come true. He knew the spell which would infuse life into the colors spread by his magic brush.”

        (E.H. Gombrish, The Story of Art, Phaidon, London, 1995 reprinted 1999)

Who’s that woman hidden up his smock?

Psychoanalyst Darian Leader sees a zone of emptiness wherever he looks as he examines the modernist era in Stealing the Mona Lisa

Leonid Brezhnev may have seen in the Mona Lisa nothing but ‘a plain, sensible-looking woman’, but as an icon she is among the most recognisable ever; the embodiment of classical art, her perfect features and riddling smile adorn postcards, tea towels and chocolate boxes the world over.

Yet as this book insists, it was her disappearance that secured her celebrity, and the hordes of tourists that daily converge on the Louvre are as nothing compared to the thousands who queued to see not the painting, but the empty space left by its robbery back in 1911.

Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst; here, though, he heads fearlessly off into the realm of art theory, using the theft as a neat springboard for reflections on why we look at art and what we see – or don’t see – when we do.

One summer’s morning early last century, an Italian house painter, Vincenzo Perugia, strolled into the Louvre, exiting a short while later with the Mona Lisa hidden in his voluminous white smock. Despite Perugia having left a large thumbprint at the scene, it took the Parisian police two years to retrieve the painting and make their arrest. All that time, the canvas was stashed in a trunk at Peruggia’s lodgings, where postcard reproductions stood propped up on the mantelpiece.

In this and sundry other peculiar details, Leader finds rich pickings, making thumbnail diagnoses as he goes. Hundreds of readers wrote in to L’Echo de Paris, for instance, insisting that the Gioconda must still be in the Louvre, hiding behind another painting. Cartoonists depicted her cavorting around Paris, finally freed from her frame. Blinkered by their assumptions about high art, Louis Lepine and his detectives imagined the priceless painting installed in its own apartment, kept in style like an expensive mistress, and it never occurred to them that the thief could be one so humble as Perugia.

We never find out Perugia’s motive since Leader’s prime interest in the theft is as ‘the perfect crime of the modernist era’, an idea he explores in a narrative fraught with digressions – some illuminating, most artfully obfuscation. He pronounces on everything from why we munch popcorn in the cinema to what lies behind that Hammer Horror feeling that a portrait’s eyes are following us, rallying a predictably Zeitgeisty choice of evidence from The Full Monty to the paintings of LS Lowry.

The book’s subtitle asks what it is that art stops us from seeing, and it’s not giving anything away to show that the answer is nothing – a Laconian nothing, that is. Leader trained under French psychoanalyst Jacques Lucan, and his theory of a ‘zone of emptiness’ underpins much of Leader’s thinking.

Although he roams from cave paintings to Picasso, what Leader often means by art is conceptualize (the book’s dedication hints at why so many of his examples are works by Sarah Lucas). When we stand before a work and ask ‘Is this art?’, we are, he concludes, responding to ‘the special, sacred space the artwork inhabits’, something art can evoke but that must ultimately remain invisible. Just as with Magic Eye pictures, the harder you work to make sense of Leader’s writing, the less likely you are to get there.

Leader tempers many of his observations with judicious with, which is just as well since with mothers and penises looming so large throughout, it’s hard not to hear the mocha-rich tones of Frasier Crane. Perhaps, when Leader posits the theory that the Mona Lisa’s smile – ‘a strange mixture of tenderness and contempt’ – was brought about by Leonardo exposing himself, a similar smile is playing on his lips, too. Or perhaps not.

Stealing the Mona Lisa lacks the breezy charm of Leader-as-agony-uncle, and too often his thinking is mired in the plodding language of flip charts. Ultimately, this book is destined to frustrate, for while some of it is perfectly plausible, it is no more so than a hundred other interpretations. As Leader himself lets slip: ‘Art, after all, is about making, not communicating.

Behind her smile,

My View :Behind her smile, I see hatred, disappointments, loneliness rejection and hopelessness. That maybe be done by the nightmares of the past, or the hidden truth.

I have read lot of book that are commenting about her. we all know that Mona Lisa was never seen, but she is such a famous picture, what made her so famous, what is behind her innocent and fake smile…to be continued

What a pleasant activity to termination
His face was contentment,
What a surprise kiss!

My mind was gratified, since I agreeable
Him first…
My facial expression, show it all, when my
Eyes started un ending blinking,
He motion to my left eye, and wipe the
Frozen tear,
His fellows observe attentively
As he took chocolate in his pocked, and give it to me,

It felt like, it was my first kiss ever…
As we both gave an innocent smile, it was
Indeed
Oh, I was so sad when it was time for me
To go, he emotionally kissed my hand,
And motioned his hands with a fake and unpleasing
Goodbye, he was sad,
But we both knew that we’ll see one another,
Soon, before the next flight!
When the car was in motion, he gave me a quick smile
And say good-bye, my love in broken English

Kiss goodbye, I smiled

Kiss goodbye I thought

Kiss goodbye, he’s gone

Kiss goodbye, for the reality has taken place, and cross rational will never make sense

Life sentence for killers

South African people are tired of seeing killers going up and down the streets few days after they break the law, this matter was shown after  the Community of Kayamandi, Stellenbosch, just outside Cape Town, took law into their hands by beating three well-known criminals to death. These well-known criminals were taken by police officers after they were badly beaten by the community, and no one was arrested. These three teenagers robbed and stub women who were going to work early on the morning.  They took all their belongings and ran; the community heard that they were around on Monday 14 march 2011, and went and beat them, no one bothered to call the police because they had enough of the police officers who always protect the criminals. And the police officers were reminded about what happened few years ago, when the same people rape a 9 month’s old little girls, and they are still around. On that same day, those boys were reported dead, the cause of their death was the deep wounds. “I am glad they are finally out of outlive, I am sure we will be free, we will not be afraid to walk around with our treasured items because of them “one of the community leader said. People think that government does not care about what they think, since they are from the small township. People believe that crime was never part of this community until their kids were exposed to all kinds of stuffs this is not the community they know, “we used to be one community that is full of Ubuntu ‘humanity’, my child was your child in those days, I do not know what happened to our children, it is getting worse and worse”, one of the residence commented.

The community believes in justice, they want no bail for killers and rapist, they believe that people should suffer the consequences, “if the law does not do it, the community will do”, Community member said.

People of this small town only want the best for their town, and they will not rest until all the criminal are put into cell where they belong

As we all know what happened in the past between Mbeki and Zuma, Mbeki and up giving up the battle of being president for the third time. He left and we never had from him again, I do believe he was such gentlemen to just let it go just like that, I think he knew that, it will happen again; it seems like everyone in the so-called African National Congress was against Him, at least that’s what I’ve notice from the people who follow politics, most of them had the same feeling, the feeling that they were against him. I remember watching news, and people were burning Mbeki’s t-shirts, I mean the t-shirts that had His face, funny enough, it happened again but to Zuma now. They burn them exactly the way they did to Mbeki.the question is, are going to see the tragedy of the past? We’ll have to wait to find out.

What is this issue going?

I think the error of the past is about to happen, once again! We all knew that Zuma and Malema were best friends, it surprised me to here what Mr. Malema said about the other day, He said I am not friend with Zuma, and He also said that a man must have one woman,

Where does it all going?

Malema is a truth teller I have ever come across with, He tell it, as it is, and most of the people have really fallen in love with Him, and they are starting to believe in him,

What happened to the “friendship” they had?

We all have different opinions about the whole thing, so I’m going to share my opinion, what I think is that, Our so-called Leaders were paying Malema to say things, so He got enough of that, because people, I mean almost the whole country, were starting to turn its back on Him, and he was always the Centre of attention, he was always on the news. To be honest everything started to make no sense to me until he says something… they all say their speeches, but I wanted to know what is Juju saying about it, his comments became the only reason I watched news. Even If Zille is saying something, i know he was going to comment, and always looking forward in what he is going to say. I think Malema got tired of being Zuma’s cartoon and chose to stand alone,

Is Malema going to form His own party or take over ANC???

I’m sure that’s what everyone is thinking, Is JUJU going to form His own Party?then What is the future of the ruling party?

Since we all see how many people who support Malema, I think He is going to try to take over ANC, we saw how angry are people about the whole thing.

 I watched  Day walker, a comedy by Trevor Noah, last years, he mentioned something about the expectations’ that people had on the president Jacob Zuma, it was very funny to here those things because I had those expectation, I wanted a crazy president who just sings during the speech, who didn’t care about what people think of him, a president who goes to work with traditional clothes, or just, untidy, go to parliament with a undone t-shirt, I am sure that’s what everyone wanted, and we were so disappointed when he changed the person he was, he’s no longer singing and dancing during the speech, he wears suits every time, that’s boaring, we wanted someone who is out there, who is not scared to take risk.

What is Zuma’s future??  

When we fail to achieve our goals , we usually feel week, inadequate, and powerless, we feel like losers, I’ve noticed that after  two years ago after I failed to go to university, most of my close friends got school, but my thongs delayed and I end up not going to school, I felt devastated, angry at myself, I end up giving up what I was planning  study, it’s not like I gave up on it, I just felt that it let me down, so I told myself that I was going to  change a career, guess what!, the dreams we had and gave up on them, a pierce of us left with them, and that’s a reality, we don’t think about that when storm comes, but it is true,. I started not to care about what people think of me, and started to do things my way, it was not satisfying but it felt great, (to be continued)

What happens when we can’t take the fail or fault?

what we usually do when we fail, we give up and blame other people

for whatever that is happening to us,others end up running to drug, and letting

their lives run into grains.

what i can tell people to do is to continue with their dreams, if they fail, they must try again, and again