"I'm extinct too... how much would I get on auction?"

1. My absolute favourite story of the week comes from the dusty nether regions of the East London museum, where the world’s only known dodo egg is the subject of a court dispute with the family of the famous Marjorie Courtney-Latimer. There’s mulitple twists and turns to the tale but basically it comes down to the family of Courtney-Latimer, who was the curator of the museum for decades and put it on the map with the discovery in the 1930s of the coelecanth, wanting the dodo egg back as they say it was only loaned to the museum by Marg. Read this fascinating story here at the Daily Dispatch.

2. Then over to Mashable where Sports Illustrated in the US was outed by a Diggit bookmarker from Bahrain for soliciting bookmarks for the magazine’s website with an offer of Sports Illustrated merchandise. It’s the comments thread on the outing that’s worth the read with many people saying that this kind of thing goes on all the time. Here’s the SI email posted on Diggit but you gotta love these two comments on the issue:

“Oh my God! Companies pay people to plug their products and services on social networking sites!
Also, the earth revolves around the sun. News at 11.”

“Quick to the doughnut shop immediately….we have to contact Michael Moore about this evil capitalism going on.”

3. Then in the UK, there’s been a major stoem over a Daily Mail column about the boy band star Stephen Gately, which seems to be more than a tad homophobic. Twitter heavies Stephen Fry and Derren Brown denounced the column and there were more than 21 000 complaints to the country’s Press Complaints Commission, causing its website to crash — this is more complaints in a single weekend than the regulator has received in total in the past five years! Comments are streaming into the Daily Mail’s website and my guess is that the furore will cause a major spike in the paper’s site traffic. Click here to read the story with all the relevant links at Editor’s Weblog.

4. Then we have some excellent analysis pieces from law expert and blogger Pierre de Vos on the legal issues involved in Schabir Shaik’s bid for a presidential pardon, Greta Steyn of Fin24 on the electrricity hikes and the economy and an opinion piece at Business Day saying there is a case to be made for Eskom raising capital with the World Bank rather than punishing the SA consumer even more. If olny.

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The new stars of the show are undoubtedly former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former NPA head Bulelani Ngcuka after being implicated in a political conspiracy against ANC president Jacob Zuma.

"Did you say conspire or perspire?"

When he announced his decision to drop all charges against Zuma, acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe indicated that there would be a commission of inquiry into the two men’s conduct but a senior NPA source has told the The Times that, in fact, they will be prosecuted. Read the story here though both men declined to comment.
Now the focus has shifted (Zuma sighs with relief) and we’re going to be seeing and hearing a lot about Ngcuka and McCarthy over the next year so what are they up to these days?

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