So there you are, trawling the internet for news of Agostini’s rumoured comeback, or those rare pics of Rossi with some gorgeous wench, when Windows shouts “Bing-bong” to announce the arrival of a new email. You stop what you’re doing, and there it is, simmering in your inbox — a badly written message, usually bearing […]
2007
Posted inLifestyle
How to have six beers and save lives …
If they were really serious about stopping people drinking and driving, our government would do something constructive about it, other than just making money out of roadblocks in currently disadvantaged areas. Like providing a decent public transport system. But that’s never going to happen — our taxes are much better spent on rushing our troops […]
Posted inLifestyle
The Eleventh Commandment
Politicians spend a great deal of our time and money passing myriad laws aimed at making us think they’re very busy people. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed, so they’re obviously putting lots of effort into converting worthwhile tasks into bullshit just to impress us voters. […]
Posted inMedia
The ‘gross misconduct’ of blogging
It is one of the most bizarre, frustrating and terrifying experiences to have to defend yourself for doing precisely what you have been trained and employed to do. At my rather outlandish and constitutionally questionable disciplinary hearing last week, I found I often had to pinch myself so weird it all was. My fellow employee […]
Posted inBusiness, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Kortbroek, my hero
Let it not be said that our minister in charge of environmental affairs is a tight-lipped, ignorant piece of political flotsam. Sure he has a bit of a fish bone in the cupboard, related to perpetually interesting alliances, but he also has vision and strength of conviction, strong leadership qualities. So, our honourable minister indicated […]
Posted inGeneral
The Mbeki biography — the good one
I have just put down of Mark Gevisser’s Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred and I have to say I am disappointed, but only because the end came too soon — I thought I had at least a chapter to go, but in fact the pages under my fingers were the 90-odd pages of footnotes, bibliography […]
Posted inGeneral
Mearsheimer and Walt: The Israel lobby and US foreign policy
John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard, published what they have styled a working paper (updated from 2002 through 2007) on the Israel lobby and its effect on US foreign policy. The March 2006 version may be seen here. The latest version […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Did you ever sleep with Mbeki?
Minutes before the Wits University book launch of Mark Gevisser’s over-hyped book on Mbeki, the traffic was forced to part on Jan Smuts outside the university as The Leader zipped past in RSA1 with a siren-blaring retinue of seven vehicles across three lanes. It lent an authentic African feel to the event. It is the […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Independent Newspapers censors, withdraws and censors again
Today, Business Report, which is inserted in a number of Independent Newspapers daily publications across the country, carries a censored advert on its back page from the End Occupation Campaign (EOC). The ad was censored by the newspaper company. The EOC — a coalition of Palestine solidarity groups, faith-based organisations such as the South African […]
Posted inGeneral
Urgent need to wake up to the demands of the environment
Humans are notoriously, if understandably, self-centred. It takes long years of education to teach children to consider the needs of others, and even then the struggle between narcissism and altruism continues unabated. At present, we live under economic conditions, known as neo-liberal consumer capitalism, that promote self-interest rather than consideration of others. Unfortunately, since the […]
Posted inGeneral
The obsession with money
Decades ago, renowned British novelist, John Fowles, wrote in a rare work of non-fiction, The Aristos, that “having, not being, governs our time”. In this sometimes startling statement of his personal philosophy, he further observed that “the great driving obsession of the last 150 years … is money”. This obsession, he further claimed, is “the […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
Johncom may have a winner in the Times
Johncom, soon to be renamed Avusa, has for the first time released details about the cost of its two new print titles, the Weekender and the Times. The company spent R33-million from April to September improving its online offerings and launching the two new titles, CEO Prakash Desai said during the company’s interim results announcement […]