Hillary Clinton will become the 44th US president on November 4 2008 and if she is wise and the world is fortunate she will select Barack Obama as her vice-president or appoint him to a senior position dealing with internal US policies. The world will shift intense and expensive efforts focused on HIV and Aids […]
2007
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Matric results: Fire Naledi Pandor
Polokwane taught us that South Africans are tired of promises and of people with posh voices telling us what to do and doing nothing themselves. We begin 2008 with dreadful matric results — 21 500 young people failed in Gauteng alone. How is that possible in the wealthiest, best resourced province in Africa?
Posted inLifestyle
The corners of her eyes
This weekend I had two windows broken in my house. The first was a braaiing accident when, after a couple of toots, I stumbled with a plastic chair in my hands and two of the chair legs went through a glass pane. The second breakage was an act of God when we had some strong […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle
Service in South Africa: Heroes and zeros
South Africa has one of the worst service ethoses in the world. I’m trying to think which nation in the world that I have travelled to is worse and can’t. And yes, I deliberately avoid Nigeria, there is just so much trauma I’m prepared to experience in one lifetime.
Posted inGeneral
With Facebook you get without asking
When a snot-nosed and wet-behind-the-ears 23-year-old tells the world at a media junket how the advertising industry needs to listen to him, you wonder what authority he has to do that. His grand message is that “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today”.
Posted inMedia
With Facebook you get without asking
When a snot-nosed and wet-behind-the-ears 23-year-old tells the world at a media junket how the advertising industry needs to listen to him, you wonder what authority he has to do that. His grand message is that “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today”.
Posted inGeneral
Theory and practice
In a previous posting (The critical task of universities) I wrote about, among other things, the society-critical task of universities, as well as the place of teaching and research at such institutions. Unsurprisingly, it has elicited a negative comment aimed at exposing what my critic saw as the hollowness of “theory”
Posted inGeneral
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, al-Qaeda and a lesson for South Africa
Regular readers of my blog will be aware of my close affinity with the people of Pakistan, which initially arose from my contact with their cricket fans. What started as a fascination with their sporting prowess grew into an intense interest in all things concerning their country and the region.
Posted inLifestyle
A rhinestone Xmas
DAMN! I tried so hard to have a happy Christmas, but the best I managed was a somewhat disjointed crazy kinds-in-the-kitchen porridge of highs and lows. I can’t say I expected much from Christmas itself. Since I’ve aged and grown more and more disillusioned with the general direction this most glorious of lands is taking, […]
Posted inBusiness, Media
An original idea? Beaten to it by 600 years
My friend Mike and I have been working on a plan for a new product. Mike likes to look me in the eye and say: “Arthur, we are not geniuses.” This is his way of reminding me that we need to get a move on, because somewhere, someone else has already thought of the same […]
Posted inLifestyle
Cyberlover, privacy tsars and the Jewish husband
Earlier this month a Russian chatbot called Cyberlover began appearing on online dating services. The idea behind it being to get unwitting “clients” to give their personal details away, thereby opening themselves up to all kinds of fraud and theft. Ingenious. Of course the leaking of data is becoming a major concern the world over, […]
Posted inBusiness, Tech
Web 2.0: The emperor’s new code
Every time I hear the term “Web 2.0”, I throw up a little. The man behind the phrase, Tim O’Reilly, is a legend, sure. His publishing company, O’Reilly, is a thousand-megawatt leading light whose ideas I filch regularly. But, oh, what a turdy little storm he started when he coined the term back in 2004. […]