The latest Super 14 proposal to hit administrators suggests the Blues be split into two franchises, as well as changes made to the Chiefs’ partners. The New Zealand Herald reports that there is a push to have six New Zealand sides involved in the series, perhaps as early as next year but more likely 2010, […]
2008
Posted inGeneral
How to create the ultimate password
When it comes to passwords, there are two objectives we need to achieve. Passwords need to be secure and easily remembered and accessible. In today’s climate of multiple logins to our social networks, websites, banks, email, etc, we tend to get lazy and stick to a single password which we use everywhere, which poses a […]
Posted inLifestyle
Liver transplant surgeon: A career with a future
If I were chatting to a medical student who was thinking about specialising, I would strongly recommend that he or she consider going into liver transplant surgery. Now there’s an area that is only going to grow in the future. I will now resist the temptation to make a Manto joke, noting instead how binge […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Normalising xenophobia
The barbaric violence, including the intimidation and killings that silenced the ho hum of the rainbow nation for the past three weeks, has finally subsided. Ordinary South Africans, after witnessing the bloodshed sprayed all over their newspapers and television screens, appear to have returned to the daily drama of their own lives. Of course, the […]
Posted inGeneral
The university of the 21st century: Facing complexity
It is imperative to problematise the idea of a university relentlessly and insistently at the beginning of the 21st century, and for a number of reasons. The first is that, regardless of a widespread belief in the ‘neutrality’ of universities, they have not been unaffected by political partisanship. Perhaps this is unavoidable, given the fact […]
Posted inGeneral
What is De Villiers planning for Pienaar and Steyn?
Is Pieter de Villiers playing discordant musical chairs with Ruan Pienaar and Francois Steyn? Will these two players’ amazing versatility and prodigious talent prove to be a curse? I ask this because it was under Jake White that the curse first came to the fore. White used these talented ex-Grey College boys in virtually every […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Middle East: US Foreign policy under Obama
Most observers must have been shaken from their self-delusion about Barack Obama’s supposedly more “humane and wise approach to foreign policy” after he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on the 4th June 2008. There is nothing pacifist nor anything anti-imperialist about the man’s political outlook, less so about his foreign policy orientation. Beneath […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The Zanu-PF Fan Club (also known as the ANC)
Robert Mugabe is one lucky dictator, being in the enviable position of having outsourced his foreign diplomacy efforts to the South African government. By preventing a discussion in the United Nations Security Council on Zimbabwe’s political situation, South Africa is doing its utmost to ensure that the international community does nothing about the tyrannous regime’s […]
Posted inGeneral
MXit’s innovation manager speaks …
Although MXit is an exciting development in the South African social media space, it has suffered from a lot of FUD. As per Wikipedia, FUD is “Fear, uncertainty and doubt: a tactic of rhetoric used in sales, marketing, public relations.” I believe the same FUD created by some South African journalists, politicians and parents around […]
Posted inGeneral
Video: Thoughts about the weekend games
I thought I’d post this video from my rucku website. It has thoughts about Wales vs South Africa and Ireland vs New Zealand, Roy Keane, Rugby Heaven and New Zealand.
Posted inGeneral
Twitter downtime – Could Google help Twitter scale?
I had a thought on Twitter a few days ago: Could a Google acquisition of Twitter help the service scale? Or is it not an infrastructure issue but more a platform issue? Twitter has suffered from serious downtime over the last few weeks, trying to keep their service live during peak usage periods. They managed […]
Posted inLifestyle
Rooney nuptials: Wedding of the century or mindless self-indulgence?
As a big fan of the British royal family with all its pomp and ceremony, I was naturally drawn to the “wedding of the century”, that of Wayne and Coleen Rooney. It’s the Italian Riviera, yachts and castle time as football upstages Hollywood with all the glitz and glamour of the fare. Sportsmen and women […]