We’re talking Search Wars: What does it mean to you? On Monday Robert Scoble wrote what I thought was a brilliant thought piece on Microsoft potentially buying out Yahoo!, and concurrently also Facebook. Scoble’s take on the matter was that should Microsoft venture this way, what with social media, and particularly FaceBook in this case […]
2008
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
The minister and the law
Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law; but because ’tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to *confute him, so said John Selden (1584-1654), posthumously published in Table Talk, 1689. There are four fundamental pieces of the law that set the boundaries […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Xenophobic racism and other general idiocy
When I first heard that people of Zimbabwean, Mozambican and Malawian descent had been attacked in Alexandra, I did what I always do when I hear such news. Not to be callous or anything, but I shrugged and wondered out loud why people always seem amazed when these things happen. I have received a lot […]
Posted inBusiness, News/Politics
Polokwane’s revenge: ‘no crisis Mbeki’ pulls the walls down
Thabo Mbeki must go. The president who has failed to see any crisis with the world’s highest rates of Aids, worst crime statistics, exploding power stations, the stolen election of a neighbouring country and scenes of unmitigated barbarism against foreigners is destroying our nation. African National Congress treasurer general Matthew Phosa is right, we need […]
Posted inGeneral
There is insanity in IT
I suppose this is usually the part where I’m supposed to say this is my first post and blah, blah … Now that has been said and done, with great appreciation of the minds that did it before, I will get on to the real issue. For all the time I have been involved in […]
Posted inGeneral
Is it easier to feel South African when you’re not actually in South Africa?
Hands up who remembers this ad for Castle Lager? It appeared in 1998, after Thabo Mbeki’s “two nations” speech which in many ways marked the end of the Rainbow Nation as a national myth. It’s telling that Castle Lager, then the self–proclaimed beer of the nation, chose to feature South Africans who are a long […]
Posted inGeneral
The identity-management solution
In my first article I described the requirement for an identity-management (IdM) solution. In this article I will highlight some of the ways in which a properly implemented IdM solution can meet those requirements. One of the very first deliverables in an IdM project is to establish the single view of an identity. Your IdM […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Party HQ shouldn’t call shots on SABC — Mathews Phosa
Intervention by ANC headquarters to change Parliament’s nominees for the SABC board last year was not only “going too far”, it was actually “corrupt”. This strong assessment comes from ANC treasurer general Mathews Phosa, speaking to the South African National Editors’ Forum in Johannesburg on Saturday. It should be up to Parliament to resolve who […]
Posted inGeneral
Time to stop wallowing in self-pity
What Jews and Afrikaners have in common, a son of a leading anti-apartheid activist once said to me, is that they will never let you forget about their past suffering. He could say this, being himself part Jewish and part Afrikaans. In reality, though, it is true of virtually everyone. Whereas contrition and self-criticism do […]
Posted inLifestyle
The freedom of not having a car
I love the freedom of not having a car. No monthly payments, no ruinous splodges of wonga on the garage card. No insurance, no tracking device, no monthly subscription for said tracking device.* In South Africa, I drove a RunX, which, I reasoned, was solid and practical and easier to sell than the Fiat I […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Kenya’s animal science phenomenon
Submitted by Lionel Faull Lionel Faull stumbles across an entry in the little-known East African Journal of Animal Behavioural Science … Kenya is world famous for its wilderness safari experience, thanks to its magnificent landscapes and teeming wildlife. A new species of mammal has recently emerged, however, whose predatory characteristics have thrown the tourism sector […]
Posted inGeneral
Image, art, language and gender
Art as practice, phenomenon, activity, always exceeds any specific artist’s production. It therefore embodies a certain self-transcendence, which is why every era witnesses anew the problematisation of art. Art has to become a problem as soon as it seems self-evident to the people of an era, because its domestication would rob it of its function […]