Only in America! While the entire planet was focused on the CERN laboratory near the French-Swiss border, just in case our little world had its own Big Bang and like Humpty could not be put together again, the USA was making a matzos pudding about pigs and lipstick. Turns out that on Tuesday Barrack Obama, […]
2008
Posted inMedia, Tech
Blogging, the next chapter
The annual Highway Africa conference at Rhodes U in Grahamstown does not so much set the agenda as tap into the agenda of where new media is going. Case in point is the contribution of Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media and global thought leader in citizen journalism. Back in 2003, we both participated […]
Posted inNews/Politics
On Sarah Britten’s “Jacob Zuma, Zapiro (bless his satirical name) and Sarah Palin” article
Sarah Britten made a very astute observation on where the Zapiro (bless his satirical name) cartoon may be taking us all. Zuma may very well be re-written as a victim – for the nonce. Dream on girl – with this kind of writing ye may very well topple the mighty Traps. However, the furore created […]
Posted inGeneral
Santana: the man with no answers, no plan
This week, I got a rare opportunity to ask the country’s most paid manager Joel Natalino Santana to explain his football philosophy to me and the rest of football scribes who had gathered for a post-mortem following the country’s failure to reach the Africa Cup of Nations. “Clearly”, I told Santana, “we are not getting […]
Posted inGeneral
Where is the social conversation going?
This is a theory I’m hatching … Would appreciate some feedback. The premise: trying to look forward and predict what will happen in the adoption cycle of social media. It is, of course, only when we look forward, that we can invent truly differentiated and unique ideas. Its background thinking to this graph goes along […]
Posted inGeneral
To subscribe or to follow, that is the question
For those of you who don’t know, twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and receive other users’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets can be seen as text messages which move between users’ computers rather than mobile phones. There are hundreds of thousands of twitter users around […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Best served before the Big Bang
I always thought that the “Big Bang” was the date that they stamped under cartons of food. Every time the government (Mrs Traps) serves us supper all the boxes are marked “best served before the Big Bang”, which considering that the Mark II is only starting in a tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border today, must […]
Posted inMedia
That cartoon
Rape. It is a hard thing to think about, and not usually the subject of cartoons. Did the Zapiro cartoon cross the line? And what is that line, anyway? I don’t think it crossed the line. Michael Trapido thinks it did, and argues (in his blog “Will Mondli fire Zapiro?”) that it did so for […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Zapiro, Zuma and us
With his latest Sunday Times cartoon, Zapiro has ventured where angels should fear to tread. I am saying “should” because it shows that journalist-cartoonists can be as desensitised as other South Africans about the social crises that beset us. I am talking about his shameless use of rape as metaphor. South Africa has been staggering […]
Posted inGeneral
The State of the billion rand rugby nation: 0 to 1,369 minutes in one S14 season
Here then, after much sifting and research, are the playing times of South African rugby’s elite Super 14 group of the Cheetahs, Bulls, Sharks, Lions and Stormers and their total playing time for the 2007 Super 14 season, to offer a benchmark of whether South Africa is maximising the playing time of its asset base […]
Posted inGeneral
(Car) Toon Army may yet have the last laugh, but this whole business is not funny anymore. Really.
The English national pastime — except when they are winning the odd Ashes series, of course — is in danger of become the international fashion accessory of the world’s wealthiest men. In the latest twist to a saga that is making Generations look rather bland, Newcastle United have now been linked with a possible takeover […]
Posted inLifestyle
Floating dorpies
People are sure to be offended by this piece, people who refuse to see past their prejudices and make intellectual counters, if that may be, to my ideas expressed on this piece. Therefore, the disclaimer just below is probably null, but I feel strongly that people should know that I offer this piece in the […]