Many writers decry office-speak such as “going forward” or “step up to the plate” as “useless” or “irritating”. Let’s celebrate it instead. There are many uses for office-speak, or biz-speak, or buzzwords. “Going forward” has especially come in for criticism as a kind of nervous tick in business speech, a filler phrase without any meaning […]
2008
Posted inGeneral
Dempsey departs with the truth
I’m reminded of a once popular song by a South African kwaito artist, Senyaka, which asked the question: “Romeo, o swa jang o nkolota?” (Romeo, why do you die when you still owe me?). Before proceeding, it might be necessary to pay my condolences to the family and those close to Charles Dempsey of the […]
Posted inGeneral
Seven client-side web peeves
The web is not about technology, it’s about communication. Yet, in the ultimate schema of things, it becomes evident to the end-user only via HTML and clever client-side jinks. Despite our clever plans, middleware, and thousands of hours of social meddling, we are stuck with ouputting to a 1024px wide box encapsulated in virtual chrome. […]
Posted inNews/Politics
If we’re celebrating Mandela, why are we acting like Mugabe?
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Mad Bob must be feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about the conduct of some of our leaders right now. Madiba less so. The man who devoted his life to a liberation struggle, for all the right reasons, and then to nation-building, now has to listen to […]
Posted inGeneral
New mental psyche of Springboks: Togetherness and toughness
Peter de Villiers’ style of coaching adds a unique dimension of team togetherness and camaraderie, that surpasses previous recent Springbok coaches. Previously, the Springbok teams were treated like a constellation of stellar individuals playing for the Springboks. In many instances the overwhelming and intense media attention on some of the players made them start believing […]
Posted inSport
Silwane trains for the Comrades
I have never run the Comrades Marathon. This is because I studied Human Physiology and Biochemistry and I am privy to simple concepts that the rest of the population seems unaware of. For instance, how many people know that muscles are constructed from proteins and that proteins have a propensity to denature under certain stresses, […]
Posted inBusiness
My fellow South Africans, learn to flip burgers
South Africans desperate to emigrate to Australia will be excited to learn that McDonalds and KFC are so desperate for staff that they are willing to issue 457 skilled immigrant visas to burger flippers. Granted, you will have to move to a mining town in the middle of nowhere. But it is a foot in […]
Posted inGeneral
Even Mugabe is entitled to freedom of expression
“If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Paarl Web, a subsidiary of Naspers, printed R3 million worth of party propaganda for Mugabe after Caxton declined the deal. Business Day reported the story, and now there is some uproar about this. We are, admittedly, dealing […]
Posted inGeneral
The great open source CMS debate
There’s been loads of discussion lately about using WordPress as a CMS platform. The recent WordPress meetup held in Cape Town saw some discussion around the the topic. Adii presented a very compelling argument for the fact that WordPress is essentially a database with different type of data which can be used in many different […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
‘Bush speaks the truth. Hell freezes’
Ha! My favourite six words of fiction. “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” come a close second. I am a sucker for brevity, and appreciate writers who can cut a long story short without losing the essence of the plot. (Unlike Woody Allen who said he “speed-read War and Peace. It was about Russia.”) So, […]
Posted inGeneral
De Villiers still on track
So what have we learnt from Peter de Villiers’ tenure so far? Certainly there hasn’t been enough sustained evidence of the promised shimmering new expansive game plan in the three Tests thus far. That though, I believe can be attributed to the nature of the opposition and the very fact that well, it’s only been […]
Posted inGeneral
Interview: ForGood – a social movement (network) that transcends the Internet
I spotted a new “social movement” site the other day, which piqued my interest. ForGood positions itself as “a social movement that inspires, guides and connects different people taking action to make our society safer, healthier, happier, more informed, more compassionate, caring …” So I set up the following text interview to delve beneath the […]