So I had a brief chat to someone on Facebook the other day. I’d met him once a couple of months ago and we’d never got around to following up. During the course of our exchange, he suggested we “go for a coffee some time”. I found this interesting. Coffee is quite clearly intended to […]
2011
Posted inGeneral
Milan San Remo 2011
One of the things I enjoyed most about the Milan San Remo on Saturday was the build up. Anticipation in the morning of the race was high. Riders were tweeting what they were having for breakfast while journalists were predicted the day’s winner. Cycling fans have a horrible time from October to January when there […]
Posted inGeneral
Disservice delivery and the crisis of local government
The most disgusting example of the failure of local government in South Africa also happens to be the place my mother’s family calls home. The gateway to Mpumalanga’s Cultural Heartland, the Kruger National Park and the Lowveld juts out like a scar on the otherwise awe-inspiring rolling grasslands a mere 100km from Tshwane. The near […]
Posted inLifestyle
My Steri Stumpie moment
I estimate my Cape Epic partner and I have downed about 100 chocolate, cream soda and strawberry flavoured milk drinks in the last six months. This has been my greatest, most deserved pleasure. When SMSs have flown around between friends — Are you surfing tomorrow? Wind’s looking perfect, let’s meet at Lakeside at 8.30; reserve […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Stovepipe pants and phutu plaits
Mr G was jug-eared and wore towelling socks with Barker moccasins. His moustache was more Yosemite Sam than Magnum PI. On good days, he wore a canary-yellow tracksuit in keeping with his role as the phys-ed instructor. But normally it was the stovepipe pants and white shirt combo. Oh, and the bad tie. But these […]
Posted inLifestyle
Mud, Alchaholic drinks and money (sometimes)
This weekend I laughed more than I have laughed in a very long time. My mother was tidying out drawers and found my Std 2 Guidance schoolbook. It’s a slim A5 drawing book, and it makes for fascinating reading. For me, at least, because it’s a telescope through 26 years to an earlier version of […]
Posted inNews/Politics
The flesh is weak and the spirit flagging
Not a week passes without some ANC luminary, of manifestly pure heart and clear conscience, promising in soulful soliloquy to the news cameras that the government will not tolerate malfeasance an instant longer. This week it was the turn of the Minister in the Presidency, Collins Chabane, who railed against the “scourge of corruption”, in […]
Posted inGeneral
Springbok puzzle for 2011 nears completion
The gentlemanly fisticuffs that we’s seeing across the Sanzar universe at the moment, while first and foremost a battle for regional supremacy, falls into the shadow of a much bigger prize. Rugby World Cup VII begins in earnest during the middle of September but the majority of Super rugby players will tell the media that […]
Posted inGeneral
The ACDP and FF+ fall short of our Constitution
By Steven Hussey One seldom considers that positions vehemently opposed to apparently unpalatable details of our beautiful, liberal Constitution are held by parties with seats in Parliament. But of course that is the case, and from time to time the rejection of South Africa’s values for human rights raises its primitive head. What an itch […]
Posted inGeneral
The heteronormative observer — the Concourt in Le Roux v Dey
Is it defamatory, and therefore illegal, to publish an image depicting a person who claims that he is heterosexual, as gay? This week the Constitutional Court apparently answered the above question in the negative. The facts before the court were as follows: two schoolboys published a computer-created image in which the faces of the deputy […]
Posted inGeneral
If only I wasn’t afraid of maths
I have a recurring nightmare, and it’s not the possibility that Patricia de Lille might pose for Playboy as part of some sort of commemorative election edition. No, this nightmare always involves something quite different: waking up to discover that I have a maths exam to write — and I haven’t studied for it. Maths […]
Posted inGeneral
The tsunami in Japan: Reality versus simulation
In an age when sophisticated new technologies enable engineers, architects, medical doctors, physicists and molecular biologists to simulate virtually everything that their respective disciplines pertain to, from building designs to protein molecules, the Japanese tsunami comes as a cruel reminder that there is, after all, something real out there. And this “something” sometimes behaves in […]