I visit a death camp — at the wrong time of the year They show a curtain-raiser video on the tour bus from Krakow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, a 50-minute documentary based on the work of Alexi Vorontsov, the first Red Army soldier with a movie camera to enter these gates of hell in January 1945. Now […]
Bruce Cohen
A former journalist, in recent years founder and CEO of Absolute Organix.
Posted inLifestyle
Australia, where is your humanity?
There’s a smug little reality show on Discovery Channel called Border Patrol that shines a spotlight on the work of Australian customs officials. In a recent episode I sat riveted as two Ozzy pensioners quivered tearfully before an officious bitch in blue that had seized their contraband bunch of bananas. The threat level stuttered to […]
Posted inMedia
Tiger Brands: Infantile bully
Earlier this month my company took a stand at a baby show at Emperor’s Palace. We decorated our stand with posters and products to promote Holle, a Swiss range of organic baby foods and formulas, which we have been distributing for several years. One of the posters we put on the stand said: “Holle — […]
Posted inNews/Politics
I kiss the feet of St Julian of Wiki
As I write, Google returns 56 million results for my search on “Assange”. Pretty intimidating for anyone trying to join the discourse on Julian the Terrible. Here’s my contribution: Fucking ace, Julian. Make those mothers sweat and shit themselves. OK, that hardly qualifies as thoughtful input into the debate on media freedom and the right to […]
Posted inLifestyle
Get off our organic backs
If you live in the 702 reception area and were listening to the John Robbie Show on Monday, you might have been as irritated as I was when the topic of organic foods came up for discussion. People keep digging up nonsense research to make the absurd claim that organic food is no healthier than […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Hey Trevor, I Noah better way
If Trevor Noah, the spinmeister of Cell C, wants to make himself the darling of (at least some of) the SA cellphone community, he might consider this: get Cell C to start a massive roll-out of Wi-Fi hotspots in major centres, saturating them with broadband access. It will allow the fast-growing smartphone customer base to […]
Posted inLifestyle
The terminal failure of orthodox medicine
When my father died last year of cancer it took me some time to fully grasp the manner of his passing and to realise my own culpability in allowing the doctors to destroy whatever dignity death might have allowed him if I had had the courage and the knowledge to stop the torture. I allowed […]
Posted inLifestyle
The real war on cancer (maybe)
The South African media seems to have blissfully ignored one of the most important health stories of the decade — last week’s report by President Obama’s Cancer Panel (PCP) which, finally, has turned the tables on the entire cancer industry from within. While the PCP report focuses on the cancer epidemic in the US — […]
Posted inLifestyle
In defence of bread
You may have come across Michael Pollan’s book In Defence of Food, a wry and fascinating critique of the dangers of the ideology of nutritionism where we hapless and relentless seekers of good health (or is it really immortality?) spend our lives sacrificing taste and joy for recommended daily allowances of vitamins and minerals; where […]
Posted inBusiness
Absa, you’re killing me
I truly hate Absa, and they haven’t done a thing to me. If you’ve ever run an email account without any spam filtering on, you’ll have had an inkling of just how much spam is piling up across the net, a veritable flood of dirtybits looking for tiny cracks in the dyke. The spam filters […]
Posted inLifestyle
Defragging is divine
Do you defrag? Really? Do you watch while you defrag? Like a teenage voyeur behind the picket fence gasping as Sally steps into her bath? I have it on good geek authority that it’s OK to watch those blue and yellow and green pixels shuttle and skip across the screen as your hard drive periodically […]
Posted inGeneral
Getting to grips with a thick-headed reality
As the election draws near I am reminded of a throw-away scene in a frivolous little movie called Confetti, a mockumentary about a wedding competition. You may have seen the movie (it’s re-running on DStv at the moment). It’s a pathetic little bedroom scene where that most desperate-to-win tennis player turns to his paranoid partner […]