As a student in Moscow in the late 90’s, my wife Sonja decided it was time to own a cat. As a kid, her parents had always refused to allow a cat into their apartment. Now that she was 18, those rules dissolved and nothing could stop her. It was time. She hopped onto that […]
Grant Walliser
The human brain is made of atoms. Atoms consist primarily of empty space. It is fair to say, therefore, that my head is basically empty. That will please those of you who disagree with what I say until it dawns on you that your head is empty too.
So, based on the undeniable fact that our heads are fundamentally comprised of emptiness, is anything we think or say of any real value?
Probably not.
Remember that next time you are fuming at some point of view contrary to your own.
There is no debate that is not worth having.
No subject should ever be off limits.
Posted inNews/Politics
Does terrorism work?
The dust has settled now at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. I am not going to list the numbers of dead or expand upon the horror of it all; it is an all too common occurrence for there to be anything significant to add. I won’t give you a detailed explanation of who al-Shabab is; […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Thank God for Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens, author, journalist, master debater and razor-sharp intellectual has died. His passing was accompanied by an almost audible sigh of collective relief from the many hapless individuals that encountered him in debate while he lived. You could search long and hard for a sharper tongue driven by a more insightful, enormous brain for all […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Christmas is sick!
Christmas is sick. Based largely on sun worship and Scandinavian pagan ritual, Christmas in some form has been with us for thousands of years. Christians muscled in on an existing winter solstice festival, slapped their prophet on the front cover, claimed a rather unlikely virgin birth and beat up anybody with their large holy armies […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Zapiro vs The Prophet
The recent fracas surrounding Zapiro’s drawing of the Prophet Muhammad has predictably culminated in the usual death threats from irate Muslims. Both the cartoonist and the newspaper’s editor apparently have to die for daring to express their opinion in a theoretically free country. I think it may be worth examining both why Zapiro decided to […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
‘I’m South African Neutral’ and what it really means
Being a South African over the past few weeks has been a turbulent experience. The excitement of the looming Fifa World Cup has been tempered by a degree of racial polarisation not seen since the apartheid era. Instigated largely by Julius Malema’s inflammatory style and culminating in the murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche, this polarisation has […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Malema, Milosevic, Hitler and the ticking time bomb
In March of 1991 after months of nationalistic propaganda and other divisive rhetoric from Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, a small group of Serbs and Croats clashed in the Plitvice Lakes National Park on the border between these two countries. Serbs had moved into the park and expelled the park management. Zagreb viewed this as […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
SpeakZA: The free press will never die
The name Zanu-PF used to be synonymous with liberation as was the ANC. It used to stand for the high ideals of fighting oppression at great cost to those who lead the fight. Across the globe, liberated, free-thinking societies and the media institutions that represented their views stood by Zanu-PF as they have stood by […]
Posted inLifestyle
Take your filthy hands off our porn
Government, it seems, wants to control our access to porn on DSTV. Thank goodness we have them to look out for us. We are clearly not capable of making these complex moral decisions all by ourselves. We are the rabble, the electorate and all we understand are those empty campaign promises. We love those flashy […]
Posted inGeneral
Kangaroo courts part 1: The Polanski case
Every so often we are faced with a news story that divides opinion and causes heavy debate. In these cases, emotion often rules supreme and otherwise pleasant people become laptop dictators demanding justice and punishment. They seldom know more than the basic public stance, cry righteous indignation without a semblance of objectivity, and the baying […]
Posted inGeneral
City Power knocked my lights out!
Heritage Day for most people was a day to celebrate. Braais were going, music was playing and people chilled at home or at events around the country. For some, however, Heritage Day was pretty miserable and heritage night and the entire long weekend was worse and was spent in the dark. That’s because City Power […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Iran, Russia, US, Europe and Israel: Why Mugabe is irrelevant
I honestly don’t think I can stomach another indignant person imploring “the West” to “do something about Zimbabwe”. This gem is usually delivered on the back of some hack thesis about the hypocritical invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to free them from dictatorships whilst leaving poor old Zimbabwe languishing under Mugabe. Next is generally the […]