I wish I had an astronomy telescope powerful enough to spot a minor planet barely visible near Jupiter. It’s called Siyaxuza and is named after a young rocket scientist from Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. ‘Stroesnyannies! This bombshell is contained in the revered Clem Sunter’s column “The X Factor” on News24’s website. Despite the fact […]
Llewellyn Kriel
Posted inLifestyle
Seven billion superheroes: Has the ‘third wave’ overtaken us already?
In 1980 pioneering futurist Alvin Toffler published the sequel to his seminal Future Shock. The Third Wave broadly argued that humanity was poised on the cusp of an all-encompassing, all-pervading third fundamental social revolution — the previous two having been the Industrial Revolution and prior to that the First Wave when clans of nomadic hunter-gatherers […]
Posted inGeneral
Hey, why you so late again?
If ignorance really is bliss, South Africans must be among the happiest people this side of the Big Bang. The fact that we are not is alarming; or rather very, very frightening. Or should be. Okay, confession time: I’m distorting the original meaning of the adage. Most of us understand it to mean that not […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Piketberg: A mine and a metaphor for our time
A few weeks ago South Africans elected the African National Congress to yet another term as overlords of one of the most beautiful, sacred and creative lands on Earth. A land acknowledged as the “Cradle of Humankind”, where our species, homo sapiens sapiens, first ventured forth to populate and ultimately become the overlords of the […]
Posted inGeneral
Dangling between the devil and the ANC
One of the big stories of the day in the US is the sly means by which mega-corporations are finding less-than-open ways to give their CEOs disproportionately gargantuan packages. Everything from super-cars to private jets to high-profile academic posts to private security. The companies — if and when they respond — bleat about how hard […]
Posted inNews/Politics
It takes a village to raise a species
EISH! What a tough day for humanity! With the World Health Organisation raising the global alert level to Phase 5 meaning that a worldwide pandemic of the killer H1N1 influenza virus is imminent, the world — that’s all of us — is now locked in combat with two enemies. The existing one is the global […]
Posted inTech
It’s the end of the world as we know it
We may not have reached the point where the normally trustworthy laptop politely, but firmly says: “I’m sorry, Llewellyn, but I cannot allow that.” Yet! But the glorious imbroglio that has crashed down around the great Time magazine with the publication of its hitherto supposedly authoritative “100 Most Influential People in the World” for 2009 […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
‘I dreamed a dream in time gone by …’
Predictably, there have been few real surprises emerging from last week’s election. What has surprised many though has been the timbre of international reactions. Ranging from rank indifference to stereotypically ignorant responses to the blase business-as-usual expectations about the Dark Continent, reactions in the major media worldwide have reflected poorly on how the rest of […]
Posted inGeneral
What to do with that damned race card now?
Ever since Madiba passed the reins of power to the ineffectual intellectual, the dominion of the African National Congress has been marked — and marred — by its incomprehensible fetish with the “race card”. This silliness was trotted out with monotonous tedium every time they were at a loss for a reasonable or logical response […]
Posted inGeneral
Open, Sezuma!!
The following things seem pretty certain now — the ANC will emerge victorious from the elections and Jacob Zuma will become South Africa’s fourth post-apartheid president. The rest is detail. Whether Cope does anything, but dilate the eye of Sauron. Whether Helen lands the Western Cape. Whether hordes of municipalities choose delivery over the ANC’s […]
Posted inGeneral
The anguish of the exiles
Now that I’ve been in a foreign country for two months, and despite the fact that I’ll return sooner than comforts me, I have begun to understand the enormity of relocating from the land of your birth. Irrespective of the details, every South African I have come to know while staying with my family in […]
Posted inGeneral
Now I really want the 2010 World Cup to fail!
Every great multinational sports match, from annual events such as Formula 1, the Super 14 and TriNations, the Uefa Champions League soccer, the tennis Grand Slam and the barrage of golf tournaments, to quadrennial events such as the Olympics, the Rugby World Cup and the Soccer World Cup, has long been tainted by the stain […]