I was at an event the other night that featured Jay Naidoo as the guest speaker. In his talk he told the story of Grameen Bank — a bank in Bangladesh that focuses on micro-loans to the poorest and most destitute members of society. The bank, jointly with its founder Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the […]
Tony Lankester
Tony is a corporate animal but it wasn't always so. He used to work in the media, with a specific interest in technology; travel; music; and getting free stuff. He doesn't consider himself a thought leader, although he does confess to having thoughts. He presents the M&G's weekly podcast.
Posted inTech
Hail Vodacom — the new kings of spam!
Like everyone else with an email account, spam has become one of those mind-numbing annoyances I’ve had to learn to live with. This study reckons that 83% of all emails being sent are spam. That translates to somewhere between 60-billion and 150-billion emails a day. It sounds like it is overstating it a bit, but […]
Posted inLifestyle
Barry Manilow: Secret weapon against crime
I came across this report that tells how police in the United Kingdom have borrowed from their Australian counterparts an ingenious method of managing loitering youths. To fight the growing problem of pimply teenagers gathering in public places with their trousers around their knees, iPods embedded in their waxy ears, composing badly spelled SMSs and […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
Hear your Thought Leaders …
This is not a post, just a plug. In the form of a post. If you haven’t yet heard the Mail & Guardian‘s weekly podcast Between the Pages, then this is as good a time as any to get on the bandwagon. The show has been going for 43 weeks now and, each week, we […]
Posted inGeneral
Madeleine McCann mystery: Another theory
Any parent of a young child would have gone cold when the news of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann hit the world’s media in May this year. Since then there has been some criticism of the extent of the media attention. It’s a fair point –given the hundreds of thousands of children who go missing […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Mbeki’s inbox: Part 2
I see in this week’s Mail & Guardian that the paper decided to take my post from Thought Leader and expand on it a bit, with some help of two of their journos (check out page four of the paper). While all that was going on, I was sent another screen grab from the president’s […]
Posted inTech
When privacy no longer counts
I read a couple of stories in the past few days that seemingly have no connection, but that collectively demonstrate how the world we live in has changed. Article #1: Intelligence magazine reports on a new security system that is being put in place in airports in the United States. The system pre-vets travellers and […]
Posted inBusiness
The scourge of PowerPoint
If you ever have to do presentations to groups of people, you may find this useful. I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte — he’s a man who has made a career out of teaching people how to represent their thoughts and arguments in an elegant and useful manner. Wikipedia notes that the New York […]
Posted inGeneral
Inside Mbeki’s inbox …
A confidential source working in the IT department in Parliament sent me this screengrab from President Thabo Mbeki’s inbox. Thought you might like to see it [click picture below to enlarge].
Posted inGeneral
The agony of analysing politics
I thought the time had come for me to do something a bit more analytical than a report on my weekend at Oppikoppi, my views on Facebook friendship, nudity in small-town America and angst about my cyber-footprint. President Thabo Mbeki’s firing of Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge seemed like fair fodder. Everyone else was doing […]
Posted inLifestyle
Fun places to live #456723
What I wouldn’t give to live in the town of Brattleboro, Vermont. They sound like such fun people. For years the town (population 12 005, according to their Wikipedia entry) has been nudist-friendly … there is no ordinance prohibiting nudity in the state or in the town. And so people who like letting it all […]
Posted inLifestyle
My own Oppikoppi A to Z
M&G Online editor Riaan Wolmarans wrote a great piece for the paper detailing the A to Z of Oppikoppi — that free-flowing cauldron of dusty love, music and drink somewhere about two hours out of Pretoria. It struck me how incredibly personal the whole ‘koppi experience is. Two people can spend the same amount of […]