Imagine for a moment that the human race was extinct and that instead in its place several billion humanoid pigs had taken up residence on planet earth. Pigs, yeah let’s say pigs — or dogs, or cats or birds for that matter, it doesn’t really make a difference. Let’s say that these pigs (or dogs […]
General
Posted inGeneral
Alternatives
The worst thing about limitations on individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities is that they impinge upon your options, choices and decision-making. Take for example the decision to deploy ANC cadres to government, the public service, the public enterprises and the parastatals; this has wrought havoc in your life, making it impossible for you live, work, […]
Posted inBusiness, General, News/Politics
Eskom is bent
If Eskom is bent, what is it going to take to straighten it out?
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General
Hate and hatred
Black people are angry. White people are angry. Indian people are angry. Coloured people are angry. Chinese people are angry. It would seem that South Africans of all races are angry. There is so much hate and hatred welling up inside each South African, that at a moment’s notice anyone could tweet a harshly worded […]
Posted inGeneral, Health
Does homeopathic medicine work (at least for some people)?
There is a huge, and unjustified, prejudice towards homeopathic medicine in contemporary societies, and I suspect that it is driven by the financial interests of what is colloquially known as Big Pharma, of which medical doctors are the involuntary, if not unwitting agents every time they prescribe some or other mainstream medication. Don’t get me […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, General, Health, Lifestyle
Social and emotional skills will improve education and grow our economy
Dr Gloria Marsay People faced with adversities in developing countries struggle to bridge the gap between education and work. A key challenge for 21st century schools involves serving culturally diverse students with appropriate transferable skill domains, i.e. deep human skills and advanced technical skills essential for economic empowerment in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (#4IR), as described […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, Gender violence, General, Health, Media, Tech
Human ‘nature’ as explored in a riveting television series: ‘The 100’
The question, what is dominant, human ‘nature’, or ‘nurture’ (culture), has been the motivating force in a debate that has waged since at least the 18th and 19th centuries — for instance in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see his prize-winning Academy of Dijon essay on the question, whether human morals had improved by, or […]
Posted inEnvironment, Gender violence, General, News/Politics
It’s official, I’m a twit!
I swore off social media rubbishcapades more than a decade ago. I still have all my records from the early and mid 90s regarding my orders for a social media. I still listen to all my records from the mid and late 90s regarding my orders for a Web 2.0 and a social media. I […]
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
‘Aquaman’ and American superheroes
On the way back from a conference in Berlin just before Christmas 2019, I was catching up on movies on Qatar Airlines — a carrier with exceptional leg-space in economy class, so I could sit comfortably, at least — and I managed to select a number of excellent recent films, including Marc Webb’s Gifted (2017) […]
Posted inEquality, General, Media, News/Politics
Trump: The Emperor without clothes
Everybody knows the story of the emperor’s new clothes — where a vain emperor contracted two so-called ‘tailors’ to make him a new set of clothes, not knowing that they were con artists. By flattering the emperor about his handsome appearance in the supposedly new clothes, when in fact there was nothing, and assuring him […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media, Tech
Modern architecture in Berlin
When one finds oneself on a busy street in modern Berlin — capital of a reunified Germany since June 20 1991 — it is difficult to believe that it has grown into this city in the course of seven centuries, at least as far as its written history goes. The latter records that in the […]
Posted inEnvironment, Equality, General, Health, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Searching for a new political cosmology
This morning my eye caught a report about Brazil’s climate-change denialist, neoconservative president, Jair Bolsonaro — evidently in an attempt to divert attention from his own egregious responsibility for the fires that rage unabated in (what is rapidly ceasing to be) the Amazon rainforest — accusing Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘paying’ non-governmental organisations to set fire […]