Somewhere a computer is quietly thinking about you. It is deciding what you want for supper tonight and sending instructions to trucks and warehouses to make sure that your local Woolworths can sell it to you. It is basing its thoughts on a whole range of factors — weather patterns (thanks, Al Gore), holidays (Eid, […]
Lifestyle
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
New weapon in traffic cops’ arsenal
The Sunday Times this week reported on the long-promised demerit scheme set to weed out South Africa’s worst drivers. Habitual offenders will rack up points depending on the severity of their traffic mishap, thus risking the suspension or cancellation of their driver’s licences. A pilot project to test the system will be launched in Pretoria/Tshwane […]
Posted inLifestyle, Sport, Tech
All Blacks and France plan Facebook revenge
France and New Zealand may be out of the Rugby World Cup, but they have come up with a desperate new attempt to prove they remain a force on the international stage. In just three weeks, France has doubled the size of its regional network on Facebook, from 141 000 to 284 000. The New Zealand network […]
Posted inLifestyle
Doing them for a fiver
Walking around Brixton in the United Kingdom trying to sell overweight filofaxes to old ladies doesn’t exactly give you that “holiday” feeling. But sooner or later, if you’re a young South African on a working holiday (as I once was), you have to start working — preferably while you can still afford a travel card. […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Is technology manipulating consumer behaviour?
The advent of armchair shopping has turned the consumer space completely on its head. Traditionally the capacity to store and move goods hampered the rate of consumption, which ultimately gave birth to larger brick and mortar stores and faster courier services in an attempt to present and sell the ever-growing selection of goods to the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Have you started your own I-can-moer-my-kids-if-I-want-to stokvel?
Have you heard the latest from that congregation of wise heads who are busy formulating the new Children’s Act? Apparently if I should inadvertently (hypothetically speaking, of course) roundhouse-kick my son in the jaw and knock his back-chatting behind out, it will cost me R300. I hate hearing news like this because I’m never sure […]
Posted inLifestyle
Your interpretation, please …
I was walking along the beach in Durban not so long ago when the strangest thing happened to me. Well, one of the strangest. One of the strangest in a long while, anyway. It was one of the main beaches — Dairy, I think, or Bay, and there were loads of people about. I seem […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
O Eskom! My Eskom!
I’ve cribbed the heading off Walt Whitman, the famous American poet who lived in the 19th century, because he probably didn’t have much electricity either. In “O Captain! My Captain”, a tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination in 1865, Whitman captures the mood of the American people — grief at the loss of their […]
Posted inLifestyle, Tech
Blogging Player of the Week: What a schmuck!
The first blogger I knew didn’t call himself a blogger, because the word hadn’t yet been invented. Once, in the dawn of internet time, Roy Blumenthal was at the helm of “a hare-brained art prank” called Dirty Laundry, in which he created a web page asking people to send their dirty laundry to him for […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Subscription rage
Whenever I see a certain former editor of the Mail & Guardian (who may or may not have a missing tooth), a small shiver of guilt shoots up my spine. If, from a karma perspective, one’s bad behaviour comes back to bite one in the ass, then my ass has teeth marks. It started with […]
Posted inLifestyle
The Sumo, all cut up!
The team of surgical nurses and doctors that stood overlooking the hospital-gown-clad Sumo had looks of certain dismay on their faces as they contemplated how they would move the 147kg Sumo from his hospital bed-on-wheels to the operating table reminiscent of a butcher’s chopping board. As you can imagine, the Sumo, naked under the rather […]
Posted inLifestyle
Singing as we work …
I’ve been bedridden for two days with a delightful combination of flu and exhaustion. This has been an interesting experience for me not only because I’m usually (very) active, but also because my landlord and -lady (an archaic set of terms if ever there was one!) called in garden services to massacre my little garden […]