I think I know why social media is good for everyone. I just think I do, but don’t really. Besides being a vehicle for sparking Arab Springs, social media is first with the news and enhances your brand if you’re a journalist, editor, social commentator or political analyst. In fact if you’re none of these […]
Media
Posted inGeneral, Media, News/Politics
Alcohol in Australia: Some observations
So we’re facing the prospect of something that the advertising industry has been fighting for years: the banning of alcohol advertising. Having just visited one of the great nanny states, Australia, I thought it would be interesting to share some observations of how alcohol issues are handled there. The fact that I was able to […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
The Harlem Shake and Western illusion of freedom
Co-authored with Arsalan Khan When five teenagers in Queensland, Australia, uploaded a video of themselves dancing to a short excerpt of Baauer’s song Harlem Shake it immediately went viral, garnering some 400 million views and spawning well over 100 000 copycat versions. Critiques of the fad thus far have pointed out that it looks nothing at all […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle, Media
The shopping mall as consumer architecture
Referring to the moment, in Plato’s Symposium, where the lover supposedly beholds a completely disembodied, atemporal “beauty”, in the process conforming to the character of this abstraction, Kaja Silverman says (World Spectators, 2000: 10): “This deindividuation of the look represents a crucial feature of the process through which Socrates negates phenomenal forms. This is because […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
The Oscar Pistorius case: Time magazine is wrong, Lulu is right
Two mainstream media companies have turned the Oscar Pistorius case into an opportunity to ruminate on the perils of post-white rule. Time magazine and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) have both in their recent coverage used Pistorius’s defence to weigh in on the South African “culture of violence”. It is notable that these media companies […]
Posted inMedia
Which South African brands deserve their own day?
It’s World Nutella Day. Yes, really. (It’s all over Twitter, so it must be true.) I don’t know who comes up with these days marking things, or why hazelnut chocolate spread is deserving of commemoration, but there you go. I first encountered Nutella at Bryanston Primary in the 1980s, when the tuck-shop sold little plastic […]
Posted inMedia, News/Politics
ANC and FNB, my new favourite soapie
I have been following the soap opera between the ANC and FNB with interest and more than a little cynicism. The reaction in the aftermath too has been very intriguing. It seems that some banks are determined to be involved in matters which make me wonder if they really are banks or wannabe retailers, politicians, […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media
Tips on malaria prevention
I’ve recently become aware of two publications about malaria. The first is about preventing malaria in travelling children. The second, about malaria treatment. I’ve also become aware of a product on the market called “Nordman Artemisia Anti-Malaria“. The article in the South African Family Practice Journal by Dr Sophie Mathijs has the title: “Malaria prevention […]
Posted inMedia
The revolution will not be retweeted. RT this if you agree
Azza is an Egyptian media professional and blogger I met in Berlin this year, in early spring. As clunky as it may be, more so to point it out, I mention the season for its symbolism. Spring is a time of renewal. In the spring young shoots sprout from where old, frost-bitten branches hang and […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
Are we a chronically distracted society?
How often do you have a completely uninterrupted space where you can just sit and think, pondering life’s mysteries in silence? Personally, I lack enough creative pauses. My cellphone, like a battery-powered limb, relentlessly entices me with its flashing red light. A chance for quiet serenity exists only in my dreams. Scott Belksy, author of […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle, Media
An incorrigible perversion…for men
Last month, linked to Breast Cancer Awareness month, I emphasised a local South African product called Breast Protection Formula™ and its claim that it contains nutrients and plant extracts that help prevent breast cancer. As the US surgeon and breast cancer scientist David Gorski (MD, PhD) stated in commenting on the product: “No, it does […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media, News/Politics
Don’t touch me on my Facebook!
It seems the revolution comes in many packages, as seen on Facebook in the form of scantily clad sexy babes who sell radical black revolutionary speak, along with perfectly trimmed stomachs, silicone breasts, voluptuous derrieres and overtly sexual profile pictures. Now I know anything to do with black radicalism is dangerous territory for a whitie […]