Posted inNews/Politics

Disgrace

By now much has been written about the tragic tale of Oscar Pistorius. I don’t feel that I can contribute directly to this debate. Until such time as the courts have done their work, we must all reserve judgement. I will say though that I feel that not one but two young people have lost […]

Posted inNews/Politics

Prejudice, racism and entertainment

“South Africans here in New Zealand have a reputation for being aggressive — especially the Afrikaners,” groaned Mark, a fellow English-speaking South African, over a beer. “Why Afrikaners?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders. “They arrive here with a huge chip on their shoulder, walk into our workshop demanding a WOF for their car and […]

Posted inLifestyle

Why is 50 Shades selling?

Like Prof Ron Nicolson, writing last week in ‘Maritzburg’s daily The Witness, I’m hesitant to criticise a book I’ve never (and have no urge to) read. But why has EL James’s 50 Shades of Grey caused pandemonium? Why is it selling so much, asks Nicolson and many others? Forty million copies later, the book’s stirred […]

Posted inLifestyleTech

Twitter won’t give you Aids but…

Twitter is not the healthiest of habits. It sucks hours. It sucks days. It requires dedication. It requires long stretches of inactivity. It makes you lie to yourself. It makes you tell yourself that you are learning something by continuously refreshing your feed to read the latest article or tweet from such and such opinion […]

Posted inGeneralLifestyle

The rise of the slacktivist

We’re all guilty of it. Some more than others, but nonetheless, we’re all culpable. Log on to Facebook or Twitter, hit the “like” or “favourite” button and, for a fleeting moment, we feel like we’re somehow making a tangible difference in the world. But surely it’s slightly more complicated than that? In 1970, poet Gil […]

Posted inMedia

What does LinkedIn have to do with nude yoga?

More than you’d expect, actually. I’ll state this right upfront: I love to hate the world’s largest business social network. The random, irrelevant contact requests from so-called “friends”. The dull, tiresomely self-promoting discussion topics. Half the people on it haven’t updated their profiles since the Rinderpest. Oh yes, and then there’s the fact that after […]