Subject: RE: Tour de Free State
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:07:28 +0200
Hi Nick
Your story sounds like an interesting possibility for our reader contribution section. If you could send me a draft, I'll discuss it with Albertus on the Weg side to see what he thinks.
Best regards,
Andrea
Andrea Weiss
Deputy Editor: Weg/go!
Tel (021) 4171155
Cell No 0829205993
YOUR JOURNEY STARTS HERE
Some interesting breakthroughs (and breakdowns) today and yesterday. Got into a shouting match with Lucille at Heartland - I think she's one of the rudest people I've ever met. You could swear I owed her something - instead it's the other way around.
I'll be going to Botswana next week Wednesday, and hopefully get some coinage on photos and pictures taken on that trip.
Had lunch with Susan (one of my lecturers) at House of Coffees; she's wearing a hair extension, a long blonde ponytail that makes her look very Swedish - quite interesting conversation content. Samantha was working there - haven't seen her in a while. Then went up to give Katia a sample for printing on my cycling template. Also spoke to someone at Giant bikes in Cape Town about possibly branding the cycling 'template'. Apparently Jan Ullrich (who they have sponsored) is out of the Tour for taking dope, and now they have to bin a lot of big posters with his mugshot on it.
Need to get a heap of marking done by Tuesday, so I can go to Botswana without a guilty conscience. I also need to get this Fietstoer story done. So some stuff to do this weekend. Also my girlfriend's brother's 21st tomorrow night. Should be good.
How to send a computer to yourself (and why not to)
In November of 2005 I sent 7 boxes from South Korea to South Africa. I intended to take my desktop tower with me in the plane, but my bicycle and other paraphernalia put me 20kg into the red. My entire weight allowance and more had been absorbed but an ex pupil of mine worked at an excess baggage/ticketing kiosk and she wrote off the 20kg and allowed me to take my heavy flatscreen onboard as hand luggage at no extra charge). Despite these angelic gestures, I was forced to leave my desktop at the airport, with the Korean friend that brought me. So I flew home and arrangements were made to send my desktop to follow me home.
I did leave my fossilized 4kg notebook computer in Korea, but I had plenty of valuable information on my hard drives that I still wanted, so I instructed a computer builder in Korea – a South African – to dismantle the tower, and then ship it all in a box, sending everything excluding the bulky shell. Another friend of mine provided a blanket to wrap the components in. The box was sent registered mail, and insured at the Korean Post Office. The friend who made these arrangements told me that they refused to insure computers, but it went through on a technicality (that these were parts, not an actual computer).
My computer arrived at the end of December, and the box looked…well… Put it this way, have you seen the movie Ace Ventura Pet Detective? Remember what the box in the opening scene went through, and what it looked like? My boxes’ corners were bent, the sides were soft, and a punctured area had been covered with brown tape with the writing: FOUND OPEN OR DAMAGED/SECURED BY THE POSTAL AUTHORITIES/SA POSTAL SERVICE.
And they were damaged (although both hard drives, mercifully, worked and I was able to use the data I needed). I’d insured the contents for $400, so went back to the post office and went through what can only be described as an ordeal. Each branch is given a budget, so when you come with a claim for lost or damaged articles they’re reluctant to get involved. Lost is still something the branch is prepared to help with. In terms of damaged articles (even damaged and insured), my branch had no forms to fill in, no procedures in place. They referred me to a Customer Service number and from there I got referred back to my branch. Korea’s side were waiting and willing, but they needed the SA Postal authorities to at least verify everything. That was where things got stuck in the mud.
Long story short, I finally got hold of someone at Customer Care who faxed Korea, sent me on a little paperchase (receipts, declarations, photographs of the parcel etc). 6 months later I collected a cheque for R2360. A few weeks later and I might have gotten more (in terms of the exchange rate).
The following question arises: how can you safely send your computer to yourself? By courier perhaps, but it’s a lot more expensive, about half as expensive as your hardware. The only option at the moment seems to be to sell your computer wherever you are, and copy your information onto cd’s and dvd’s, or to remove only the hard drives. Someone needs to start a business that specializes in transporting whole computers safely and cheaply overseas. Ace Couriers?
Friday, June 30, 2006
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Kunstler: Blowing Smoke At A Stupid Society
June 26, 2006 The energy debate around the US has taken a definite turn this spring, since oil prices stepped back up to the $70 zone, but the thinking around these issues has only gotten worse. That's because there is only one idea dominating the public discussion: how to keep our cars running by other means, at all costs.
We're certainly hearing more about energy from government and business. President Bush made the "addicted to oil" confession in January. Chevron and British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, as BP wishfully styles itself) have both run ad campaigns acknowledging the oil-and-gas crunch, and the mainstream media has joined the campaign to pimp for bio-fuels. But all the talk is driven by the assumption that we will keep running WalMart, Disney World, and the interstate highway system just like we do now, only with other "alternative" liquid fuels.
The more naive members of the environmental sector have been suckered into this line of thinking, too -- especially the college kids, who imagine we can just divert x-amount of acreage from Cheez Doodle production and re-direct it to crops devoted to making liquid fuels for Honda Elements. They need to get some alt.brains.
Nobody is talking about the much more likely prospect that we'll have to reduce motoring drastically, and make other arrangements for virtually every aspect of daily life, from how we get food, to how we do business, to how we inhabit the landscape. The more we resist thinking about the larger agenda for comprehensively changing daily life, beyond our obsession with cars, the more likely we will veer into hardship, political trouble, and violence.
The reason for this collective failure of imagination seems pretty obvious: the older generations are hopelessly vested and invested in the hard "assets" of suburbia, which they feel they cannot walk away from; and the younger generation is too demoralized by the fear that they will never be vested in any assets (while many seek refuge from thinking at all in the electronic sensory distractions of video games and Ipods, or else in irony and other forms of manufactured alienation).
If I was a kid now, I'd find a lot more to rebel against than what we faced in the 1960s: the draft and the insipid program of Levittown. I'd rebel against a generation of adults selling the future for obscene pay packages. I'd rebel against everything from the mendacious nonsense of Rem Koolhaas to the profligate stupidity of Nascar. I'd want to eat Donald Trump for lunch (and set free the wolverine that lives on his head.) I'd utterly reject the false commoditized reality and set out to discover the world. I'd get busy building a society with a plausible future (and be real excited about it).
Sometimes I wonder if we just enjoy lying to ourselves. Sometimes I think: if this nation could somehow harness the energy in all the smoke it blows up its own ass, we'd all be able to drive to heaven in Cadillac Escalades.
We're certainly hearing more about energy from government and business. President Bush made the "addicted to oil" confession in January. Chevron and British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, as BP wishfully styles itself) have both run ad campaigns acknowledging the oil-and-gas crunch, and the mainstream media has joined the campaign to pimp for bio-fuels. But all the talk is driven by the assumption that we will keep running WalMart, Disney World, and the interstate highway system just like we do now, only with other "alternative" liquid fuels.
The more naive members of the environmental sector have been suckered into this line of thinking, too -- especially the college kids, who imagine we can just divert x-amount of acreage from Cheez Doodle production and re-direct it to crops devoted to making liquid fuels for Honda Elements. They need to get some alt.brains.
Nobody is talking about the much more likely prospect that we'll have to reduce motoring drastically, and make other arrangements for virtually every aspect of daily life, from how we get food, to how we do business, to how we inhabit the landscape. The more we resist thinking about the larger agenda for comprehensively changing daily life, beyond our obsession with cars, the more likely we will veer into hardship, political trouble, and violence.
The reason for this collective failure of imagination seems pretty obvious: the older generations are hopelessly vested and invested in the hard "assets" of suburbia, which they feel they cannot walk away from; and the younger generation is too demoralized by the fear that they will never be vested in any assets (while many seek refuge from thinking at all in the electronic sensory distractions of video games and Ipods, or else in irony and other forms of manufactured alienation).
If I was a kid now, I'd find a lot more to rebel against than what we faced in the 1960s: the draft and the insipid program of Levittown. I'd rebel against a generation of adults selling the future for obscene pay packages. I'd rebel against everything from the mendacious nonsense of Rem Koolhaas to the profligate stupidity of Nascar. I'd want to eat Donald Trump for lunch (and set free the wolverine that lives on his head.) I'd utterly reject the false commoditized reality and set out to discover the world. I'd get busy building a society with a plausible future (and be real excited about it).
Sometimes I wonder if we just enjoy lying to ourselves. Sometimes I think: if this nation could somehow harness the energy in all the smoke it blows up its own ass, we'd all be able to drive to heaven in Cadillac Escalades.
Healing
I've had a weird cold where my nose has been almost perfectly dry and yet my upper throat has felt dry and has accumulated green sludge at an alarming rate.
The next phase is that the sludge dislodges, heads down to the alveoli and then the nagging cough. Bought Mucospect and now although my head feels a bit heavy and scratchy, I'm starting to feel brighter and better.
Today I managed to escape from the my sunny prison and have been riding around in the Jeep. Pumped my wheel and new fitness ball (a red one) at Cyclopede, paid R3000 into my American Express card (officially meeting all my obligations) and ran into Karen Allers, her husband, her mom, and Vincent's daughter. Mrs Aller's says my brother is a machine - just muscles at the gym. In contrast i probably look like the Michellin man. Our showdown in a race on Saturday never happened because we both got sick soon after that tough spin class. Barendine did too, much worse than either of us.
Had lunch with my dad and brother and then Allie joined us.
Have not done much marking, but some. Am itching to buy a cvar but trying not to. Missed a 21st birthday party as a result (Christie, Lee and PJ were at Elzanne's) so a bit blue about that.
Have a few pots on the stove in terms of ideas so am ready to change from 1st gear (sickness) to second gear (starting to get going, picking up speed).
This three week holiday already feels like it is speeding away from me like a runaway train. Playing the new Battle For Middle Earth computer game isn't helping any, but made the process of being sick a lot more fun.
The next phase is that the sludge dislodges, heads down to the alveoli and then the nagging cough. Bought Mucospect and now although my head feels a bit heavy and scratchy, I'm starting to feel brighter and better.
Today I managed to escape from the my sunny prison and have been riding around in the Jeep. Pumped my wheel and new fitness ball (a red one) at Cyclopede, paid R3000 into my American Express card (officially meeting all my obligations) and ran into Karen Allers, her husband, her mom, and Vincent's daughter. Mrs Aller's says my brother is a machine - just muscles at the gym. In contrast i probably look like the Michellin man. Our showdown in a race on Saturday never happened because we both got sick soon after that tough spin class. Barendine did too, much worse than either of us.
Had lunch with my dad and brother and then Allie joined us.
Have not done much marking, but some. Am itching to buy a cvar but trying not to. Missed a 21st birthday party as a result (Christie, Lee and PJ were at Elzanne's) so a bit blue about that.
Have a few pots on the stove in terms of ideas so am ready to change from 1st gear (sickness) to second gear (starting to get going, picking up speed).
This three week holiday already feels like it is speeding away from me like a runaway train. Playing the new Battle For Middle Earth computer game isn't helping any, but made the process of being sick a lot more fun.
The Field (revisited)
You were running through long grass, away from the road when it happened. I was watching you that day, making your way back through that quiet hillside on the outskirts of town. You stepped on a tea colored bottle. The sun damaged part of it shattered, but the rest of it held firm, and sent jagged teeth clean through the foam of your Nike Airs. I saw you suddenly running on one leg, out of balance, as red wine poured from your foot, soaking the dry blonde grass in a glistening red. You fell into the long grass and it cushioned your fall. You turned on your back, and covered your green grey eyes with your elbow. And lay spread-eagled below me and the sky, with the sun and the crackling grass full on you. It was then that I began to comprehend the wound in you and the wound in me.
I wish you knew the times I watched over you when you were a child. I know I probably watched over you more than a mother should have. In death, the world is clear, it’s all revealed, and our cares and controls are just illusions to help us feel safe. Watching you there in the long grass, as a cold sweat took hold of you; I felt something like the tug on the limb that has been amputated. I felt my silver thread tighten and draw me down even closer to the Earth. And I stood there, your mother, your ghost, haunting the sunrays.
It was not easy. The shock of the pain, the exhaustion of the run, and the sight of eyes of meat watching you from inside your shoe that turned you cold and faint. I leaned over and my see-through silver shadow fell over your face. I saw the small knot knitting your forehead into a frown. I heard your small baby breaths. I realized how much you’d changed since I’d last touched you. Your head shaved and smooth. I waited with you, helpless, as a stranger might do having found an abandoned baby.
I stood there thinking all these things against the flood of Heaven, against the drowning pressure all ghosts feel when they walk the guilty Earth again. I abandoned you because I was abandoned. You know how sorry I am, and that the fugue took over. But seeing you there I realized how that same abandonment had rippled through your life and though different, and modulated by exercise and the many good things happening in your life, was bearing down on you despite your resistance to it, in spite of your battle against it. I don’t know if it is in our blood, to feel unreal or unwanted burdens. But I know the day my blood left my body; I could see that no one in this world can move through it without going insane first. Watching you here, I wish I had tried to live my way back to sanity. I suppose I did try, for many years. I suppose what I mean is I wish, even though I may have known I would probably not have succeeded in finding a lasting sanity for myself, I could have tried, kept trying, as you do. I could have accepted those nightmarish travails, the hours, and just swum each day patiently against the entropy, against the tide, just as I do now, to leave the bed of Heaven for the belly dancing dreams on Earth. Is there sanity in that? The gush of light here whispers to me, no.
I can hear your heart fisting in your chest.
I can see the rush below your temples.
The universe and its truth swim me away from you. Truth is eternal. And brutal to those not awake. I look at your eyes but only the living can recognize consciousness in the living. Your eyes cannot see me until your journey is done, and even then, if you have not found a way to the here and now, if you have not awakened, you will continue that journey until you do.
If you really want to know, it was the bang of the gun, and my last seconds with my cheek on the floor, unable to blink, that brought me to my Awakening. And then, with all that joy and beauty and love beckoning, my life slipped from me.
And so here you are.
You will have to find a way home. I can see that. You will have to get up and get to a road or a path before it gets too dark.
But you just lie there, not even grimacing. Just frowning, some fantasy spinning through your mind. Now is not the time. You need to move now.
Oh!
I whirlwind away reluctantly, my silver thread drawn into a spiritual hurricane, borne by the powerful wind of a Great Spirit. You are a dwindling speck below, your red spray still visible from these dizzy heights and then I’m gone but I will find a way to return I promise.
I wish you knew the times I watched over you when you were a child. I know I probably watched over you more than a mother should have. In death, the world is clear, it’s all revealed, and our cares and controls are just illusions to help us feel safe. Watching you there in the long grass, as a cold sweat took hold of you; I felt something like the tug on the limb that has been amputated. I felt my silver thread tighten and draw me down even closer to the Earth. And I stood there, your mother, your ghost, haunting the sunrays.
It was not easy. The shock of the pain, the exhaustion of the run, and the sight of eyes of meat watching you from inside your shoe that turned you cold and faint. I leaned over and my see-through silver shadow fell over your face. I saw the small knot knitting your forehead into a frown. I heard your small baby breaths. I realized how much you’d changed since I’d last touched you. Your head shaved and smooth. I waited with you, helpless, as a stranger might do having found an abandoned baby.
I stood there thinking all these things against the flood of Heaven, against the drowning pressure all ghosts feel when they walk the guilty Earth again. I abandoned you because I was abandoned. You know how sorry I am, and that the fugue took over. But seeing you there I realized how that same abandonment had rippled through your life and though different, and modulated by exercise and the many good things happening in your life, was bearing down on you despite your resistance to it, in spite of your battle against it. I don’t know if it is in our blood, to feel unreal or unwanted burdens. But I know the day my blood left my body; I could see that no one in this world can move through it without going insane first. Watching you here, I wish I had tried to live my way back to sanity. I suppose I did try, for many years. I suppose what I mean is I wish, even though I may have known I would probably not have succeeded in finding a lasting sanity for myself, I could have tried, kept trying, as you do. I could have accepted those nightmarish travails, the hours, and just swum each day patiently against the entropy, against the tide, just as I do now, to leave the bed of Heaven for the belly dancing dreams on Earth. Is there sanity in that? The gush of light here whispers to me, no.
I can hear your heart fisting in your chest.
I can see the rush below your temples.
The universe and its truth swim me away from you. Truth is eternal. And brutal to those not awake. I look at your eyes but only the living can recognize consciousness in the living. Your eyes cannot see me until your journey is done, and even then, if you have not found a way to the here and now, if you have not awakened, you will continue that journey until you do.
If you really want to know, it was the bang of the gun, and my last seconds with my cheek on the floor, unable to blink, that brought me to my Awakening. And then, with all that joy and beauty and love beckoning, my life slipped from me.
And so here you are.
You will have to find a way home. I can see that. You will have to get up and get to a road or a path before it gets too dark.
But you just lie there, not even grimacing. Just frowning, some fantasy spinning through your mind. Now is not the time. You need to move now.
Oh!
I whirlwind away reluctantly, my silver thread drawn into a spiritual hurricane, borne by the powerful wind of a Great Spirit. You are a dwindling speck below, your red spray still visible from these dizzy heights and then I’m gone but I will find a way to return I promise.
The Adventure is Today
Recollections of an Ironman Triathlon
The day is dawning. I can feel it. It is still dark out there. It is surprisingly quiet for all the shadows and bags and equipment moving lightly in the gloom. It is the proverbial deep breath before the plunge.
It is a great day to have. There were some great days leading up to this one. But now that the day is here, the day of the race, every moment seems to absorb itself. The past slips away and can’t be remembered, and the future retreats closer and closer until all there is is now. I see my hands, I feel my toes. I breathe. Here I am, and who do I think I am?
What creature am I, on this day in the year 2004, to come here with my machine, my neoprene, to race almost 1000 others like me? This day is about living the answer to that question. If you do this race, you do not have to read books on the subject. But for those who will never do an Ironman, here are some words.
Please understand that words to a blind person can never do justice to what sunshine is, or to a paralyzed person, what the flow of water is like around one’s legs, or to someone who is afraid – setting a challenge and setting about meeting it. These are magical things that words can convey, words themselves seem then to be adored, when the lesson is to take the words, throw them away, and find the courage to be all these and other things yourself, in your own deeds. The words that flow from there are yours.
So I write hoping that instead of producing voyeurism, I can inspire, induce action, induce doing. Induce you being you while you witness me being me.
It begins today.
You forget the training. You begin to fear the size of the thing you are approaching. You fret. This jumpiness can be explained in part because you are in peak physical condition, training has been scaled down from dizzy peaks, and your body is buzzing, glowing with energy. It is impossible to not spill energy over the brim, not to overflow sometimes at the sight of other athletes, or a particularly steep hill on the bike course.
I am sharing this experience with you, this experience of being human, of having an understanding of what it is like to live, to be alive, and to be engaged and functioning throughout a fine day on this planet, I am sharing this because I know many do not know.
I know many are lost, and alone and afraid. Many are sleeping, and dying. Many have been caught up in addictions and destructive patterns of behavior. I was. But now I am powerful beyond words. I hope to ring a church bell over the ocean. I hope to stir the waves, to reach you where you lie, some beautiful shipwrecks on the ocean floor. Arise. This is a call to fill your sails with the wind and the sun and the moon.
I look out of the window of my hotel. The nuclear fire swells yellow and purple against the clouds on the horizon. I see my bicycle gleaming. The silver chain has been polished. It sparkles magically at me. And before me, the sea begins to swim with stars. It is time to head down to the transition area with the other athletes. Come with me, and I will show you what the beginning of an Ironman is.
My red machine gleams as light before sunshine kisses us.
A gentle brush with the misty hand of the morning and the hairs of my arms prick up. I shiver, and anticipate the chill of the ocean, the suffocating heat of the run. This glimpse leaves me drunk and sleepy at once. I stand on the steps of the hotel.
How did it come to this?
It is like asking the sea how it happened. You see the sea, vast, immense, and blue. Do the rivers feed the sea, or does the sea, somehow, feed the rivers and become itself? It is this prolonged presence with oneself on a road, over a mountain that you begin to discover that the sea does not begin or end at the beach. It snakes up mountains and flies into the air and circles back in whirls of vapor and wind. It is all a wheel with spokes, spinning everything. In far-flung places with clear air, we see the Milky Rim arcing off the edge of our starry spoke.
In the same way every moment seems to have inevitably curled, pushed, and edged me towards this one. Did I have to conjure up energy? Sometimes. Once it becomes a habit, you swim with the tide, sometimes faster, sometimes treading water. But moving. Moving with a purpose, towards a goal.
The goal is here. Not some time or place in the future, but Now. The world suddenly seems irretrievably large, and glowing.
Now look at what you can live, and then leap in to it.
The day is dawning. I can feel it. It is still dark out there. It is surprisingly quiet for all the shadows and bags and equipment moving lightly in the gloom. It is the proverbial deep breath before the plunge.
It is a great day to have. There were some great days leading up to this one. But now that the day is here, the day of the race, every moment seems to absorb itself. The past slips away and can’t be remembered, and the future retreats closer and closer until all there is is now. I see my hands, I feel my toes. I breathe. Here I am, and who do I think I am?
What creature am I, on this day in the year 2004, to come here with my machine, my neoprene, to race almost 1000 others like me? This day is about living the answer to that question. If you do this race, you do not have to read books on the subject. But for those who will never do an Ironman, here are some words.
Please understand that words to a blind person can never do justice to what sunshine is, or to a paralyzed person, what the flow of water is like around one’s legs, or to someone who is afraid – setting a challenge and setting about meeting it. These are magical things that words can convey, words themselves seem then to be adored, when the lesson is to take the words, throw them away, and find the courage to be all these and other things yourself, in your own deeds. The words that flow from there are yours.
So I write hoping that instead of producing voyeurism, I can inspire, induce action, induce doing. Induce you being you while you witness me being me.
It begins today.
You forget the training. You begin to fear the size of the thing you are approaching. You fret. This jumpiness can be explained in part because you are in peak physical condition, training has been scaled down from dizzy peaks, and your body is buzzing, glowing with energy. It is impossible to not spill energy over the brim, not to overflow sometimes at the sight of other athletes, or a particularly steep hill on the bike course.
I am sharing this experience with you, this experience of being human, of having an understanding of what it is like to live, to be alive, and to be engaged and functioning throughout a fine day on this planet, I am sharing this because I know many do not know.
I know many are lost, and alone and afraid. Many are sleeping, and dying. Many have been caught up in addictions and destructive patterns of behavior. I was. But now I am powerful beyond words. I hope to ring a church bell over the ocean. I hope to stir the waves, to reach you where you lie, some beautiful shipwrecks on the ocean floor. Arise. This is a call to fill your sails with the wind and the sun and the moon.
I look out of the window of my hotel. The nuclear fire swells yellow and purple against the clouds on the horizon. I see my bicycle gleaming. The silver chain has been polished. It sparkles magically at me. And before me, the sea begins to swim with stars. It is time to head down to the transition area with the other athletes. Come with me, and I will show you what the beginning of an Ironman is.
My red machine gleams as light before sunshine kisses us.
A gentle brush with the misty hand of the morning and the hairs of my arms prick up. I shiver, and anticipate the chill of the ocean, the suffocating heat of the run. This glimpse leaves me drunk and sleepy at once. I stand on the steps of the hotel.
How did it come to this?
It is like asking the sea how it happened. You see the sea, vast, immense, and blue. Do the rivers feed the sea, or does the sea, somehow, feed the rivers and become itself? It is this prolonged presence with oneself on a road, over a mountain that you begin to discover that the sea does not begin or end at the beach. It snakes up mountains and flies into the air and circles back in whirls of vapor and wind. It is all a wheel with spokes, spinning everything. In far-flung places with clear air, we see the Milky Rim arcing off the edge of our starry spoke.
In the same way every moment seems to have inevitably curled, pushed, and edged me towards this one. Did I have to conjure up energy? Sometimes. Once it becomes a habit, you swim with the tide, sometimes faster, sometimes treading water. But moving. Moving with a purpose, towards a goal.
The goal is here. Not some time or place in the future, but Now. The world suddenly seems irretrievably large, and glowing.
Now look at what you can live, and then leap in to it.
Wild Weather
The hockey-stick effect
The world’s weather naturally fluctuates with volcanic eruptions and solar activity having the most direct effects on global climate. Not any more. Now by far the most powerful stimulator of world climate is pollutants. The question is how serious are these new effects?
The National Academy of Sciences is a US based private organization. It was chartered by Congress to advise the American government on scientific matters, and the most recent of these was a study of global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia. In the 20th century the Northern Hemisphere (average surface temperatures) has increased by 1 degree*, which has caused, amongst other effects, increased hurricane activity. Another think-tank, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (sponsored by the NAS amongst others) has also discovered some disturbing trends in worldwide weather.
To summarise their findings they cite the so-called hockey-stick effect. The shaft of the stick represents stable temperatures for millennia, while the sharply curving blade represents the sudden surge in temperatures happening now. Associated with spiking temperatures are severe increases in CO2 levels, industrial pollutants etc. Climate scientists Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradley have shown that the Northern Hemisphere is warmer now than it has been in over 2000 years, even 12 000 years according to other data.
China has to be singled out as the world’s greatest polluter – they burn more coal than the US and Europe combined. When it’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere particulates of the heavy metals, sulphur etc that are belched out of Chinese factories attach themselves to clouds of fine Gobi desert sand. These massive poisonous clouds are visible from space, and can be seen snaking and swirling south and east, reducing visibility in Korean and Japanese cities to less than a kilometer. Schools close and people are advised to stay indoors, and wash skin, clothes and other surfaces exposed to this dust. People begin to suffer from very serious respiratory sicknesses, including asthma and painful throat and lung infections. I had two very bad throat infections last year during these Yellow Dust storms. Instruments, filters for example, as far away as America have been described as becoming ‘blacker than ever’ as a result of these airborne toxins from China.
But if one measures pollution (as a result of energy consumption) per capita, America is still streets ahead. This is because more Americans, as a percentage of the total population, can afford to drive cars than Chinese. The White House is reluctant to take climate change seriously because curbing pollution will cost 5 million jobs and impact on the all important extraction industries (oil, natural gas etc) and make energy prices even more expensive than they currently are. There’s the rub: we can’t afford to pollute the atmosphere, but the world’s worst polluter, China, can afford pollution limiting controls even less. Why? Because they’re trying to stay cheap. They’re trying to maintain their position as the cheapest place to manufacture everything. So what’s been happening is, especially in China, we’re seeing plenty of very nasty contamination.
Increased CO2 levels are actually good for plants. Studies show that nettles, for example, grow more quickly and their stings become more potent when exposed to higher CO2 levels. In a future world with a CO2 soup for an atmosphere, can we expect a Day of the Triffids – where poisonous plants start to take over? A more realistic and dangerous effect we’re likely to see is the migration of insects and insect borne diseases like Malaria. We are already seeing this in South Africa where Malaria is on the move – further and further south. If you’re someone who finds the climate debate all hype, and you live in Johannesburg or Pretoria, here’s a snippet especially for you. What you thought was irrelevant to your life actually visits you courtesy of climate change. Yes, a malaria carrying mosquito who otherwise would never have found her way to you now finds you on your doorstep. While the Chinese may be keeping their costs low on coal plants, they export the costs elsewhere. You get to buy cheap canned oysters and a toilet seat made in China, but pay for these global amenities (and local incompetencies) by being forced to go a pharmacy and using anti-malaria meds for the rest of your life.
How climate change impacts other creatures is uncertain. It’s the first time it’s happening so we’re living out an experiment. But it’s certain that as insects find new habitats, migrating birds will also change their flyways. Who knows what diseases, associated with bird flu, will get a new lease on life.
So far we are coping with one health crisis after another by throwing lots of money at them. We’re winning (well, that needs to be qualified by who you are, and how rich you are), but only just. Has anyone realized how many epidemics/emergencies are running concurrently? Let me say that again to be clear: are we aware that AIDS, bird flu, city wrecking hurricanes, war, the spread of warming, malaria and toxic air is all happening at the same time? I’m not sure we have enough resources (financial and otherwise) to overwhelm all the associated effects building up in global weather patterns. We’re caught up in a psychology of growth and the only way we’ll accept less growth is through the experience of a crash. That appears to be what we are heading towards. A more enlightened society would look at the signs and volunteer to curb their activities. Are we capable of behaving like an enlightened, high level species?
While there is little doubt that we are living in interesting times, the exact nature of what these times portend is less certain. What is certain is that people who are alive now will live long enough to find out.
*Information sourced from ‘Earth’s hottest it’s been in 2000 years’, by John Heilprin
The world’s weather naturally fluctuates with volcanic eruptions and solar activity having the most direct effects on global climate. Not any more. Now by far the most powerful stimulator of world climate is pollutants. The question is how serious are these new effects?
The National Academy of Sciences is a US based private organization. It was chartered by Congress to advise the American government on scientific matters, and the most recent of these was a study of global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia. In the 20th century the Northern Hemisphere (average surface temperatures) has increased by 1 degree*, which has caused, amongst other effects, increased hurricane activity. Another think-tank, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (sponsored by the NAS amongst others) has also discovered some disturbing trends in worldwide weather.
To summarise their findings they cite the so-called hockey-stick effect. The shaft of the stick represents stable temperatures for millennia, while the sharply curving blade represents the sudden surge in temperatures happening now. Associated with spiking temperatures are severe increases in CO2 levels, industrial pollutants etc. Climate scientists Michael Mann, Malcolm Hughes and Raymond Bradley have shown that the Northern Hemisphere is warmer now than it has been in over 2000 years, even 12 000 years according to other data.
China has to be singled out as the world’s greatest polluter – they burn more coal than the US and Europe combined. When it’s spring in the Northern Hemisphere particulates of the heavy metals, sulphur etc that are belched out of Chinese factories attach themselves to clouds of fine Gobi desert sand. These massive poisonous clouds are visible from space, and can be seen snaking and swirling south and east, reducing visibility in Korean and Japanese cities to less than a kilometer. Schools close and people are advised to stay indoors, and wash skin, clothes and other surfaces exposed to this dust. People begin to suffer from very serious respiratory sicknesses, including asthma and painful throat and lung infections. I had two very bad throat infections last year during these Yellow Dust storms. Instruments, filters for example, as far away as America have been described as becoming ‘blacker than ever’ as a result of these airborne toxins from China.
But if one measures pollution (as a result of energy consumption) per capita, America is still streets ahead. This is because more Americans, as a percentage of the total population, can afford to drive cars than Chinese. The White House is reluctant to take climate change seriously because curbing pollution will cost 5 million jobs and impact on the all important extraction industries (oil, natural gas etc) and make energy prices even more expensive than they currently are. There’s the rub: we can’t afford to pollute the atmosphere, but the world’s worst polluter, China, can afford pollution limiting controls even less. Why? Because they’re trying to stay cheap. They’re trying to maintain their position as the cheapest place to manufacture everything. So what’s been happening is, especially in China, we’re seeing plenty of very nasty contamination.
Increased CO2 levels are actually good for plants. Studies show that nettles, for example, grow more quickly and their stings become more potent when exposed to higher CO2 levels. In a future world with a CO2 soup for an atmosphere, can we expect a Day of the Triffids – where poisonous plants start to take over? A more realistic and dangerous effect we’re likely to see is the migration of insects and insect borne diseases like Malaria. We are already seeing this in South Africa where Malaria is on the move – further and further south. If you’re someone who finds the climate debate all hype, and you live in Johannesburg or Pretoria, here’s a snippet especially for you. What you thought was irrelevant to your life actually visits you courtesy of climate change. Yes, a malaria carrying mosquito who otherwise would never have found her way to you now finds you on your doorstep. While the Chinese may be keeping their costs low on coal plants, they export the costs elsewhere. You get to buy cheap canned oysters and a toilet seat made in China, but pay for these global amenities (and local incompetencies) by being forced to go a pharmacy and using anti-malaria meds for the rest of your life.
How climate change impacts other creatures is uncertain. It’s the first time it’s happening so we’re living out an experiment. But it’s certain that as insects find new habitats, migrating birds will also change their flyways. Who knows what diseases, associated with bird flu, will get a new lease on life.
So far we are coping with one health crisis after another by throwing lots of money at them. We’re winning (well, that needs to be qualified by who you are, and how rich you are), but only just. Has anyone realized how many epidemics/emergencies are running concurrently? Let me say that again to be clear: are we aware that AIDS, bird flu, city wrecking hurricanes, war, the spread of warming, malaria and toxic air is all happening at the same time? I’m not sure we have enough resources (financial and otherwise) to overwhelm all the associated effects building up in global weather patterns. We’re caught up in a psychology of growth and the only way we’ll accept less growth is through the experience of a crash. That appears to be what we are heading towards. A more enlightened society would look at the signs and volunteer to curb their activities. Are we capable of behaving like an enlightened, high level species?
While there is little doubt that we are living in interesting times, the exact nature of what these times portend is less certain. What is certain is that people who are alive now will live long enough to find out.
*Information sourced from ‘Earth’s hottest it’s been in 2000 years’, by John Heilprin
How to buy a car (without looking stupid)
New is a boo boo
When you can buy a new car for less than R65 000 (Star bakkies, made in China), it makes sense to buy new doesn’t it? Actually, it doesn’t. If you think second hand is only for the poor, you’re wrong again. A lot of the wealthiest people know how much money is wasted in buying a brand new car. The bright buyer buys a vehicle that is technically new, but officially secondhand.
I’m not knocking Star cars – I’ve never even seen one. I am looking to buy a new car, and the reason to avoid the new brands has got little to do with the performance or quality of the cars or carmakers. It has everything to do with resale value, and important: after sales service.
A new car is one of the worst investments you can make. Within a year the value of a car can drop by half. That means if you want to sell your Star 12 months down the line, you might have difficulty getting more than R40 000 for it. Many people aren’t interested in resale value, after all, they see the car as something to move them around for the next decade or two. Fair enough. But if you’re driving a Chevy Spark or a Kia Picanto or a Citroen or a Fiat Panda or anything else reasonably priced (and reasonably exotic) you can expect to part with an arm and a leg for replacement parts. These models may do okay for the first 100 000 kilometres, but woe betide the driver who goes into the unknown territory beyond, or worse, if you’re unluckily or dumb enough to ever prang your new ride.
I interviewed a chap called Ben who does this for a living and he quoted bone chilling prices for replacing anything other than Toyota, Nissan, VW and other breeds well known in South Africa.
Since the resale value is so low, why not buy a car that is almost new? My sister did. These are called demos, and their prices are slashed by up to R6000 just because they’ve driven out of the showroom once or twice. Often they have less than 100 kilometres on their clocks. Another option is to buy a car that’s been used by a car rental agency (but make sure they are fitted with airbags). These have a nominal amount of kilometers (no more than 40 - 50 000) and otherwise ought to be in pristine condition.
If you’re still not convinced, consider the danger of forking out R7000 and then having your less than R1000 repayments increase along with the interest rates. Because of the Rand’s weakness against the dollar, we can expect not only higher interest rates, but another petrol price hike (about 24 c). Today the price of oil is above $70, and it’s hard to imagine inflation is not going to start clobbering the global economy starting sometime in the remainder of this year.
So what to do? Play it safe. Save as much as you can for as long as you can, and then buy something as new (but not brand new) as possible. Try to buy something made no earlier than 2000 (if you can afford to, and can stand to save that long) to insure that it’s fuel efficient and is likely to last until oil runs out. Put an ad in the classifieds that goes something like this:
Wanted to buy: Newish second hand vehicle, especially Toyota (one of the usual suspects). Have X to spend, or nearest offer. Call Smart Aleck at 075 4321 098.
Looking intelligent while driving is another kettle of fish, but at least you won’t be struggling with debt longer than you need to be. One more tip: when you insure your rocket ship, consider Hollard’s latest package. It’s called Pay-As-You-Drive. The less you drive, the less you pay. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
When you can buy a new car for less than R65 000 (Star bakkies, made in China), it makes sense to buy new doesn’t it? Actually, it doesn’t. If you think second hand is only for the poor, you’re wrong again. A lot of the wealthiest people know how much money is wasted in buying a brand new car. The bright buyer buys a vehicle that is technically new, but officially secondhand.
I’m not knocking Star cars – I’ve never even seen one. I am looking to buy a new car, and the reason to avoid the new brands has got little to do with the performance or quality of the cars or carmakers. It has everything to do with resale value, and important: after sales service.
A new car is one of the worst investments you can make. Within a year the value of a car can drop by half. That means if you want to sell your Star 12 months down the line, you might have difficulty getting more than R40 000 for it. Many people aren’t interested in resale value, after all, they see the car as something to move them around for the next decade or two. Fair enough. But if you’re driving a Chevy Spark or a Kia Picanto or a Citroen or a Fiat Panda or anything else reasonably priced (and reasonably exotic) you can expect to part with an arm and a leg for replacement parts. These models may do okay for the first 100 000 kilometres, but woe betide the driver who goes into the unknown territory beyond, or worse, if you’re unluckily or dumb enough to ever prang your new ride.
I interviewed a chap called Ben who does this for a living and he quoted bone chilling prices for replacing anything other than Toyota, Nissan, VW and other breeds well known in South Africa.
Since the resale value is so low, why not buy a car that is almost new? My sister did. These are called demos, and their prices are slashed by up to R6000 just because they’ve driven out of the showroom once or twice. Often they have less than 100 kilometres on their clocks. Another option is to buy a car that’s been used by a car rental agency (but make sure they are fitted with airbags). These have a nominal amount of kilometers (no more than 40 - 50 000) and otherwise ought to be in pristine condition.
If you’re still not convinced, consider the danger of forking out R7000 and then having your less than R1000 repayments increase along with the interest rates. Because of the Rand’s weakness against the dollar, we can expect not only higher interest rates, but another petrol price hike (about 24 c). Today the price of oil is above $70, and it’s hard to imagine inflation is not going to start clobbering the global economy starting sometime in the remainder of this year.
So what to do? Play it safe. Save as much as you can for as long as you can, and then buy something as new (but not brand new) as possible. Try to buy something made no earlier than 2000 (if you can afford to, and can stand to save that long) to insure that it’s fuel efficient and is likely to last until oil runs out. Put an ad in the classifieds that goes something like this:
Wanted to buy: Newish second hand vehicle, especially Toyota (one of the usual suspects). Have X to spend, or nearest offer. Call Smart Aleck at 075 4321 098.
Looking intelligent while driving is another kettle of fish, but at least you won’t be struggling with debt longer than you need to be. One more tip: when you insure your rocket ship, consider Hollard’s latest package. It’s called Pay-As-You-Drive. The less you drive, the less you pay. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Ad Awards: Rocks vs Rubbish
In advertising success means giving your audience a kick of pleasure or purpose. One of the ways to please your audience is to tell a good story. And there’s another thing: actions speak louder than words – so demonstrate your commitment to us beyond the flash in the pan advertising. Reality is the best advertising.
Telling a good story is not an easy thing to do in half a minute or less. It means constructing a world quickly that makes sense, that entertains, that communicates a memorable message and passes the bottom-line test: does the ad cause people to buy the product you’re advertising more than they already are?
Rocks
When you invent a really good story (in the world of advertising), the audience get to know and love the characters, and from then on, life can get a whole lot easier. You can use the same formula, build on it, and quickly convey clever messages because your audience is already up to speed with your story. Vodacom, in contrast to MTN and Cell C, have used characters (the Jewish guy and black Gogo) in a story to promote their service. This is why Vodacom’s ads are a lot more effective – because they’re personal. What’s personal about people throwing Frisbees around? Having said that, Vodacom’s latest Ghostbusters ad is a bit of a dud.
The Caltex ads with Boet and Swaer were also excellent, but seem to have disappeared. New account executive perhaps?
So what rocks right now? The CTM ads are still going strong, and their latest offering is excellent. Nige and his buddy are at the Waterfront (somewhere in Cape Town) and using the background of a ship coming in (loaded with CTM branded containers) it’s explained how CTM manages to keep the prices of their quality product so low – by buying in bulk. The wordplay as usual, is classic.
Huh?
How do you advertise televisions? The best place is either glossy magazines or by making a very good radio ad (where perhaps an untuned radio is used as a metaphor for a badly tuned or visually inferior television). I’m guessing, to sell televisions you really need to awaken the imagination of your audience, and audio is the most effective medium to do that. Advertising gurus will argue that at least you find your target market (with the appropriate disposable income) through the television medium but I disagree. Plenty of well heeled people listen to the radio in their luxury cars on their way to work. Advertising TV’s should awaken the imagination. Samsung’s ad is much clever than Sony’s (about giving up tickets to a soccer game…another story).
Television, after all, is a medium that shows (more than it tells), so we are left in a passive role, going into a sort of imagination-paralysis. That’s the last thing you want to do. To sell a TV you have to do the same thing you do when you want to sell something else big, and expensive, like a car, or a house. You need to inspire. You need to fire up the imagination, to thrill with the wonder of possibilities. The main reason why Sony’s Bravia LCD TV’s don’t quite make sense is you need a television to see it. If you already have a television you’re unlikely to rush out and buy another one. And since they are advertising how good it is by showing all these colorful bouncing balls, and it’s just a festival of color *on your own TV*, why are you going to buy it? Maybe when your television breaks down (when you can’t see the ad anyway). And when’s that? Sorry, Sony ought to wise up on this one.
Rubbish
I like KFC’s ad with the boys in their treehouse den, and the other one with the teenagers coming over to a pretty girls house because her mum has ordered KFC. I mean they’re okay, they’re not great. Seems there’s a little boys ad, a teenage girl ad and another ad featuring a grown up loving couple. He invites his girlfriend to his favourite restaurant (without telling her specifically that it’s KFC) and so he goes to KFC and she goes somewhere else. I would too. I don’t think it’s an ad that will appeal to many women. What does it actually communicate? Even men may be reminded of the downside of relationships – not a good metaphor to be associated with.
Finally I’d like to mention Virgin’s advertising. Virgin wants to go global but lacks infrastructure, and so have to rely to a large extent on clever promotion and marketing. It is clever. It stands out. This is how Virgin has managed to stay successful. To a large extent Virgin relies on people choosing them just out of preference, for reasons that don’t go far beyond likeability. But likeability is important. We like Richard Branson, and we associate him, and his story with his products (however good or bad they may be).
I’m tempted to change credit cards just because of that likeability factor. The fact that my bank charges me more bothered me, but not a lot. Having heard Sir Richard talk about it, I do think there is a lack of competition here, and the fact that you’re charged at every turn, even to deposit money is ridiculous. Banks in South Africa are starting to remind me of car guards. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’re supposed to pay a tip. That’s not right. When I wanted to transfer money to a non ABSA credit card I was told the charge might be as much as R300. So I’ve had to transfer the money manually. How much do I like ABSA now? The fact that I like Virgin (just by virtue of their image, and advertising) provides that extra little oomf that may get me to change. In the first paragraph I mentioned telling a good story: watch Virgin Money’s ad on a fictional country full of millionaires. It’s extravagant, it’s gratuitous, and it’s over the top. But I like it for its freshness and originality – two things I can’t associate with Absa. The Virgin Mobile ad featuring a fella on his way to heaven is also a good story.
Will I leave Vodacom for Virgin Mobile? Once I’m able to compare the actual costs, and once I know that there’s number portability, I will. In 1999 I worked for Virgin Mobile in Bristol, and Britain used number portability then. Why, 7 years on, has it still not happened in South Africa? Because the three current operators want their so-called consumers to be nothing more than uninformed suckers. Are local banks any different? Hooray for Sir Richard and the hero brands who like us, want us to like them and see us as their customers, not mere consumers or worse.
Telling a good story is not an easy thing to do in half a minute or less. It means constructing a world quickly that makes sense, that entertains, that communicates a memorable message and passes the bottom-line test: does the ad cause people to buy the product you’re advertising more than they already are?
Rocks
When you invent a really good story (in the world of advertising), the audience get to know and love the characters, and from then on, life can get a whole lot easier. You can use the same formula, build on it, and quickly convey clever messages because your audience is already up to speed with your story. Vodacom, in contrast to MTN and Cell C, have used characters (the Jewish guy and black Gogo) in a story to promote their service. This is why Vodacom’s ads are a lot more effective – because they’re personal. What’s personal about people throwing Frisbees around? Having said that, Vodacom’s latest Ghostbusters ad is a bit of a dud.
The Caltex ads with Boet and Swaer were also excellent, but seem to have disappeared. New account executive perhaps?
So what rocks right now? The CTM ads are still going strong, and their latest offering is excellent. Nige and his buddy are at the Waterfront (somewhere in Cape Town) and using the background of a ship coming in (loaded with CTM branded containers) it’s explained how CTM manages to keep the prices of their quality product so low – by buying in bulk. The wordplay as usual, is classic.
Huh?
How do you advertise televisions? The best place is either glossy magazines or by making a very good radio ad (where perhaps an untuned radio is used as a metaphor for a badly tuned or visually inferior television). I’m guessing, to sell televisions you really need to awaken the imagination of your audience, and audio is the most effective medium to do that. Advertising gurus will argue that at least you find your target market (with the appropriate disposable income) through the television medium but I disagree. Plenty of well heeled people listen to the radio in their luxury cars on their way to work. Advertising TV’s should awaken the imagination. Samsung’s ad is much clever than Sony’s (about giving up tickets to a soccer game…another story).
Television, after all, is a medium that shows (more than it tells), so we are left in a passive role, going into a sort of imagination-paralysis. That’s the last thing you want to do. To sell a TV you have to do the same thing you do when you want to sell something else big, and expensive, like a car, or a house. You need to inspire. You need to fire up the imagination, to thrill with the wonder of possibilities. The main reason why Sony’s Bravia LCD TV’s don’t quite make sense is you need a television to see it. If you already have a television you’re unlikely to rush out and buy another one. And since they are advertising how good it is by showing all these colorful bouncing balls, and it’s just a festival of color *on your own TV*, why are you going to buy it? Maybe when your television breaks down (when you can’t see the ad anyway). And when’s that? Sorry, Sony ought to wise up on this one.
Rubbish
I like KFC’s ad with the boys in their treehouse den, and the other one with the teenagers coming over to a pretty girls house because her mum has ordered KFC. I mean they’re okay, they’re not great. Seems there’s a little boys ad, a teenage girl ad and another ad featuring a grown up loving couple. He invites his girlfriend to his favourite restaurant (without telling her specifically that it’s KFC) and so he goes to KFC and she goes somewhere else. I would too. I don’t think it’s an ad that will appeal to many women. What does it actually communicate? Even men may be reminded of the downside of relationships – not a good metaphor to be associated with.
Finally I’d like to mention Virgin’s advertising. Virgin wants to go global but lacks infrastructure, and so have to rely to a large extent on clever promotion and marketing. It is clever. It stands out. This is how Virgin has managed to stay successful. To a large extent Virgin relies on people choosing them just out of preference, for reasons that don’t go far beyond likeability. But likeability is important. We like Richard Branson, and we associate him, and his story with his products (however good or bad they may be).
I’m tempted to change credit cards just because of that likeability factor. The fact that my bank charges me more bothered me, but not a lot. Having heard Sir Richard talk about it, I do think there is a lack of competition here, and the fact that you’re charged at every turn, even to deposit money is ridiculous. Banks in South Africa are starting to remind me of car guards. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’re supposed to pay a tip. That’s not right. When I wanted to transfer money to a non ABSA credit card I was told the charge might be as much as R300. So I’ve had to transfer the money manually. How much do I like ABSA now? The fact that I like Virgin (just by virtue of their image, and advertising) provides that extra little oomf that may get me to change. In the first paragraph I mentioned telling a good story: watch Virgin Money’s ad on a fictional country full of millionaires. It’s extravagant, it’s gratuitous, and it’s over the top. But I like it for its freshness and originality – two things I can’t associate with Absa. The Virgin Mobile ad featuring a fella on his way to heaven is also a good story.
Will I leave Vodacom for Virgin Mobile? Once I’m able to compare the actual costs, and once I know that there’s number portability, I will. In 1999 I worked for Virgin Mobile in Bristol, and Britain used number portability then. Why, 7 years on, has it still not happened in South Africa? Because the three current operators want their so-called consumers to be nothing more than uninformed suckers. Are local banks any different? Hooray for Sir Richard and the hero brands who like us, want us to like them and see us as their customers, not mere consumers or worse.
The Death Penalty
Can we hold the World Cup without it?
I’ve taken a moment to look at just how avaricious that sounds. I mean think about it, sentencing hardened criminals to death just so that we can hold a soccer tournament and the country can make a few extra bags of gold. But then you can also think about it in another way: serious crime might still prevent the tournament from happening at all, and serious crime must pay for it to be such a hit (pun intended) in South Africa. So then, who should profit more out of the 2010 world cup, marketers or murderers?
I once attended an Investec recruitment drive for graduates. What they did was they invited a bunch of promising graduates in centres all around the country. Then they posed a question to the group and evaluated their answers, listening etc. The question posed to us was: Capital Punishment – use it or lose it?
Personally I don’t have a definitive answer. Some issues, as far as I’m concerned, just aren’t that simple. Abortion is another example. It’s easy to paint the world with the same sweeping brushstroke, but it’s not right. And it’s not what’s best. There are a lot of details in the human story, and plenty of exceptions to the rule. If you’re a good human being, and you care about people, you’re sensitive to each person’s story, to the minutiae.
At this recruitment drive I made the point that in an ideal world capital punishment is crude and uncalled for. But in South Africa, crime is so serious that we can consider it (the death penalty) an act of collective self defense. We’re far from an ideal world, and will remain a troubled and broken society as long as we don’t deal with everyday realities. We ought to bring the death sentence back, temporarily, until the killing rate drops to a more civilized (almost-ideal-world) point. This was my belief then, and it hasn’t changed much since. Neither has crime.
David Bullard wrote with wit and wisdom in his column last Sunday on the same subject, suggesting we let murderers go on moonless nights in the Kruger Park to give them a sporting chance. ‘If they survive until morning they go free.” The real situation in this country is a lot less amusing, and the way we are coping with it even less effective than Bullard’s anecdote. Our prison system allows hardened criminals to mix with young offenders, so they are quickly upgraded to hardened warrior status. One inmate has said that not a single young criminal (awaiting trial) is not raped. If you arrived in jail as a hesitant scalawag, and you were considering the straight and narrow, a good seeing to by a hardened bastard (no pun intended) ought to set one permanently on the wrong track. This is where the system breaks down. You can’t just treat symptoms without overhauling the system. And in this whole operation one has to remain sensitive to those perpetrators who might be rehabilitated. The death sentence is meant to permanently remove people from society who can’t help themselves from wiping it out.
Bullard pertinently mentions the ‘muesli munchers’ as a group of apparently intelligent, apparently enlightened objectors. One opinion I’ve heard quoted more than once from the ‘muesli munchers’ is that the death sentence hasn’t even been proved to be effective. I’m sure there are cases in the USA especially where that might be true. But elsewhere it has been exceedingly effective. I have been to Singapore and Thailand, and they are remarkably civilized countries. The death penalty is available there to people addicted to drugs and murder. I think a death sentence for drug trafficking is a bit severe, but since I am not a drug trafficker or user, the world becomes a little safer and easier for me. Ever been to Singapore? It’s a pleasure. Murder is almost unheard of in Singapore (so is spitting and until recently, chewing gum).
I’m not suggesting Singapore’s standards for South Africa. They go a little too far. Oral sex for example, is also illegal (I’m not 100% certain of the fine print) between unmarried persons. But I am recommending, if we want to have a hope of having 500 000 visitors to our country making it safely into and out of our national stadia we ought to do something between now and then. If we don’t do something significant we may be seeing a certain percentage of that number (1% is 5000, 10% is 50 000) of them raped, hijacked, murdered or otherwise victimized while enjoying our unique South African hospitality.
I worry about people from different backgrounds, who don’t even speak English, walking around in South Africa, under the influence, footloose and fancy free, wanting to celebrate and enjoy themselves.
It’s not inconceivable that a severe crime spree targeted at innocent soccer tourists might actually prevent the 3 week long World Cup from running through to the finals. Imagine what a disaster it would be if people cancelled their plans after a high enough number of people came to grief? Imagine the lasting and damaging negative publicity echoing across news networks and around the world.
So what can we do? Ex New York mayor Rudi Giuliani has made some useful suggestions for South Africa: increase the number of policemen and stations in the country, run the cop shops like businesses, carefully account for all crimes, implement policing strategies and note improvements or deteriorations, use strategies that work (where crime stats come down) in other precincts.
That’s fine for a 10 year plan. We’ve got 4 years. And tonight the murderers will be out in force again.
Finally, going back to that recruitment debate: once all our arguments and counterarguments had been tallied, one of the Investec judges, a tall, fairly good looking guy, stood up and, having asked for our opinions on the death penalty, decided to give us his. He said: “The death sentence is absolutely, morally wrong. And it should never be brought back.”
Since then I’ve always borne a grudge against Investec. Sorry bud, that statement is just wrong. The death sentence is reprehensible because it is designed for reprehensible people. Imagine a person kills your sister, goes to jail, comes back, and kills your brother, goes to jail, comes back and kills your mother. Then, on his way out, he says: “I’ll be back for you.”
Should it be up to us – individuals in our homes – or government, to deal with these monsters? It’s not such a tough question if you’re not a murderer, or possibly a feckless banker.
I’ve taken a moment to look at just how avaricious that sounds. I mean think about it, sentencing hardened criminals to death just so that we can hold a soccer tournament and the country can make a few extra bags of gold. But then you can also think about it in another way: serious crime might still prevent the tournament from happening at all, and serious crime must pay for it to be such a hit (pun intended) in South Africa. So then, who should profit more out of the 2010 world cup, marketers or murderers?
I once attended an Investec recruitment drive for graduates. What they did was they invited a bunch of promising graduates in centres all around the country. Then they posed a question to the group and evaluated their answers, listening etc. The question posed to us was: Capital Punishment – use it or lose it?
Personally I don’t have a definitive answer. Some issues, as far as I’m concerned, just aren’t that simple. Abortion is another example. It’s easy to paint the world with the same sweeping brushstroke, but it’s not right. And it’s not what’s best. There are a lot of details in the human story, and plenty of exceptions to the rule. If you’re a good human being, and you care about people, you’re sensitive to each person’s story, to the minutiae.
At this recruitment drive I made the point that in an ideal world capital punishment is crude and uncalled for. But in South Africa, crime is so serious that we can consider it (the death penalty) an act of collective self defense. We’re far from an ideal world, and will remain a troubled and broken society as long as we don’t deal with everyday realities. We ought to bring the death sentence back, temporarily, until the killing rate drops to a more civilized (almost-ideal-world) point. This was my belief then, and it hasn’t changed much since. Neither has crime.
David Bullard wrote with wit and wisdom in his column last Sunday on the same subject, suggesting we let murderers go on moonless nights in the Kruger Park to give them a sporting chance. ‘If they survive until morning they go free.” The real situation in this country is a lot less amusing, and the way we are coping with it even less effective than Bullard’s anecdote. Our prison system allows hardened criminals to mix with young offenders, so they are quickly upgraded to hardened warrior status. One inmate has said that not a single young criminal (awaiting trial) is not raped. If you arrived in jail as a hesitant scalawag, and you were considering the straight and narrow, a good seeing to by a hardened bastard (no pun intended) ought to set one permanently on the wrong track. This is where the system breaks down. You can’t just treat symptoms without overhauling the system. And in this whole operation one has to remain sensitive to those perpetrators who might be rehabilitated. The death sentence is meant to permanently remove people from society who can’t help themselves from wiping it out.
Bullard pertinently mentions the ‘muesli munchers’ as a group of apparently intelligent, apparently enlightened objectors. One opinion I’ve heard quoted more than once from the ‘muesli munchers’ is that the death sentence hasn’t even been proved to be effective. I’m sure there are cases in the USA especially where that might be true. But elsewhere it has been exceedingly effective. I have been to Singapore and Thailand, and they are remarkably civilized countries. The death penalty is available there to people addicted to drugs and murder. I think a death sentence for drug trafficking is a bit severe, but since I am not a drug trafficker or user, the world becomes a little safer and easier for me. Ever been to Singapore? It’s a pleasure. Murder is almost unheard of in Singapore (so is spitting and until recently, chewing gum).
I’m not suggesting Singapore’s standards for South Africa. They go a little too far. Oral sex for example, is also illegal (I’m not 100% certain of the fine print) between unmarried persons. But I am recommending, if we want to have a hope of having 500 000 visitors to our country making it safely into and out of our national stadia we ought to do something between now and then. If we don’t do something significant we may be seeing a certain percentage of that number (1% is 5000, 10% is 50 000) of them raped, hijacked, murdered or otherwise victimized while enjoying our unique South African hospitality.
I worry about people from different backgrounds, who don’t even speak English, walking around in South Africa, under the influence, footloose and fancy free, wanting to celebrate and enjoy themselves.
It’s not inconceivable that a severe crime spree targeted at innocent soccer tourists might actually prevent the 3 week long World Cup from running through to the finals. Imagine what a disaster it would be if people cancelled their plans after a high enough number of people came to grief? Imagine the lasting and damaging negative publicity echoing across news networks and around the world.
So what can we do? Ex New York mayor Rudi Giuliani has made some useful suggestions for South Africa: increase the number of policemen and stations in the country, run the cop shops like businesses, carefully account for all crimes, implement policing strategies and note improvements or deteriorations, use strategies that work (where crime stats come down) in other precincts.
That’s fine for a 10 year plan. We’ve got 4 years. And tonight the murderers will be out in force again.
Finally, going back to that recruitment debate: once all our arguments and counterarguments had been tallied, one of the Investec judges, a tall, fairly good looking guy, stood up and, having asked for our opinions on the death penalty, decided to give us his. He said: “The death sentence is absolutely, morally wrong. And it should never be brought back.”
Since then I’ve always borne a grudge against Investec. Sorry bud, that statement is just wrong. The death sentence is reprehensible because it is designed for reprehensible people. Imagine a person kills your sister, goes to jail, comes back, and kills your brother, goes to jail, comes back and kills your mother. Then, on his way out, he says: “I’ll be back for you.”
Should it be up to us – individuals in our homes – or government, to deal with these monsters? It’s not such a tough question if you’re not a murderer, or possibly a feckless banker.
The World At Play
A chance to shine
Did you think the soccer world cup was about soccer? It’s a massive fancy dress party, and an excuse to have fun, especially if your team (whoever they are) wins.
Now that my team (the Netherlands) is out of the world cup (in the ugliest game thus far), I’ve been looking at the other teams. Feels a bit like déjà vu – South Africa made their exit at the 2002 world cup fairly early on, but finding a new team to support wasn’t hard. Since I was in Korea I just bought a red ‘Be the reds’ shirt and red bandana and joined the mob of millions of ‘red devils’ in the streets. Korea put on a series of stellar performances that surprised everyone. It took me 5 minutes to learn the two simple songs the Koreans sang over and over again. Singing makes up a big part of this game, so make sure you have something to sing. It was when I was singing DAE-HA-MIN-GUK (and clapping, tata-ta-ta-TA with about 100 000 people around me) that the world cup fever really hit. Walking down the streets of Seoul shouting and singing and hugging strangers after winning the latest match until the wee hours was what it was all about. The world cup is an excuse to celebrate with lots of people, and have plenty of fun.
In Korea that meant spending the build up to these games in buzzy, noisy restaurants, and in many cases, especially after a goal, drinks were bought for everyone (on the house), and sometimes even food. The world cup was the topic of every conversation, and the reason behind every smile. More than once we were invited into a singing room (noraebang) for further merriment, with even more drinks on the house. What made the world cup experience special in Korea, I think, is that Korea felt they were coming of age as a nation, coming onto par with the other top players on the world’s stage – both in terms of the game but also as fully fledged player in the global economy. You could feel this delight, this giddiness – because they had the spotlight of the world on them – and they really basked in it, made the most of it and enjoyed it. Will we I wonder?
This morning on TV I caught a glimpse of the spirit of the world cup in Germany. Of course the country where it happens gives the event a unique taste and color. Germany, with its red, yellow and black, its bratwurst and beer halls, its traditional architecture and modern autos – I’m sure it’s a feast. I’d love to be in Munich again, to see the Koreans again and what they make of German culture (and what Germans make of them), to see Australia, the Netherlands and Brazil play, to see the whole circus and what, who stands out, but especially to see how much the Germans enjoy being the centre of attention.
And now our chance is coming. We’re where the world cup will be next. Gulp. For those South Africans who think the soccer world cup in 2010, here, is going to be like the rugby world cup, think again. Everything is on a much, much larger scale. Half a million well heeled, life loving people swarming through South Africa is going to have a major impact on the locals. It’s a non stop party for a few weeks. Many of the people we’ll encounter are from countries we know little about, and have little idea about their culture. Countries like Ukraine, and Denmark and Croatia for example. When your country faces off against any of these nations, you begin to learn a bit more about your adversary, how different we are, and at the same time, about how the colorful people of this world are essentially the same, caught up in the same game. It’s exciting.
There is also a sexy side to soccer. Some of the most stunning girls try to dazzle, and in Korea there were some very memorable Brazilians and Koreans sporting eye popping outfits. If your team is no longer in the tournament pick another, and be creative. Paint your face, dress up and join the party.
4 years really isn’t a long time, but time enough for us to prepare to be the best hosts that we can be. People all over the country will turn their homes into hotels. We’ll see circus tents sprouting in open fields and picnic braais belching yummy wors smoke all over suburbia. There’ll be t-shirts and merchandising on a grand scale, with plenty of money to be made while the soccer balls bounce around the stadiums, and in backyards everywhere. Our priorities in the meantime should be curbing crime (see article on crime, Penalty: Death Penalty), upgrading our public transport systems, fixing our roads and developing our service industries. Let’s not forget to support our young players who dream about winning the world cup.
I hope our team play, and play well, but even if they don’t it’s our chance to shine as a nation.
Did you think the soccer world cup was about soccer? It’s a massive fancy dress party, and an excuse to have fun, especially if your team (whoever they are) wins.
Now that my team (the Netherlands) is out of the world cup (in the ugliest game thus far), I’ve been looking at the other teams. Feels a bit like déjà vu – South Africa made their exit at the 2002 world cup fairly early on, but finding a new team to support wasn’t hard. Since I was in Korea I just bought a red ‘Be the reds’ shirt and red bandana and joined the mob of millions of ‘red devils’ in the streets. Korea put on a series of stellar performances that surprised everyone. It took me 5 minutes to learn the two simple songs the Koreans sang over and over again. Singing makes up a big part of this game, so make sure you have something to sing. It was when I was singing DAE-HA-MIN-GUK (and clapping, tata-ta-ta-TA with about 100 000 people around me) that the world cup fever really hit. Walking down the streets of Seoul shouting and singing and hugging strangers after winning the latest match until the wee hours was what it was all about. The world cup is an excuse to celebrate with lots of people, and have plenty of fun.
In Korea that meant spending the build up to these games in buzzy, noisy restaurants, and in many cases, especially after a goal, drinks were bought for everyone (on the house), and sometimes even food. The world cup was the topic of every conversation, and the reason behind every smile. More than once we were invited into a singing room (noraebang) for further merriment, with even more drinks on the house. What made the world cup experience special in Korea, I think, is that Korea felt they were coming of age as a nation, coming onto par with the other top players on the world’s stage – both in terms of the game but also as fully fledged player in the global economy. You could feel this delight, this giddiness – because they had the spotlight of the world on them – and they really basked in it, made the most of it and enjoyed it. Will we I wonder?
This morning on TV I caught a glimpse of the spirit of the world cup in Germany. Of course the country where it happens gives the event a unique taste and color. Germany, with its red, yellow and black, its bratwurst and beer halls, its traditional architecture and modern autos – I’m sure it’s a feast. I’d love to be in Munich again, to see the Koreans again and what they make of German culture (and what Germans make of them), to see Australia, the Netherlands and Brazil play, to see the whole circus and what, who stands out, but especially to see how much the Germans enjoy being the centre of attention.
And now our chance is coming. We’re where the world cup will be next. Gulp. For those South Africans who think the soccer world cup in 2010, here, is going to be like the rugby world cup, think again. Everything is on a much, much larger scale. Half a million well heeled, life loving people swarming through South Africa is going to have a major impact on the locals. It’s a non stop party for a few weeks. Many of the people we’ll encounter are from countries we know little about, and have little idea about their culture. Countries like Ukraine, and Denmark and Croatia for example. When your country faces off against any of these nations, you begin to learn a bit more about your adversary, how different we are, and at the same time, about how the colorful people of this world are essentially the same, caught up in the same game. It’s exciting.
There is also a sexy side to soccer. Some of the most stunning girls try to dazzle, and in Korea there were some very memorable Brazilians and Koreans sporting eye popping outfits. If your team is no longer in the tournament pick another, and be creative. Paint your face, dress up and join the party.
4 years really isn’t a long time, but time enough for us to prepare to be the best hosts that we can be. People all over the country will turn their homes into hotels. We’ll see circus tents sprouting in open fields and picnic braais belching yummy wors smoke all over suburbia. There’ll be t-shirts and merchandising on a grand scale, with plenty of money to be made while the soccer balls bounce around the stadiums, and in backyards everywhere. Our priorities in the meantime should be curbing crime (see article on crime, Penalty: Death Penalty), upgrading our public transport systems, fixing our roads and developing our service industries. Let’s not forget to support our young players who dream about winning the world cup.
I hope our team play, and play well, but even if they don’t it’s our chance to shine as a nation.
The Death Penalty
Can we hold the World Cup without it?
I’ve taken a moment to look at just how avaricious that sounds. I mean think about it, sentencing hardened criminals to death just so that we can hold a soccer tournament and the country can make a few extra bags of gold. But then you can also think about it in another way: serious crime might still prevent the tournament from happening at all, and serious crime must pay for it to be such a hit (pun intended) in South Africa. So then, who should profit more out of the 2010 world cup, marketers or murderers?
I once attended an Investec recruitment drive for graduates. What they did was they invited a bunch of promising graduates in centres all around the country. Then they posed a question to the group and evaluated their answers, listening etc. The question posed to us was: Capital Punishment – use it or lose it?
Personally I don’t have a definitive answer. Some issues, as far as I’m concerned, just aren’t that simple. Abortion is another example. It’s easy to paint the world with the same sweeping brushstroke, but it’s not right. And it’s not what’s best. There are a lot of details in the human story, and plenty of exceptions to the rule. If you’re a good human being, and you care about people, you’re sensitive to each person’s story, to the minutiae.
At this recruitment drive I made the point that in an ideal world capital punishment is crude and uncalled for. But in South Africa, crime is so serious that we can consider it (the death penalty) an act of collective self defense. We’re far from an ideal world, and will remain a troubled and broken society as long as we don’t deal with everyday realities. We ought to bring the death sentence back, temporarily, until the killing rate drops to a more civilized (almost-ideal-world) point. This was my belief then, and it hasn’t changed much since. Neither has crime.
David Bullard wrote with wit and wisdom in his column last Sunday on the same subject, suggesting we let murderers go on moonless nights in the Kruger Park to give them a sporting chance. ‘If they survive until morning they go free.” The real situation in this country is a lot less amusing, and the way we are coping with it even less effective than Bullard’s anecdote. Our prison system allows hardened criminals to mix with young offenders, so they are quickly upgraded to hardened warrior status. One inmate has said that not a single young criminal (awaiting trial) is not raped. If you arrived in jail as a hesitant scalawag, and you were considering the straight and narrow, a good seeing to by a hardened bastard (no pun intended) ought to set one permanently on the wrong track. This is where the system breaks down. You can’t just treat symptoms without overhauling the system. And in this whole operation one has to remain sensitive to those perpetrators who might be rehabilitated. The death sentence is meant to permanently remove people from society who can’t help themselves from wiping it out.
Bullard pertinently mentions the ‘muesli munchers’ as a group of apparently intelligent, apparently enlightened objectors. One opinion I’ve heard quoted more than once from the ‘muesli munchers’ is that the death sentence hasn’t even been proved to be effective. I’m sure there are cases in the USA especially where that might be true. But elsewhere it has been exceedingly effective. I have been to Singapore and Thailand, and they are remarkably civilized countries. The death penalty is available there to people addicted to drugs and murder. I think a death sentence for drug trafficking is a bit severe, but since I am not a drug trafficker or user, the world becomes a little safer and easier for me. Ever been to Singapore? It’s a pleasure. Murder is almost unheard of in Singapore (so is spitting and until recently, chewing gum).
I’m not suggesting Singapore’s standards for South Africa. They go a little too far. Oral sex for example, is also illegal (I’m not 100% certain of the fine print) between unmarried persons. But I am recommending, if we want to have a hope of having 500 000 visitors to our country making it safely into and out of our national stadia we ought to do something between now and then. If we don’t do something significant we may be seeing a certain percentage of that number (1% is 5000, 10% is 50 000) of them raped, hijacked, murdered or otherwise victimized while enjoying our unique South African hospitality.
I worry about people from different backgrounds, who don’t even speak English, walking around in South Africa, under the influence, footloose and fancy free, wanting to celebrate and enjoy themselves.
It’s not inconceivable that a severe crime spree targeted at innocent soccer tourists might actually prevent the 3 week long World Cup from running through to the finals. Imagine what a disaster it would be if people cancelled their plans after a high enough number of people came to grief? Imagine the lasting and damaging negative publicity echoing across news networks and around the world.
So what can we do? Ex New York mayor Rudi Giuliani has made some useful suggestions for South Africa: increase the number of policemen and stations in the country, run the cop shops like businesses, carefully account for all crimes, implement policing strategies and note improvements or deteriorations, use strategies that work (where crime stats come down) in other precincts.
That’s fine for a 10 year plan. We’ve got 4 years. And tonight the murderers will be out in force again.
Finally, going back to that recruitment debate: once all our arguments and counterarguments had been tallied, one of the Investec judges, a tall, fairly good looking guy, stood up and, having asked for our opinions on the death penalty, decided to give us his. He said: “The death sentence is absolutely, morally wrong. And it should never be brought back.”
Since then I’ve always borne a grudge against Investec. Sorry bud, that statement is just wrong. The death sentence is reprehensible because it is designed for reprehensible people. Imagine a person kills your sister, goes to jail, comes back, and kills your brother, goes to jail, comes back and kills your mother. Then, on his way out, he says: “I’ll be back for you.”
Should it be up to us – individuals in our homes – or government, to deal with these monsters? It’s not such a tough question if you’re not a murderer, or possibly a feckless banker.
I’ve taken a moment to look at just how avaricious that sounds. I mean think about it, sentencing hardened criminals to death just so that we can hold a soccer tournament and the country can make a few extra bags of gold. But then you can also think about it in another way: serious crime might still prevent the tournament from happening at all, and serious crime must pay for it to be such a hit (pun intended) in South Africa. So then, who should profit more out of the 2010 world cup, marketers or murderers?
I once attended an Investec recruitment drive for graduates. What they did was they invited a bunch of promising graduates in centres all around the country. Then they posed a question to the group and evaluated their answers, listening etc. The question posed to us was: Capital Punishment – use it or lose it?
Personally I don’t have a definitive answer. Some issues, as far as I’m concerned, just aren’t that simple. Abortion is another example. It’s easy to paint the world with the same sweeping brushstroke, but it’s not right. And it’s not what’s best. There are a lot of details in the human story, and plenty of exceptions to the rule. If you’re a good human being, and you care about people, you’re sensitive to each person’s story, to the minutiae.
At this recruitment drive I made the point that in an ideal world capital punishment is crude and uncalled for. But in South Africa, crime is so serious that we can consider it (the death penalty) an act of collective self defense. We’re far from an ideal world, and will remain a troubled and broken society as long as we don’t deal with everyday realities. We ought to bring the death sentence back, temporarily, until the killing rate drops to a more civilized (almost-ideal-world) point. This was my belief then, and it hasn’t changed much since. Neither has crime.
David Bullard wrote with wit and wisdom in his column last Sunday on the same subject, suggesting we let murderers go on moonless nights in the Kruger Park to give them a sporting chance. ‘If they survive until morning they go free.” The real situation in this country is a lot less amusing, and the way we are coping with it even less effective than Bullard’s anecdote. Our prison system allows hardened criminals to mix with young offenders, so they are quickly upgraded to hardened warrior status. One inmate has said that not a single young criminal (awaiting trial) is not raped. If you arrived in jail as a hesitant scalawag, and you were considering the straight and narrow, a good seeing to by a hardened bastard (no pun intended) ought to set one permanently on the wrong track. This is where the system breaks down. You can’t just treat symptoms without overhauling the system. And in this whole operation one has to remain sensitive to those perpetrators who might be rehabilitated. The death sentence is meant to permanently remove people from society who can’t help themselves from wiping it out.
Bullard pertinently mentions the ‘muesli munchers’ as a group of apparently intelligent, apparently enlightened objectors. One opinion I’ve heard quoted more than once from the ‘muesli munchers’ is that the death sentence hasn’t even been proved to be effective. I’m sure there are cases in the USA especially where that might be true. But elsewhere it has been exceedingly effective. I have been to Singapore and Thailand, and they are remarkably civilized countries. The death penalty is available there to people addicted to drugs and murder. I think a death sentence for drug trafficking is a bit severe, but since I am not a drug trafficker or user, the world becomes a little safer and easier for me. Ever been to Singapore? It’s a pleasure. Murder is almost unheard of in Singapore (so is spitting and until recently, chewing gum).
I’m not suggesting Singapore’s standards for South Africa. They go a little too far. Oral sex for example, is also illegal (I’m not 100% certain of the fine print) between unmarried persons. But I am recommending, if we want to have a hope of having 500 000 visitors to our country making it safely into and out of our national stadia we ought to do something between now and then. If we don’t do something significant we may be seeing a certain percentage of that number (1% is 5000, 10% is 50 000) of them raped, hijacked, murdered or otherwise victimized while enjoying our unique South African hospitality.
I worry about people from different backgrounds, who don’t even speak English, walking around in South Africa, under the influence, footloose and fancy free, wanting to celebrate and enjoy themselves.
It’s not inconceivable that a severe crime spree targeted at innocent soccer tourists might actually prevent the 3 week long World Cup from running through to the finals. Imagine what a disaster it would be if people cancelled their plans after a high enough number of people came to grief? Imagine the lasting and damaging negative publicity echoing across news networks and around the world.
So what can we do? Ex New York mayor Rudi Giuliani has made some useful suggestions for South Africa: increase the number of policemen and stations in the country, run the cop shops like businesses, carefully account for all crimes, implement policing strategies and note improvements or deteriorations, use strategies that work (where crime stats come down) in other precincts.
That’s fine for a 10 year plan. We’ve got 4 years. And tonight the murderers will be out in force again.
Finally, going back to that recruitment debate: once all our arguments and counterarguments had been tallied, one of the Investec judges, a tall, fairly good looking guy, stood up and, having asked for our opinions on the death penalty, decided to give us his. He said: “The death sentence is absolutely, morally wrong. And it should never be brought back.”
Since then I’ve always borne a grudge against Investec. Sorry bud, that statement is just wrong. The death sentence is reprehensible because it is designed for reprehensible people. Imagine a person kills your sister, goes to jail, comes back, and kills your brother, goes to jail, comes back and kills your mother. Then, on his way out, he says: “I’ll be back for you.”
Should it be up to us – individuals in our homes – or government, to deal with these monsters? It’s not such a tough question if you’re not a murderer, or possibly a feckless banker.
Friday, June 23, 2006
Sick and Free
Quite a horrible irony that on the last day of school I woke up with a woolen head, and a scratchy throat. I have felt, all week, that I've been fending off illness. A few well timed naps have helped, I feel, to limit the contagion to a mere scratchy wooziness. Could have been a lot worse.
The stress of having to mark hundreds of papers (several times this week into the wee hours of the morning) has definitely had an impact. Lack of sleep and missing a few breakfasts this week, plus being surrounded by plenty of sniffly people, that's how you give a bug a launching pad. Another major factor was the spin class I did. Remember I walked home wet with sweat on a cold night. In the actual session I felt extremely tired, but forced myself to endure the whole 40 minutes.
I'm going to try to eat plenty of fresh oranges (for Vitamin C), drink water, sleep and rest, and get something from a pharmacy. This non-teaching period (3 weeks) is meant to be a heavy training period, so I have to be healthy as soon as I can be.
Going to try to do all remaining schoolwork in the first week and then maybe head out to the Underberg for some R&R (horseriding and such) in the 2nd or 3rd week.
Check www.reporter.co.za today. I have to articles (posted yesterday on this blog) on the main feature page. One is a top story. Some handy pocket money there.
Earth hottest it's been in 2000 years
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press WriterThu Jun 22, 11:16 PM ET
The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.
The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.
Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote. It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.
Their conclusions were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers — a "hockey-stick" chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.
It had compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures — a 1 degree rise in global average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th century — and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.
That research is "likely" true and is supported by more recent data, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, had asked the academy for the report last year after the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, launched an investigation of the three climate scientists.
The Bush administration has maintained that the threat from global warming is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.
"This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance," Boehlert said Thursday. "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."
The academy panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600.
But it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.
Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations had the biggest effects on climate. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, the panel said.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
___
On the Net:
National Academy of Sciences: http://nationalacademies.or
The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.
The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.
Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote. It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.
Their conclusions were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers — a "hockey-stick" chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.
It had compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures — a 1 degree rise in global average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th century — and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.
That research is "likely" true and is supported by more recent data, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, had asked the academy for the report last year after the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas, launched an investigation of the three climate scientists.
The Bush administration has maintained that the threat from global warming is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.
"This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance," Boehlert said Thursday. "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."
The academy panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600.
But it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.
Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations had the biggest effects on climate. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, the panel said.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.
___
On the Net:
National Academy of Sciences: http://nationalacademies.or
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Is Society Oversexed
Witch hunts or justifiable anger?
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husband’s is perfectly scandalous*
Every once in a while we hear about some horrible incident where an innocent child’s life is turned upside down by the sexual predations of someone older, who should know better. One of the most recent is a divorced man in Cape Town who picked up two desperately poor (and very young) girls and paid them R25 each for oral sex. The irony is that this all came to light as a result of the man paying the one girl R5 more than the other, and the argument that resulted (and probably continued in their respective homes) alerted the one’s mother. One can easily imagine the mother’s reaction, her calling the police and the media.
Westerners who travel to the East, especially Thailand and the Philippines, are notorious for financing the so-called sex industry. When I traveled to both countries I noticed several older men walking around with local girls young enough to be their daughters. In Thailand (Phuket) I noticed a British girl talking to a pretty Thailand girl (about the same age) and asked if they were friends. The British girl (who was about 15 or 16 years old) answered, “No, she’s my father’s friend.”
The technology exists today to allow continuous sex without conception. This obviously leads to a lot more sex than we would otherwise have. There’s nothing wrong with sex, obviously, as long as it is in an acceptable context, and we take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. What does disturb is the constant pursuit of it, and the way sexuality is overtly and increasingly explicitly part of our everyday business. It’s overt in terms of how we dress and present ourselves, what we consider successful and what the media presents as something to aspire to. Beauty and sex has been made into a kind of God. Women worship it by cutting and enhancing their bodies, by applying make-up for hours on a daily basis. And men support this activity by following Oscar Wilde’s motif: The only way to behave towards a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
My concern is the extent to which society (especially western) is depicting itself, and transforming itself, into a softcore pornographical mindset. Life does seem to resemble, increasingly, a porn movie. What are the basics of a porn movie? No plot, plenty of nonsense (in terms of dialogue), lots of gratuitous sex (often with the participants pretending to be a lot happier and excited than they really are) and an overall empty and shallow set of interactions. Isn’t society becoming similar? Our jobs demand so much time from us, that we have so little left for conventional intimacy – things like talking and listening to friends and family. Perhaps becoming increasingly sexually active is a desperate way of getting intimacy as quickly as possible.
The more promiscuous society becomes the more the society finds itself lacking basic discipline, in terms of its own appetite. That means a lack of control of oneself. It may not seem a serious thing, except when we notice people around us not being able to control themselves. We can see evidence of this in those things the form or disrupt (or destroy) the fabric of society. We see it in our children at school. We experience it in the form of crime, including crimes of passion.
The way to fill up the collective emptiness is to become less mentally active and more spiritually centred. To still our beating hearts, to meditate, to go out into nature and absorb those things that nourish the spirit (not the flesh). And we, as individuals, need to develop discipline that maintains the internal grail, and rather than allowing ourselves to become half empty or worse, filling ourselves up with meaning.
*Oscar Wilde in The Importance of being Earnest
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husband’s is perfectly scandalous*
Every once in a while we hear about some horrible incident where an innocent child’s life is turned upside down by the sexual predations of someone older, who should know better. One of the most recent is a divorced man in Cape Town who picked up two desperately poor (and very young) girls and paid them R25 each for oral sex. The irony is that this all came to light as a result of the man paying the one girl R5 more than the other, and the argument that resulted (and probably continued in their respective homes) alerted the one’s mother. One can easily imagine the mother’s reaction, her calling the police and the media.
Westerners who travel to the East, especially Thailand and the Philippines, are notorious for financing the so-called sex industry. When I traveled to both countries I noticed several older men walking around with local girls young enough to be their daughters. In Thailand (Phuket) I noticed a British girl talking to a pretty Thailand girl (about the same age) and asked if they were friends. The British girl (who was about 15 or 16 years old) answered, “No, she’s my father’s friend.”
The technology exists today to allow continuous sex without conception. This obviously leads to a lot more sex than we would otherwise have. There’s nothing wrong with sex, obviously, as long as it is in an acceptable context, and we take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. What does disturb is the constant pursuit of it, and the way sexuality is overtly and increasingly explicitly part of our everyday business. It’s overt in terms of how we dress and present ourselves, what we consider successful and what the media presents as something to aspire to. Beauty and sex has been made into a kind of God. Women worship it by cutting and enhancing their bodies, by applying make-up for hours on a daily basis. And men support this activity by following Oscar Wilde’s motif: The only way to behave towards a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
My concern is the extent to which society (especially western) is depicting itself, and transforming itself, into a softcore pornographical mindset. Life does seem to resemble, increasingly, a porn movie. What are the basics of a porn movie? No plot, plenty of nonsense (in terms of dialogue), lots of gratuitous sex (often with the participants pretending to be a lot happier and excited than they really are) and an overall empty and shallow set of interactions. Isn’t society becoming similar? Our jobs demand so much time from us, that we have so little left for conventional intimacy – things like talking and listening to friends and family. Perhaps becoming increasingly sexually active is a desperate way of getting intimacy as quickly as possible.
The more promiscuous society becomes the more the society finds itself lacking basic discipline, in terms of its own appetite. That means a lack of control of oneself. It may not seem a serious thing, except when we notice people around us not being able to control themselves. We can see evidence of this in those things the form or disrupt (or destroy) the fabric of society. We see it in our children at school. We experience it in the form of crime, including crimes of passion.
The way to fill up the collective emptiness is to become less mentally active and more spiritually centred. To still our beating hearts, to meditate, to go out into nature and absorb those things that nourish the spirit (not the flesh). And we, as individuals, need to develop discipline that maintains the internal grail, and rather than allowing ourselves to become half empty or worse, filling ourselves up with meaning.
*Oscar Wilde in The Importance of being Earnest
Sex in schools
Who’s guilty?
The recent report (see reporter.co.za’s Community Service article) on sex in school paints a damning picture of incompetent teachers preying on helpless learners. While I am sure in many cases it is true, I think a more balanced view is closer to the actual state of affairs.
I am teaching at a High School in the Free State and I have already had a student hand me a card (in the format of a business card) with her name, address, telephone number and the words ‘Escort Agency’ on it. A prank? Perhaps.
Earlier in the week I asked a group of students for help, to do filing. I even offered to pay them R5 (it’s a lot of filing). The next day three girls pitched up, all dressed to kill, and bouncing around more than schoolgirls ought to. Later this week, when I asked for help again, and the same thing happened. It could be the latest fashion, but then again, a classroom is a classroom, not a ramp for modeling, also not a restaurant for a romantic and glamorous tete a tete. Certainly not worth dressing up for. So what’s going on?
5 minutes ago I asked a matric boy whether one of the girls he was talking to was his girlfriend, and he answered both. “You have two girlfriends at the same time?” I asked, stepping nicely into a verbal trap. Now the girls started questioning me whether I ( a teacher at the school) had ever done that, or would I etc. They were very familiar and obviously trying to maneuver me towards committing myself to some sort of yay or nay attitude, in terms of being interested or not in some sexual scenario. Nay, I said, I have a girlfriend. But, the boy persisted, do you want to marry her? Is that code for: are you available for some kind of extra mural activity?
I do have to wonder about young, single male teachers (female too, but not being female I wouldn’t really know), who are single and far from home. It’s expecting a lot from them to maintain angelic standards year upon year. Having taught in Korea I know of more than one western teacher who started dating one of his students. It happens, I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t expect the highest standards from teachers. What I am saying is that we are very quick to launch witch hunts against teachers, point fingers and accuse, but if a young learner is actually soliciting attention, we sort of brush it off, ignore it. That’s a serious transgression too, if we’re trying to stamp out sexual predation in schools.
It seems to me – where I am – a situation where learners run amuck, where they may bait (or at least tempt) the teacher, and if the teacher responds, the teacher is in trouble. Schoolds should have a policy of discouraging girls from wearing clothes that are too revealing (and our school does). Yes, teachers ought to know better, but flirtatious and salacious behavior (including what is said or suggested) by learners (to teachers) ought also to be corrected with a firm approach. Given that corporal punishment is no longer de rigueur in schools, how does one make sure learners remain disciplined in terms of flaunting their sexuality? How are these young teenagers brought under some kind of control? I’ve seen young girls coming into class with FHM magazines. The media (especially soaps, and ads, movies and magazines) serves as a powerful stimulus to keep these young people burning. With so much stimuli out there, how does one cool the engine down? It’s a challenge not only in schools, but in society too (see Is Society Oversexed article elsewhere in reporter.co.za).
Cooling the sexual engine of society down: that’s the challenge.
My point is that where there is smoke, there is fire, and the learners are in many instances fanning flames. Is it their fault? No. Is it, after all, only up to teachers to extinguish them?
The recent report (see reporter.co.za’s Community Service article) on sex in school paints a damning picture of incompetent teachers preying on helpless learners. While I am sure in many cases it is true, I think a more balanced view is closer to the actual state of affairs.
I am teaching at a High School in the Free State and I have already had a student hand me a card (in the format of a business card) with her name, address, telephone number and the words ‘Escort Agency’ on it. A prank? Perhaps.
Earlier in the week I asked a group of students for help, to do filing. I even offered to pay them R5 (it’s a lot of filing). The next day three girls pitched up, all dressed to kill, and bouncing around more than schoolgirls ought to. Later this week, when I asked for help again, and the same thing happened. It could be the latest fashion, but then again, a classroom is a classroom, not a ramp for modeling, also not a restaurant for a romantic and glamorous tete a tete. Certainly not worth dressing up for. So what’s going on?
5 minutes ago I asked a matric boy whether one of the girls he was talking to was his girlfriend, and he answered both. “You have two girlfriends at the same time?” I asked, stepping nicely into a verbal trap. Now the girls started questioning me whether I ( a teacher at the school) had ever done that, or would I etc. They were very familiar and obviously trying to maneuver me towards committing myself to some sort of yay or nay attitude, in terms of being interested or not in some sexual scenario. Nay, I said, I have a girlfriend. But, the boy persisted, do you want to marry her? Is that code for: are you available for some kind of extra mural activity?
I do have to wonder about young, single male teachers (female too, but not being female I wouldn’t really know), who are single and far from home. It’s expecting a lot from them to maintain angelic standards year upon year. Having taught in Korea I know of more than one western teacher who started dating one of his students. It happens, I’m not saying it doesn’t. I’m also not saying that we shouldn’t expect the highest standards from teachers. What I am saying is that we are very quick to launch witch hunts against teachers, point fingers and accuse, but if a young learner is actually soliciting attention, we sort of brush it off, ignore it. That’s a serious transgression too, if we’re trying to stamp out sexual predation in schools.
It seems to me – where I am – a situation where learners run amuck, where they may bait (or at least tempt) the teacher, and if the teacher responds, the teacher is in trouble. Schoolds should have a policy of discouraging girls from wearing clothes that are too revealing (and our school does). Yes, teachers ought to know better, but flirtatious and salacious behavior (including what is said or suggested) by learners (to teachers) ought also to be corrected with a firm approach. Given that corporal punishment is no longer de rigueur in schools, how does one make sure learners remain disciplined in terms of flaunting their sexuality? How are these young teenagers brought under some kind of control? I’ve seen young girls coming into class with FHM magazines. The media (especially soaps, and ads, movies and magazines) serves as a powerful stimulus to keep these young people burning. With so much stimuli out there, how does one cool the engine down? It’s a challenge not only in schools, but in society too (see Is Society Oversexed article elsewhere in reporter.co.za).
Cooling the sexual engine of society down: that’s the challenge.
My point is that where there is smoke, there is fire, and the learners are in many instances fanning flames. Is it their fault? No. Is it, after all, only up to teachers to extinguish them?
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Spinning
After cycling to the bank and back (less than 10km), Barendine and me went for a run - 4 laps around the school, and then running up to Noordstad. It's really close to the school - Virgin Active I mean. No more than 500m away.
Saw Franna there, and bought another headband thingy at Wild At Heart plus some socks. Am going to buy Salomon shoes, but going to order a pair of red one's. I just can't imagine wearing black sports shoes. Call me old fashioned.
Then my brother and Barendine talked me into doing a spinning class. We were booked onto front row bikes, with shoe straps. Charl (I knew him at school as Thabo) gave the class. He's become quite a big, well built fellow.
The 40 minutes were torture. My left calf almost went into a cramp, and quite a few of the exercises required expert balance and a very strong core. By the end of it I had a nice little puddle of sweat reflecting back at me.
I was surprised to suffer so much seeing as though I am 'cycing fit'. It's far more a cardiovascular exercise than it is strength and endurance. It is the perfect antidote to boep and weight so am going to try to survive at least 2 classes a week.
Have to say I felt a bit sick afterwards - throat sore, body wet and cold and really tired. Maybe not so clever walking back home in the cold, slightly wet as well. Body ached last night as I marked my last tests.
Am also changing classes, and getting up to date in terms of filing and marks. Two mountains of exam marking waiting, and another pile (smaller) coming on Friday. Going to work through that as quick as I can.
This holiday I want to cycle to 3 or 4 small towns in the Free State. So far I'm thinking of Phillipolis and Kimberely. Do a small tour, and stay over in Guest Houses and stuff. Might also go to a writer's workshop in Cape Town and then spend 2 days with my sister in Natal, do a bit of horseriding.
My meeting today and yesterday with Mrs Martins went quite well. Note to myself: staying calm even when agitated and stressed is the best way to keep the person you're dealing with (or who is dealing with you) calm.
Was surprised when she said a prayer before the Matric exams in the gym hall. Praying really centres you and calms you down. Need to do that more...especially now that I'll be spinning more often.
Having lunch with Mrs Visagie this afternoon - it's thanks to her that I have this job. Going to chat about the teaching profession, and where to from here. And just thank her for the lead that got me the job.
Swim this afternoon and then hostel duty tonight. Need to start studying now for university exams.
The Netherlands play Argentina tonight. Should be a humdinger.
Saw Franna there, and bought another headband thingy at Wild At Heart plus some socks. Am going to buy Salomon shoes, but going to order a pair of red one's. I just can't imagine wearing black sports shoes. Call me old fashioned.
Then my brother and Barendine talked me into doing a spinning class. We were booked onto front row bikes, with shoe straps. Charl (I knew him at school as Thabo) gave the class. He's become quite a big, well built fellow.
The 40 minutes were torture. My left calf almost went into a cramp, and quite a few of the exercises required expert balance and a very strong core. By the end of it I had a nice little puddle of sweat reflecting back at me.
I was surprised to suffer so much seeing as though I am 'cycing fit'. It's far more a cardiovascular exercise than it is strength and endurance. It is the perfect antidote to boep and weight so am going to try to survive at least 2 classes a week.
Have to say I felt a bit sick afterwards - throat sore, body wet and cold and really tired. Maybe not so clever walking back home in the cold, slightly wet as well. Body ached last night as I marked my last tests.
Am also changing classes, and getting up to date in terms of filing and marks. Two mountains of exam marking waiting, and another pile (smaller) coming on Friday. Going to work through that as quick as I can.
This holiday I want to cycle to 3 or 4 small towns in the Free State. So far I'm thinking of Phillipolis and Kimberely. Do a small tour, and stay over in Guest Houses and stuff. Might also go to a writer's workshop in Cape Town and then spend 2 days with my sister in Natal, do a bit of horseriding.
My meeting today and yesterday with Mrs Martins went quite well. Note to myself: staying calm even when agitated and stressed is the best way to keep the person you're dealing with (or who is dealing with you) calm.
Was surprised when she said a prayer before the Matric exams in the gym hall. Praying really centres you and calms you down. Need to do that more...especially now that I'll be spinning more often.
Having lunch with Mrs Visagie this afternoon - it's thanks to her that I have this job. Going to chat about the teaching profession, and where to from here. And just thank her for the lead that got me the job.
Swim this afternoon and then hostel duty tonight. Need to start studying now for university exams.
The Netherlands play Argentina tonight. Should be a humdinger.
Kunstler: Circling
June19, 2006 Forgive me for starting at the end (of my West Coast excursion), but it's the most amusing part. So, they load us on United 302 (Chicago to Albany) and we push back from the jetway, and about ten minutes later I notice that we are taxiing past the "C" Concourse again, that is, we've circled around the whole airport. Okay, well, O'Hare is a weird operation.
So I sink back into the newsprint fog of the fifth newspaper I've read that day and after another ten minutes I notice we're rolling past the "C" Concourse yet again. It's also real hot in the plane because it's 90 degrees outside and the AC isn't running too well. The other passengers are getting grousy.
So, we finally stop driving around the fucking airport and apparently get on line for takeoff. Only it looks like a staggeringly long line, going forward and around the corner and up the tarmac, forever. "Kcccchhhhhhh," static over the PA as the pilot gets on the microphone. "Uh, folks...." (Whenever they start with that patronizing salutation, you know you're in for the business.) "Uh, folks, it seems to be rush hour out here. They've got us at about, oh, twenty-five or thirty for takeoff..." Groans up and down the aisle. "...and we'll give you an update as soon as we have more information, Kccchhhhhhhhh."
Okay, we're already a half an hour late for takeoff, and everybody's roasting in the cabin. I'm thinking, the pilot said, "It's rush hour out here." Wait a minute. I don't get it. Rush hour? Like a whole bunch of planes just showed up at O'Hare unscheduled? Coming and going? Nobody was informed about it ahead of time? They're all...surprised? Like there's some kind of airplane freeway ramp out there feeding onto O'Hare, and for some reason a whole lot of planes just appeared? And now the runways are clogged with planes that nobody expected or knew about...? I mention this because this is the kind of mendacious bullshit that Americans are subjected to constantly. No wonder we can't think about public affairs anymore.
Okay, so I spent nine days on the West Coast, starting in Los Angeles, Pasadena, actually. Let's just say that part of the United States is absolutely hopeless. It consists largely of a roadway hierarchy and whatever's left is apportioned to valet parking. It has no future. The poor oblivious denizens of the place don't question their predicament. The whole sordid scene is, well, tragic, and I'm sorry, but let's pass over it for now.
So, eventually I got up to Seattle, which is trying to be a city, like a real twentieth century city -- did I say twentieth? Well, there's the problem, right there. They're lining the avenues with condo skyscrapers. Big mistake. Skyscrapers are not going to be cool in the twenty-first century as we run into problems with the electricity supply. Oh, well. The other problem with Seattle is this: the topography is really demoralizing. The hills are so steep that I got shin splints from walking around the place for one day. Now, if the people who lived there and run place had any sense, they would have cable cars or some damn thing traversing the hills every ten blocks. Then, you could walk the contours comfortably and get up the elevations okay.
But they don't do that. They probably had them ninety years ago (and, in fact, I saw framed photos of Seattle's cable cars in the Town Hall auditorium lobby where I gave a blab, so I know for a fact they did). But apparently they forgot how to do that. So now, obviously, everybody brings their car downtown because it's impossible to walk around comfortably, even if you're in shape, and Seattle has become one of the worst traffic clusterfucks in the nation.
Eventually I got up to Vancouver on Amtrak -- a very comfortable ride along the shore of Puget Sound past flocks of eagles and all kinds of natural beauty -- and when I went through customs at the Vancouver central station, I was pulled aside and directed into a grim little room with a female interogation officer. I had a New York DWAI traffic conviction dating from 1997, and did I know that this made me undesirable for entry into that fortress of rectitude, Canada? Well, gosh, no....
Then the lady officer said -- I swear she did -- that she could prevent me from entering if she had been in a bad mood. But instead, she gave me printed instructions for how to apply to the Canadian consulate back home for a document proving I had been rehabilitated (from a misdemeanor). It was interesting to note that Canadian border policy depends on the particular mood of individual customs officers.
Vancouver is a very appealing site for a city, but it is in the process of being utterly pranged (as they like to say) by massive hyper-mega-overdevelopment. And anyway, circumstances had me more-or-less house-sitting an old college friend's home way up in the hills of suburban West Vancouver, where it required fifty dollars in cab fares to get something to eat. Enough said. I took a spectacular ferry ride, on an extravagantly comfortable (and cheap: $8.50Ca) vessel over to little Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, on the big island out in the Pacific. Victoria, too, was on its way toward a good self-pranging, but there is a visible residue of the pre-pranged city that is scaled comfortably and possesses great natural beauty. I met a lot of nice people there, and they didn't seem disturbed that nine years ago I had incurred a misdemeanor conviction for DWAI.
The rest was that torturous return journey home via O'Hare, which I already told you about. One final note, however, to the hotel chains of North America: please lose those fucking twenty-pound duvets you're putting on all the beds. They're too heavy. They're too hot, even with the AC on. I hardly slept the whole time I was away. No wonder I'm cranky.
So I sink back into the newsprint fog of the fifth newspaper I've read that day and after another ten minutes I notice we're rolling past the "C" Concourse yet again. It's also real hot in the plane because it's 90 degrees outside and the AC isn't running too well. The other passengers are getting grousy.
So, we finally stop driving around the fucking airport and apparently get on line for takeoff. Only it looks like a staggeringly long line, going forward and around the corner and up the tarmac, forever. "Kcccchhhhhhh," static over the PA as the pilot gets on the microphone. "Uh, folks...." (Whenever they start with that patronizing salutation, you know you're in for the business.) "Uh, folks, it seems to be rush hour out here. They've got us at about, oh, twenty-five or thirty for takeoff..." Groans up and down the aisle. "...and we'll give you an update as soon as we have more information, Kccchhhhhhhhh."
Okay, we're already a half an hour late for takeoff, and everybody's roasting in the cabin. I'm thinking, the pilot said, "It's rush hour out here." Wait a minute. I don't get it. Rush hour? Like a whole bunch of planes just showed up at O'Hare unscheduled? Coming and going? Nobody was informed about it ahead of time? They're all...surprised? Like there's some kind of airplane freeway ramp out there feeding onto O'Hare, and for some reason a whole lot of planes just appeared? And now the runways are clogged with planes that nobody expected or knew about...? I mention this because this is the kind of mendacious bullshit that Americans are subjected to constantly. No wonder we can't think about public affairs anymore.
Okay, so I spent nine days on the West Coast, starting in Los Angeles, Pasadena, actually. Let's just say that part of the United States is absolutely hopeless. It consists largely of a roadway hierarchy and whatever's left is apportioned to valet parking. It has no future. The poor oblivious denizens of the place don't question their predicament. The whole sordid scene is, well, tragic, and I'm sorry, but let's pass over it for now.
So, eventually I got up to Seattle, which is trying to be a city, like a real twentieth century city -- did I say twentieth? Well, there's the problem, right there. They're lining the avenues with condo skyscrapers. Big mistake. Skyscrapers are not going to be cool in the twenty-first century as we run into problems with the electricity supply. Oh, well. The other problem with Seattle is this: the topography is really demoralizing. The hills are so steep that I got shin splints from walking around the place for one day. Now, if the people who lived there and run place had any sense, they would have cable cars or some damn thing traversing the hills every ten blocks. Then, you could walk the contours comfortably and get up the elevations okay.
But they don't do that. They probably had them ninety years ago (and, in fact, I saw framed photos of Seattle's cable cars in the Town Hall auditorium lobby where I gave a blab, so I know for a fact they did). But apparently they forgot how to do that. So now, obviously, everybody brings their car downtown because it's impossible to walk around comfortably, even if you're in shape, and Seattle has become one of the worst traffic clusterfucks in the nation.
Eventually I got up to Vancouver on Amtrak -- a very comfortable ride along the shore of Puget Sound past flocks of eagles and all kinds of natural beauty -- and when I went through customs at the Vancouver central station, I was pulled aside and directed into a grim little room with a female interogation officer. I had a New York DWAI traffic conviction dating from 1997, and did I know that this made me undesirable for entry into that fortress of rectitude, Canada? Well, gosh, no....
Then the lady officer said -- I swear she did -- that she could prevent me from entering if she had been in a bad mood. But instead, she gave me printed instructions for how to apply to the Canadian consulate back home for a document proving I had been rehabilitated (from a misdemeanor). It was interesting to note that Canadian border policy depends on the particular mood of individual customs officers.
Vancouver is a very appealing site for a city, but it is in the process of being utterly pranged (as they like to say) by massive hyper-mega-overdevelopment. And anyway, circumstances had me more-or-less house-sitting an old college friend's home way up in the hills of suburban West Vancouver, where it required fifty dollars in cab fares to get something to eat. Enough said. I took a spectacular ferry ride, on an extravagantly comfortable (and cheap: $8.50Ca) vessel over to little Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, on the big island out in the Pacific. Victoria, too, was on its way toward a good self-pranging, but there is a visible residue of the pre-pranged city that is scaled comfortably and possesses great natural beauty. I met a lot of nice people there, and they didn't seem disturbed that nine years ago I had incurred a misdemeanor conviction for DWAI.
The rest was that torturous return journey home via O'Hare, which I already told you about. One final note, however, to the hotel chains of North America: please lose those fucking twenty-pound duvets you're putting on all the beds. They're too heavy. They're too hot, even with the AC on. I hardly slept the whole time I was away. No wonder I'm cranky.
Monday, June 19, 2006
The Race of Truth
Just watch them burn
by Nick van der Leek
The world’s most brutal sporting event starts again this July: The Tour de France. While the Tour is tough, the toughest individual stage is the time trial. When Lance rode (and won) his last ever time trial, he was asked how he felt about his victory. His reply (and remember, because he has won this event 7 times, he’s got to be the toughest of the lot): “I’m relieved it’s over.” That’s how tough it is.
The Tour makes a 3000km circuit of France, averaging around 120km per day, climbing through the Alps and Pyrenees, to reach Paris 3 weeks later in a total of about 83 hours, and an average speed of over 40km/h. If you’re a cyclist, you’ll know how hard it is to average 40km/h for just half an hour. And to do a week’s training adding up to more than 28 hours is no piece of cake, especially, 3 weeks in a row. The most I have ever averaged is 20 hours, and that was in training for the Ironman triathlon, so hats off to these guys.
The Tour de France, while it may be a race for champions, for the fittest and toughest athletes (who happen to be cyclists) in the world, the Tour is not the race of truth. The race of truth is the time trial. The Tour has 3 (including the short prologue and team time trial).
Recently I went to PE to ride against the best South African cyclists in the SA Champs time trial. I’ve time trialed before, in triathlons (from 20km – 180km). But this was only my 2nd pure cycling time trial ever. I learned the hard way that it’s not called the race of truth for nothing.
First of all, the electricity, the intensity, the paralyzing sense of nerves starts to tug at the muscle fibres for at least half an hour leading up to the start. Before you’re due to start, people around you warm up by placing their bikes on stationery trainers. They work up a sweat; get their hearts ready for pain. I did none of that, since all my time trials had been in triathlons where you can’t warm up inside the event.
‘Now I can tell you
About success, about fame
About the rise and the fall
Of all the stars in the sky’*
How it starts is you are perched on your bike, with a ramp leading down onto the road. Someone stands behind you and locks your back wheel between his or her legs. Then there is a countdown, and as the seconds count down, the heart rate starts to skyrocket.
I was worried, getting increasingly nervous, greasy palmed and fluttery, that when I was released I’d just fall down the ramp, but I got away quite safely. In the first kilometer my average speed was 39km/h, and my heart rate shot up to 176 beats per minute. What makes this race so tough is that you know you can always go faster, and harder, and so you do.
‘Now I can tell you
About the place I belong
You know it won’t last long…”*
Unlucky for me, about 5 of the riders before me didn’t turn up, so I had no riders to chase, no carrots dangling at 1 minute intervals up the road to pursue. Irritably I watched my average drop from 39 to 38…37…36…while I battled against a strong crosswind. I had a bunch of excellent riders pursuing me so I was fighting to stay ahead of them. At least 3 caught me, and one of them, Raynard Tissink (2004 SA Ironman Champion), shot by me…his Heart Rate Monitor chirruping as he went by, just after the turnaround at about 16km. It’s humbling to be the tortoise on the road, and watch the rabbits shoot by you, leaving you in their wakes, that that was me that day.
People on the side of rode clap and urge you on, but when you’re doing a time trial, the spectators are least important. It is really about you and yourself, gritting your teeth, getting a fraction more speed out of your legs, urging your muscles to push harder even when they are sapped of power. It’s about you versus yourself, and the other riders. Here, now, you see exactly how hard you can push yourself, how fast you can go, and by how far you’re going to win, or lose. In short, the time trial very simple shows who is the fastest, who is the best.
I rode hard, and I can’t say I could have ridden any harder. I pushed my heart rate to an average of 171 for 50 minutes. But I only averaged 35km/h. I’ve averaged 37km/h for triple the distance. I know I can ride faster, but the truth is, that day I couldn’t, and didn’t.
On that windy day in PE I rode one of my worst rides ever. It was disappointing. Yes, I looked for excuses – pre –race exhaustion, puncture in the last kilometer, lack of fitness etc. But in the end, the race speaks for itself, and you have to let it be, and live with it.
In Lance’s last ever time trial, stage 20 of the 2005 Tour, a 47km monster, full of climbs, technical turns and winding descents, he managed to beat his great rival, Jan Ullrich, who has won the Tour once, been runner up to Lance more than once, and never ended worse than third, by only a few seconds. But Lance won, and it is no coincidence that the winners of this great race are often the fastest in the time trials. This is because the time trial shows who is really not just the strongest rider, but the best overall. In cycling, strength alone is not enough. To win the Tour, and the race of Truth, you have to be balanced, wily, you have to ride strategically and with terrible discipline, you have to pace yourself and plot your battles carefully.
In the 2003 Tour, arguably the most exciting and closest combat between Armstrong and Ullrich, Jan Ullrich beat Lance, who was suffering from serious dehydration, by about a minute and a half in the time trial. Armstrong went on to win, but only just. This year, all eyes will be on Ullrich. Will he take over as champion of the Tour? The race of truth will provide us with the best clues. I will provide daily coverage of each stage in July, so watch this space.
* – lyrics from a Madonna song.
by Nick van der Leek
The world’s most brutal sporting event starts again this July: The Tour de France. While the Tour is tough, the toughest individual stage is the time trial. When Lance rode (and won) his last ever time trial, he was asked how he felt about his victory. His reply (and remember, because he has won this event 7 times, he’s got to be the toughest of the lot): “I’m relieved it’s over.” That’s how tough it is.
The Tour makes a 3000km circuit of France, averaging around 120km per day, climbing through the Alps and Pyrenees, to reach Paris 3 weeks later in a total of about 83 hours, and an average speed of over 40km/h. If you’re a cyclist, you’ll know how hard it is to average 40km/h for just half an hour. And to do a week’s training adding up to more than 28 hours is no piece of cake, especially, 3 weeks in a row. The most I have ever averaged is 20 hours, and that was in training for the Ironman triathlon, so hats off to these guys.
The Tour de France, while it may be a race for champions, for the fittest and toughest athletes (who happen to be cyclists) in the world, the Tour is not the race of truth. The race of truth is the time trial. The Tour has 3 (including the short prologue and team time trial).
Recently I went to PE to ride against the best South African cyclists in the SA Champs time trial. I’ve time trialed before, in triathlons (from 20km – 180km). But this was only my 2nd pure cycling time trial ever. I learned the hard way that it’s not called the race of truth for nothing.
First of all, the electricity, the intensity, the paralyzing sense of nerves starts to tug at the muscle fibres for at least half an hour leading up to the start. Before you’re due to start, people around you warm up by placing their bikes on stationery trainers. They work up a sweat; get their hearts ready for pain. I did none of that, since all my time trials had been in triathlons where you can’t warm up inside the event.
‘Now I can tell you
About success, about fame
About the rise and the fall
Of all the stars in the sky’*
How it starts is you are perched on your bike, with a ramp leading down onto the road. Someone stands behind you and locks your back wheel between his or her legs. Then there is a countdown, and as the seconds count down, the heart rate starts to skyrocket.
I was worried, getting increasingly nervous, greasy palmed and fluttery, that when I was released I’d just fall down the ramp, but I got away quite safely. In the first kilometer my average speed was 39km/h, and my heart rate shot up to 176 beats per minute. What makes this race so tough is that you know you can always go faster, and harder, and so you do.
‘Now I can tell you
About the place I belong
You know it won’t last long…”*
Unlucky for me, about 5 of the riders before me didn’t turn up, so I had no riders to chase, no carrots dangling at 1 minute intervals up the road to pursue. Irritably I watched my average drop from 39 to 38…37…36…while I battled against a strong crosswind. I had a bunch of excellent riders pursuing me so I was fighting to stay ahead of them. At least 3 caught me, and one of them, Raynard Tissink (2004 SA Ironman Champion), shot by me…his Heart Rate Monitor chirruping as he went by, just after the turnaround at about 16km. It’s humbling to be the tortoise on the road, and watch the rabbits shoot by you, leaving you in their wakes, that that was me that day.
People on the side of rode clap and urge you on, but when you’re doing a time trial, the spectators are least important. It is really about you and yourself, gritting your teeth, getting a fraction more speed out of your legs, urging your muscles to push harder even when they are sapped of power. It’s about you versus yourself, and the other riders. Here, now, you see exactly how hard you can push yourself, how fast you can go, and by how far you’re going to win, or lose. In short, the time trial very simple shows who is the fastest, who is the best.
I rode hard, and I can’t say I could have ridden any harder. I pushed my heart rate to an average of 171 for 50 minutes. But I only averaged 35km/h. I’ve averaged 37km/h for triple the distance. I know I can ride faster, but the truth is, that day I couldn’t, and didn’t.
On that windy day in PE I rode one of my worst rides ever. It was disappointing. Yes, I looked for excuses – pre –race exhaustion, puncture in the last kilometer, lack of fitness etc. But in the end, the race speaks for itself, and you have to let it be, and live with it.
In Lance’s last ever time trial, stage 20 of the 2005 Tour, a 47km monster, full of climbs, technical turns and winding descents, he managed to beat his great rival, Jan Ullrich, who has won the Tour once, been runner up to Lance more than once, and never ended worse than third, by only a few seconds. But Lance won, and it is no coincidence that the winners of this great race are often the fastest in the time trials. This is because the time trial shows who is really not just the strongest rider, but the best overall. In cycling, strength alone is not enough. To win the Tour, and the race of Truth, you have to be balanced, wily, you have to ride strategically and with terrible discipline, you have to pace yourself and plot your battles carefully.
In the 2003 Tour, arguably the most exciting and closest combat between Armstrong and Ullrich, Jan Ullrich beat Lance, who was suffering from serious dehydration, by about a minute and a half in the time trial. Armstrong went on to win, but only just. This year, all eyes will be on Ullrich. Will he take over as champion of the Tour? The race of truth will provide us with the best clues. I will provide daily coverage of each stage in July, so watch this space.
* – lyrics from a Madonna song.
Capote
Cold blooded sensitivity
by Nick van der Leek
Some years ago an aunt suggested I read Truman Capote, but I found him vulgar, and full of intellectual self indulgence. I supposed even then that I might need a second opinion at some stage, and so I was glad to have the opportunity of watching an easily digestible (and Oscar winning) performance about an episode in the author’s life.
If you’re not a writer, or an intellectual arty type (and I’m not sure if I am the latter), give this movie a miss. I only counted 5 people besides me in the cinema, and two of them walked out after 10 minutes. My girlfriend, after seeing the not very exciting poster, refused to watch even 1 minute of it.
I found it absorbing. There’s an amusing scene in a train that captures the overall tone quite well: Capote is caught out having bribed the conductor to pay him a compliment (about his writing) in front of a fellow writer. Not far into the film, I realized my first assessment while not entirely incorrect, was also incomplete. Capote’s writing is brilliant, in the same way that his capacity to remember written passages and conversations (at 94% accuracy) is brilliant.
But that doesn’t mean the man has no flaws. Or that he was a credit to society. He probably was as a writer. But was he a good person? It’s a credit to the film that it portrays him as both brilliant, and flawed.
The film covers the 4 year period Capote spent doing research for what was to become a new genre: the non fiction novel. He befriends, in the name of research, two men guilty of the quadruple homicide in a small town in Kansas. What makes our blood run cold is how Capote gives in to a decadent lifestyle filled with mendacious manipulation. What are his motives other than to gain fame? Elements of Capote reminded me of the movie Monster. In real life, Aileen Wurmos was framed in order to sell the book rights on her story, and of course, if she received the death sentence, it would make a more compelling non fiction ending. So too with the book Capote was to eventually write: In Cold Blood.
Interestingly, Capote’s research led to the killer’s death sentences being postponed time and again (Capote himself hired an advocate to protect the killer’s rights), until the author could extract an ending – how the murders actually happened. Once this information is extorted, is there any reason to allow the killers to stay alive (and on death row?) Here the writer of fact becomes involved in the actual sequence of events, and then has a hand in how the events ultimately play out.
Capote attends the execution, and is so upset and haunted by what he witnesses he is unable to finish another book again. In Cold Blood becomes his last, best work, makes him America’s best writer, but the emotional dénouement costs him dearly. He is driven to alcoholism, which eventually kills him.
As a youngish writer, I found Capote (the movie) compelling. There are several good performances. This movie should also be seen as a cautionary tale to many aspiring writers out there. Why? The act of playing God is best left to God. Writers ought to represent the facts, or the fiction, without distorting either themselves or the picture they’re presenting. It’s hard to do that, to write deeply and sensitively, to be absorbed and analytical, and have the strength to resurface, to emerge to play in the health giving rays of the sun, and find the time and focus to live a balanced and happy life devoid of critical and calculating nuances. It’s tempting, in the written world, to kill off who we don’t like, to exact personal revenge, to find personal closures on a range of issues that plague our personal realities. But writing these plots into existence doesn’t change reality. Writers (and TV addicts) should know better.
Many acclaimed writer’s become sickly and frail, even as their power and influence expands, because they focus so relentlessly on the frailties of an ailing environment, and soon enough, are enveloped by this fixation. I intend to be a writer who lives a life worth writing about, and perhaps I may make some noteworthy observations (getting sidetracked in other words) whilst traveling through the undiscovered countryside associated with day to day life.
As writers we do have to ask ourselves this, as I am sure Capote did: do we reserve all our sensitivity for writing, and none for ourselves, none for our friends and family? Do we sacrifice life for art, or art for life? What ought we to be obsessive about, if we are a chronically compulsive-obsessive set of individuals? And what do we do when God answers our prayers?
by Nick van der Leek
Some years ago an aunt suggested I read Truman Capote, but I found him vulgar, and full of intellectual self indulgence. I supposed even then that I might need a second opinion at some stage, and so I was glad to have the opportunity of watching an easily digestible (and Oscar winning) performance about an episode in the author’s life.
If you’re not a writer, or an intellectual arty type (and I’m not sure if I am the latter), give this movie a miss. I only counted 5 people besides me in the cinema, and two of them walked out after 10 minutes. My girlfriend, after seeing the not very exciting poster, refused to watch even 1 minute of it.
I found it absorbing. There’s an amusing scene in a train that captures the overall tone quite well: Capote is caught out having bribed the conductor to pay him a compliment (about his writing) in front of a fellow writer. Not far into the film, I realized my first assessment while not entirely incorrect, was also incomplete. Capote’s writing is brilliant, in the same way that his capacity to remember written passages and conversations (at 94% accuracy) is brilliant.
But that doesn’t mean the man has no flaws. Or that he was a credit to society. He probably was as a writer. But was he a good person? It’s a credit to the film that it portrays him as both brilliant, and flawed.
The film covers the 4 year period Capote spent doing research for what was to become a new genre: the non fiction novel. He befriends, in the name of research, two men guilty of the quadruple homicide in a small town in Kansas. What makes our blood run cold is how Capote gives in to a decadent lifestyle filled with mendacious manipulation. What are his motives other than to gain fame? Elements of Capote reminded me of the movie Monster. In real life, Aileen Wurmos was framed in order to sell the book rights on her story, and of course, if she received the death sentence, it would make a more compelling non fiction ending. So too with the book Capote was to eventually write: In Cold Blood.
Interestingly, Capote’s research led to the killer’s death sentences being postponed time and again (Capote himself hired an advocate to protect the killer’s rights), until the author could extract an ending – how the murders actually happened. Once this information is extorted, is there any reason to allow the killers to stay alive (and on death row?) Here the writer of fact becomes involved in the actual sequence of events, and then has a hand in how the events ultimately play out.
Capote attends the execution, and is so upset and haunted by what he witnesses he is unable to finish another book again. In Cold Blood becomes his last, best work, makes him America’s best writer, but the emotional dénouement costs him dearly. He is driven to alcoholism, which eventually kills him.
As a youngish writer, I found Capote (the movie) compelling. There are several good performances. This movie should also be seen as a cautionary tale to many aspiring writers out there. Why? The act of playing God is best left to God. Writers ought to represent the facts, or the fiction, without distorting either themselves or the picture they’re presenting. It’s hard to do that, to write deeply and sensitively, to be absorbed and analytical, and have the strength to resurface, to emerge to play in the health giving rays of the sun, and find the time and focus to live a balanced and happy life devoid of critical and calculating nuances. It’s tempting, in the written world, to kill off who we don’t like, to exact personal revenge, to find personal closures on a range of issues that plague our personal realities. But writing these plots into existence doesn’t change reality. Writers (and TV addicts) should know better.
Many acclaimed writer’s become sickly and frail, even as their power and influence expands, because they focus so relentlessly on the frailties of an ailing environment, and soon enough, are enveloped by this fixation. I intend to be a writer who lives a life worth writing about, and perhaps I may make some noteworthy observations (getting sidetracked in other words) whilst traveling through the undiscovered countryside associated with day to day life.
As writers we do have to ask ourselves this, as I am sure Capote did: do we reserve all our sensitivity for writing, and none for ourselves, none for our friends and family? Do we sacrifice life for art, or art for life? What ought we to be obsessive about, if we are a chronically compulsive-obsessive set of individuals? And what do we do when God answers our prayers?
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Weekend
Barendine kicking butt at the recent Kermesse
This weekend is Yolande Marais birthday (Saturday), the Comrades Marathon (tomorrow), and there are two sports events - a 10km run around Paul Kruger and a 80km cycle race starting at Bain's Game Lodge. It's also Father's Day on Sunday, and if it seems like there just isn't time to fit in any fun, well tomorrow is Youth Day, making it a long weekend.
I will have to catch up with all my marking, because on Monday my Grade 10's write Economics. I need to at least get to Camp 4 by this weekend, or I'll never get to the top of this mountain of marking.
This week, since exams started, I've had a bit more time to write, so have sent quite a few stories to reporter.co.za. Twice this week two stories made the front (cover page) of the website (including today). See for yourself at www.reporter.co.za
Meanwhile last night we had a nice dinner, with very animated conversations that were launched as a result of mentioning the Da Vinci Code and ended up discussing Dark Matter, Alpha Centauri etc. Nice dinner with my father, brother, Ruth, Joy and Fransa. Came home at about 11 and did some marking...almost falling asleep on some papers!
Need to run today to shake off the extra bit of wobble I've accumulated around my gut.
Urgent/Important News:
U.S. Stocks Stumble, Ending the Worst Week Since April 2005
June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Inflation concerns sent U.S. stocks lower, ending the market's worst week since April 2005, after May import prices rose twice as much as economists forecast.
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=
10000006&sid=a_H69y8PyWMI&refer=home
Hong Kong govt says 'very concerned' about Shenzhen bird flu case
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/afx/2006/06/
14/afx2813584.html
World oil reserves grow, but only just: BP
The rate at which oil reserves are growing has slowed in recent years. Reserves grew by only 0.55 percent in 2005, compared to an average 3 percent per year in 1985-1995.
Oil men say it is becoming tougher to find new big fields, and to raise production, while demand keeps on rising.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/provider
article.asp?feed=OBR&Date=20060614&ID=5796909
1964: LE Goddard
While a few hundred students were writing their Afrikaans and English exams in Brebner High School’s Bell Hall, I walked between them, my eyes drifting to the light coming through the doors and windows. Invigilating for 2 hours is boring work, and soon my attention began to drift to the framed photos, trophy cabinets, and the wooden plaques on the walls.
I’d wandered up and down, between the rows of concentrating learners, for some time when my eyes were caught by these gold letters:
LE Goddard. And the date, 1964.
This was on a board titled:
Senior Prefects
LE is for Leonie Elizabeth, and in those initials the prediction of her marital surname, van der LEek. I also saw a Wayne van der Leek, at 1987, but as far as I know, he is no relation of ours.
I felt the bitter irony welling up in me that none of us, neither my brother or me, or my sister were even as much as a prefect (nor was my father for that matter), and yet, LE Goddard is lying in a cemetery on the outskirts of Bloemfontein today. My mother. She who had the affection and admiration of her peers, the love of her community. She, who was a strong athlete and a beautiful young girl, both inside and out. She’s dead, and here we are, hers son and daughter, her husband, still living.
Standing there, in the quietude, with the downcast faces scribbling around me, I suddenly caught a glimpse of the sparkling girl, with her shining eyes and dark bouncing ponytail.
It saddened me, once again, that her life, that seemed to start off so well, ended with such tragedy. Mine in contrast, got stuck early on, in a hellish high school existence, a quagmire of confusion and despair. And here I am, with things so different…
What would my mother think, or say, if she came to fetch me from my work today. If she stood beside me in the hall? I don’t know, and I’ll never know.
I walked in the hall for some time, with her name, in gold, floating above me. I probably owe my having the job that I have, to her, since I noted at the top of my CV, My mother, Leonie Goddard, was Headgirl at Brebner High School. The principal mentioned this when I was introduced to the staff. It occurred to me then that they might ask, “Well, where is she now? How is she? What is she doing?”
All I can say is that I can’t make up for someone else’s unhappiness. No one can. But we can be responsible for our own happiness.
We can learn the lessons of life. If the chapters after the introduction were filled with disappointment and wretchedness, as mine were, at least we have experienced it. At least we have seen what happens to us when we are unhappy. That is how we begin to find and to chose a new set of circumstances. The heart is a muscle, and what doesn’t kill us, can make us stronger, especially when we can stand to listen to the silent truth where it meets us in the emptiness of the hall.
I have learned some lessons, but they have come at a price. At least I have learned, and am still learning my own lessons. What better place to learn a few lessons than at school? I’ve learned the value of loyalty, of family – the pain of brokenness, the waste of yearning for the past, waiting for circumstances to change, making comparisons. There’s no comparison – there’s just you, and your life. Do something with it. What talents do you have? What can you do? Where is your passion? What do you want? No go and do something with all of it. Go now.
I’ve learned how to make things happen with my life. I’ve learned that the only place where we can do anything, or change anything, is now. I’ve learned the best person to change, and the best place to start, is me. And as long as we are alive, there are opportunities for fresh starts. Even in difficulty, lies opportunity.
So then, all I can do with my life is to grow away from the shadow of the past, towards the sun. All I can do, for those around me, is leave behind the shadow. Let it go. I can shine my life at the world, and hope the light that shines back, shines me towards a life worth living.
I’d wandered up and down, between the rows of concentrating learners, for some time when my eyes were caught by these gold letters:
LE Goddard. And the date, 1964.
This was on a board titled:
Senior Prefects
LE is for Leonie Elizabeth, and in those initials the prediction of her marital surname, van der LEek. I also saw a Wayne van der Leek, at 1987, but as far as I know, he is no relation of ours.
I felt the bitter irony welling up in me that none of us, neither my brother or me, or my sister were even as much as a prefect (nor was my father for that matter), and yet, LE Goddard is lying in a cemetery on the outskirts of Bloemfontein today. My mother. She who had the affection and admiration of her peers, the love of her community. She, who was a strong athlete and a beautiful young girl, both inside and out. She’s dead, and here we are, hers son and daughter, her husband, still living.
Standing there, in the quietude, with the downcast faces scribbling around me, I suddenly caught a glimpse of the sparkling girl, with her shining eyes and dark bouncing ponytail.
It saddened me, once again, that her life, that seemed to start off so well, ended with such tragedy. Mine in contrast, got stuck early on, in a hellish high school existence, a quagmire of confusion and despair. And here I am, with things so different…
What would my mother think, or say, if she came to fetch me from my work today. If she stood beside me in the hall? I don’t know, and I’ll never know.
I walked in the hall for some time, with her name, in gold, floating above me. I probably owe my having the job that I have, to her, since I noted at the top of my CV, My mother, Leonie Goddard, was Headgirl at Brebner High School. The principal mentioned this when I was introduced to the staff. It occurred to me then that they might ask, “Well, where is she now? How is she? What is she doing?”
All I can say is that I can’t make up for someone else’s unhappiness. No one can. But we can be responsible for our own happiness.
We can learn the lessons of life. If the chapters after the introduction were filled with disappointment and wretchedness, as mine were, at least we have experienced it. At least we have seen what happens to us when we are unhappy. That is how we begin to find and to chose a new set of circumstances. The heart is a muscle, and what doesn’t kill us, can make us stronger, especially when we can stand to listen to the silent truth where it meets us in the emptiness of the hall.
I have learned some lessons, but they have come at a price. At least I have learned, and am still learning my own lessons. What better place to learn a few lessons than at school? I’ve learned the value of loyalty, of family – the pain of brokenness, the waste of yearning for the past, waiting for circumstances to change, making comparisons. There’s no comparison – there’s just you, and your life. Do something with it. What talents do you have? What can you do? Where is your passion? What do you want? No go and do something with all of it. Go now.
I’ve learned how to make things happen with my life. I’ve learned that the only place where we can do anything, or change anything, is now. I’ve learned the best person to change, and the best place to start, is me. And as long as we are alive, there are opportunities for fresh starts. Even in difficulty, lies opportunity.
So then, all I can do with my life is to grow away from the shadow of the past, towards the sun. All I can do, for those around me, is leave behind the shadow. Let it go. I can shine my life at the world, and hope the light that shines back, shines me towards a life worth living.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Orient in delicate brushstrokes
Narrator (Old Sayuri): The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves. Until one day there are none.
Despite this grim voiceover, the film is essentially a picturesque and beautiful, if overly long love story.
Having lived in Asia for 4 years, and having visited Osaka more than once, I was very interested to see Geisha. It is a beautiful movie, and I was not disappointed. You can see from the very first scene that you’re in for a quality treat, full of deft touches.
Any movie that starts with a scene of the sea, its deeply brooding waves rising moodily towards a dark beach has got to work. The Asian actress who plays the young wannabe Geisha Suzuka Ohgo, does an excellent job. She’s a pretty young thing, and she captures one’s heart right off the bat. Of course, from the moment you see her, you can’t wait to see her in full geisha bloom, and Ziyi Zhang (the Chinese actress from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) does not disappoint. She becomes a Geisha but only under the expert tutelage of her (Crouching Tiger rival resurrected) mentor, Michelle Yoeh.
So what is a Geisha?
Mameha: [in voiceover] Remember, Chiyo, geisha are not courtesans. And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art.
Interestingly, Japan is unrecognizable in this film. My girlfriend asked me if I missed the Orient, and I have to say, I hardly saw anything that reminded me of the current day Japan. This is because the ugly Japan – the overcrowding, the pollution, the dingy cement skyscrapers and busy neon chaos are gone, and in their place is traditional Japan. It’s temples, forests, pristine rivers and beautiful cliffs and beaches. Instead of glass and plastic we see plenty of woody, traditional structures, Japanese lamps and some of the original and, if I may say, lovely architecture. This film is full of picturesque sweeps, such as the memorable shot of the young Geisha to be running along a passageway made entirely of red wooden poles.
Unfortunately, Japan is even less recognizable because the filmmaker chose to tell a Japanese story using established Chinese actors. Although I personally enjoy Yeoh and Zhang, I can’t help, even as a foreigner, seeing it as a slap in the face of Japanese culture. Why? Because the Japanese and Chinese aren’t interchangeable, neither is their culture or history. It’s as credible, realistic and digestible as American black actors taking South African roles. Maybe international audiences get a basic idea, but a basic idea is a humble offering. When making movies, being genuine and reaching for the stars ought to be a director’s minimum mission.
At times the sweeps are perfect, and the whole film seems to be a a work of perfection. It comes close, but it isn’t. The actresses are beautiful and do a good job, but are often unintelligible. Ziyi was at the Academy ASwards, and presented in English, and struggled. Being pretty and delightful is not an excuse for being unable to speak properly. It’s too bad Ziyi didn’t sign up for just another semester of English pronunciation classes. Soon though, I’m sure her English will be as good as Yeoh’s, and then we might be able to look forward to a lot more Ziyi.
Mameha: [Explaining sex to Sayuri] Every once in a while, a man's "eel" likes to visit a woman's..."cave."
This is one of those films that you either like or dislike a lot. It’s tastefully done, and filmed with intelligence and sensitivity. It’s not erotic, but then, if you know the Asians, they are more conservative than we are. Geisha means ‘artist’, and this film aims to be a work of art. It is, but it’s an artwork that’s at least 30 minutes too long. That said, I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more films of the Orient, and if this film is anything to go by, we have a lot of untapped exotic beauty to look forward to, both from the Orient, and out of Africa. My girlfriend and I both enjoyed it, because above all, it’s a human story. The Asians know how to suffer, but they also know how to hold onto something, like love, and hope.
Narrator (Old Sayuri): You cannot say to the sun, "More sun." Or to the rain, "Less rain." To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.
Quotes from www.imdb.com
Narrator (Old Sayuri): The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves. Until one day there are none.
Despite this grim voiceover, the film is essentially a picturesque and beautiful, if overly long love story.
Having lived in Asia for 4 years, and having visited Osaka more than once, I was very interested to see Geisha. It is a beautiful movie, and I was not disappointed. You can see from the very first scene that you’re in for a quality treat, full of deft touches.
Any movie that starts with a scene of the sea, its deeply brooding waves rising moodily towards a dark beach has got to work. The Asian actress who plays the young wannabe Geisha Suzuka Ohgo, does an excellent job. She’s a pretty young thing, and she captures one’s heart right off the bat. Of course, from the moment you see her, you can’t wait to see her in full geisha bloom, and Ziyi Zhang (the Chinese actress from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) does not disappoint. She becomes a Geisha but only under the expert tutelage of her (Crouching Tiger rival resurrected) mentor, Michelle Yoeh.
So what is a Geisha?
Mameha: [in voiceover] Remember, Chiyo, geisha are not courtesans. And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art.
Interestingly, Japan is unrecognizable in this film. My girlfriend asked me if I missed the Orient, and I have to say, I hardly saw anything that reminded me of the current day Japan. This is because the ugly Japan – the overcrowding, the pollution, the dingy cement skyscrapers and busy neon chaos are gone, and in their place is traditional Japan. It’s temples, forests, pristine rivers and beautiful cliffs and beaches. Instead of glass and plastic we see plenty of woody, traditional structures, Japanese lamps and some of the original and, if I may say, lovely architecture. This film is full of picturesque sweeps, such as the memorable shot of the young Geisha to be running along a passageway made entirely of red wooden poles.
Unfortunately, Japan is even less recognizable because the filmmaker chose to tell a Japanese story using established Chinese actors. Although I personally enjoy Yeoh and Zhang, I can’t help, even as a foreigner, seeing it as a slap in the face of Japanese culture. Why? Because the Japanese and Chinese aren’t interchangeable, neither is their culture or history. It’s as credible, realistic and digestible as American black actors taking South African roles. Maybe international audiences get a basic idea, but a basic idea is a humble offering. When making movies, being genuine and reaching for the stars ought to be a director’s minimum mission.
At times the sweeps are perfect, and the whole film seems to be a a work of perfection. It comes close, but it isn’t. The actresses are beautiful and do a good job, but are often unintelligible. Ziyi was at the Academy ASwards, and presented in English, and struggled. Being pretty and delightful is not an excuse for being unable to speak properly. It’s too bad Ziyi didn’t sign up for just another semester of English pronunciation classes. Soon though, I’m sure her English will be as good as Yeoh’s, and then we might be able to look forward to a lot more Ziyi.
Mameha: [Explaining sex to Sayuri] Every once in a while, a man's "eel" likes to visit a woman's..."cave."
This is one of those films that you either like or dislike a lot. It’s tastefully done, and filmed with intelligence and sensitivity. It’s not erotic, but then, if you know the Asians, they are more conservative than we are. Geisha means ‘artist’, and this film aims to be a work of art. It is, but it’s an artwork that’s at least 30 minutes too long. That said, I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more films of the Orient, and if this film is anything to go by, we have a lot of untapped exotic beauty to look forward to, both from the Orient, and out of Africa. My girlfriend and I both enjoyed it, because above all, it’s a human story. The Asians know how to suffer, but they also know how to hold onto something, like love, and hope.
Narrator (Old Sayuri): You cannot say to the sun, "More sun." Or to the rain, "Less rain." To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew, would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind.
Quotes from www.imdb.com
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