David Bullard shaking hands with Jacob Zuma...the kid pictured above (my cousin's son Evan) is a 5th grader. Evan now possesses the level of education Jacob Zuma has (at a minimum, if not more). So a more realistic picture should have Bullard (who is about 50-something), shaking hands with Evan.
South Africa needs every genius it can muster, so it is awesome that Professor Hawking (possibly the world's smartest person) is coming to Cape Town soon to give a conference. While Hawking's book has been a bestseller for an unprecented 237 weeks in the UK, it's also described as the most unread book in the world, maybe like the Bible is. Everyone has it, they just don't bother to read it.
The All Share is up, with Brent Crude at $122.51. It's amazing how the markets work. If the oil price goes up, the heavy weight resources go up. If it goes down, everything else goes up. Either way, the indexes go up. It's a totally delusional system which is due to crash heavily against The Desert of the Real. Even now the Crude Oil price is still not making front page headlines.
A recent study suggests the world population will grow another 1 billion in the next 10 years. I don't know about you, but isn't it already pretty obvious that the world over we're struggling to feed ourselves? That we're finding the costs to actually live (drive ourselves around) are going up, making it inaffordable to most just to live where they do. It's more likely, in my opinion, that we will see 1 billion shed - through disease and the beginning of food fights and resource wars.
And the Olympic torch has been planted on the world's highest mountain. Quite cold up there, but the Chinese seemed to have gotten a small crowd up there to stand around the torch, not knowing what to say, while the mists around them basically shroud the view of rest of the world from the summit of Everest. Who knows, maybe it's all a hoax and they filmed the actual thing in a studio in Los Angeles.
The arms shipment destined for Zimbabwe is now heading towards the Congo. Something tells me Bob paid a fortune to whomever he paid, because they are making damn sure he gets what he paid for. I don't buy that they offloaded cement in Luanda.
Wimax is also making news. What is Wimax?
WiMAX will become the dominating wireless broadband access standard in the next few years.
Advantages of WiMAX:
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Long range - WiMAX's communication range of up to 48 kilometers is significant compared to existing technologies. It can cover over 4500 square kilometers.
Wireless - No need to lay down expensive cables.
High bandwidth - Shared data rates of up to 70 Mb/s.
Low cost - Base stations not very expensive.
Despite what Justice says about South Africa, those who can leave are preparing to. If you are just a little bit intelligent, it is easy to see how attitudes in Zimbabwe (and our leaders attitude to Zimbabwe) are also alive and well here, and they will flush our country down the toilet. Something is seriously wrong when 1000 people a day die of AIDS and yet you wouldn't know this from the way the press and the president mushy mushy around this issue. It should be a daily obsession in this country. There should be a culture of abstinence, and modesty. 5 million are infected now, it could be as much as 7. That is 10-20% of this countries entire population that will very certainly die prematurely.
Meanwhile South Africa's response to rising food prices is that they want to strike. Therehas already been talk of price caps. If you want shortages (as we have seen in Zim), start messing around with prices. If you are young and want to have investments, if you want to invest in a future, the sooner you leave the better. South Africa with all its wealth was always going to be a difficult ship to sink, but this is Africa, and Africa seems to find a way to sink all the ships that come here. It's the leaders that are tempted by the big bucks, and always at the expense of their own electorates.
Remember that famous letter by Allan Knott Craig espousing the virtues of being positive? At the time I found it laughable, just because it purposely ignores reality in the name of being positive and opportunistic. Right now we are seeing the results of this 'let's only focus on the good' manifesting around us. We can focus on the good and see the All Share continue to rise, as it does, meaninwhile, food prices, fuel, everything else climbs to unaffordable levels. When do you start to notice the bad news that you're habitually blocking out? I urged [at the time this letter surfaced] that we also think critically, saying we need to be aware of 'what's not working', and fixing that. It's not just doing that in the present, but in an anticipatory style, which Eskom needed to implement, and which Energy Ministers around the world needed to be applying.
I remember when Trevor Manuel gave a speech and we asked him, "How do you feel about the prospect of $100 oil," [this was in 2006]. He said something about only focussing on what they could influence. It made me wonder if anyone in the country is responsible, is tasked with doing anything about planning or finding alternatives to high fuel prices. Who owns the issue? The answer is that everyone thinks everyone else is doing something about it. The answer is that we can do something about it, in terms of individual consumption. That is a response to a problem that may not be under our control, and the discipline involved means controlling our behaviour, not controlling the oil price.
My own news is I managed to get in a lot of sleep today, a few hours worth. Can't say I feel any better than yesterday, but this physical malaise has got to turn some time. I have been reading a fair amount too. Meanwhile, plenty of new thought are surfacing along the leading edge of a saw that is sharpening its teeth.
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