The first colonist

I found this in a comment on IOL, apparently it appeared somewhere on Facebook originally.

After president Jacob Zuma’s downright idiotic statement two weeks ago that all the problems in South Africa started with the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652,

I have been noticing quite a number of Jan van Riebeeck profile pictures, cartoons and T-shirts going about. As could be expected – I would personally consider doing anything civilised to annoy Jacob Zuma as well.

But I think one should have one last word about this and then we can focus on the future again, instead of doing the ANC thing of dwelling in the past for ever. They have started with blaming apartheid for everything until they realised that some of us actually remember the years of apartheid and might not be as foolish as the majority of KFC-eating, my-vote-for-a-free-yellow-tee-shirt, snorting and dumping rubbish in the streets-voters are. So now he tried to blame a section of history which nobody can remember first hand. Stuuuuupid! Europeans actually had the skill to write and record journals, and if the president bothered to read one or two from time to time, he might not make such a fool of himself. But I understand he said once that he is not one for reading much. That is very obvious, I fear.

The president passed standard 3 at school, I understand. Which explains his lack of knowledge, because the old standard 5 history text book was the one which taught us that Jan van Riebeeck was sent to the Cape Continue reading

Global warming getting out of hand again

So New York City was expecting the worst storm ever with up to 1 metre of snow, except it didn’t quite turn out as bad as that. In spite of the no-show, people still took precautions and stripped supermarket shelves of essentials like water, bread, milk, eggs, etc.

What’s curious about the storm is that it comes soon after the Japanese released a report showing that 2014 was the hottest year on record. Which bolstered claims of global warming. Here’s one report with pretty graphs and even a video.

But of course there are other sides to the coin. For example, here’s a chart of the major snowfalls in the New York area since 1888, when records began:

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Are you getting your Six a Day?

So once again the beautiful city of Cape Town gets dragged through the mud, this time by being ranked the 14th most violent city in the world, and most violent in South Africa by quite a margin.

The numbers come from an organization in Mexico which produces a list annually, of the world’s cities with more than 300 000 inhabitants. They use official numbers where available, an unofficial numbers when all else fails, which has led to some of the cities on the list criticizing them for that methodology.

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USD200 for a barrel of oil… coming soon?

According to the Italian oil group Eni, we may see oil at USD 200 a barrel in 4 or 5 years time. The reason, according to them, is because OPEC is refusing to cut production now, while oil prices are off their historical highs of over USD 100, and far from their close-to USD 150 of a few years back.

OPEC for their part say that even if they cut production, other producers will simply move in to supply the slack, and OPEC will lose market share, which they are loathe to do.

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Taking the biscuit

When is a bribe not a bribe?

When it is a ‘gift’… unless you want to call a spade a spade, in which case it is the same thing.

Here’s a notice posted on the Department of Home Affairs web site:

Say NO to gifts and payments

Say NO

Which brings us to the story of Home Affairs data capturer Ms Mathato Mokhele, who was fired in 2007 for accepting a packet of Marie biscuits as a ‘gift,’ and has since being pursuing legal avenues in an attempt to have her dismissal overturned… and been soundly rebuffed at every step of the way.

The gory details are here: A bribe is a bribe….

Curiously, although the biscuits are described as a ‘gift’ implying no quid pro quo, she did admit to taking presents from funeral parlours and marriage officers to prioritise their paperwork…

An interesting approach to world peace.

I came across this video which propagates a cool way to bring about world peace… starting with the current generation of children. You’ll need to excuse the occasional bad language but it’s worth watching. He first discusses the recent Charlie Hebdo incident and states a few facts which people in the West tend to forget about ….