Celebrating 70 years of the Space Age
The Space Age became a reality 70 years ago today with the founding of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Here are ten things you need to know:
musings
Donald Trump is ’misinformed‘
Cyril Ramaphosa meets with Donald Trump this week. As far as I can gather, the key message my country's president wants to put across is that the US leader is 'misinformed' about South Africa.
It's what the mainstream media do with narrative building. Even the New York Times has climbed onto the bandwagon of Ramaphosa's praise singers:
Rita…
Rita was one of a handful of people in my life whom I loved deeply, completely, effortlessly. Perhaps what she meant to me is best expressed in her own words which she wrote in 2003, which I now share here:
23 January 2003
To: The Nieman Selection Committee
This letter is in reference to Kanthan Pillay, Executive Producer at etv, South Africa’s first independent free-to-air television channel where he also serves as deputy editor-in-chief of news, and runs the channel’s journalism learnership program. Kanthan has applied for a Nieman Fellowship.
A hug dislodges a wedge
"The Chinese dislike being touched by strangers. Do not touch, hug, lock arms, back slap or make any body contact.”
’No flags were harmed in the making of this ad‘
Let's move on. We have a country to fix.
Remembering Dr Aadil Moerat
...on the evening of 21 January 1998 at around 6 pm, three armed men walked into the packed waiting room of Dr Aadil Moerat’s surgery in the township of Gugulethu, Cape Town. Minutes later, Dr Moerat was dead.
How can 190 000 Russians win against 700 000 Ukrainians?
Established military wisdom has it that an invading army needs to outnumber defenders by a 3:1 ratio.
Happy birthday President Mbeki. Now get your A into G…
I have said it before and I will say it again – Thabo Mbeki was the best president in the world at the time of his sacking.
Be careful what you wish for
One of the questions we should always ask ourselves is "what if we get what we want?"
Let me give you some examples.
Many people wanted Donald Trump impeached as US president.
What about whataboutism though?
There are a number of ways we shut down conversations as human beings. In recent years, we created a term for one of those. We call it whatboutism or whataboutery...
