Kanthan's blog

6 March 2022 — 1.     South Africa has been in import mode for fuel in the recent past. What that means is that instead of importing crude oil and refining it locally into petrol, diesel etc, we are now directly importing those fuel types separately. The tilt to imports was caused by the loss...

4 March 2022 — This evening’s train of thought, triggered by recent events in that part of the world with hot women, ugly men, and nukes, naturally ended with a bottle of vodka. Let me explain. In 1472, Ivan III, Grand Duke of Muscovy, completed the expansion of what was once a medieval...

2 March 2022 — The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution today demanding Russia immediately end its military operations in Ukraine. The resolution won overwhelming support from 141 of the 193-member body. It demands Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its...

28 February 2022 — When I moved from the United States to Italy in 1992 to start work as a senior research scientist at the Centre for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia , I thought I was getting an excellent deal. My new salary was a substantial improvement over what I...

26 February 2022 — I visited South Korea little over a decade ago to visit Samsung’s headquarters near Suwon. Serendipity struck in that an old friend and former colleague from Durban circa 1995, who had moved to Hong Kong, happened to be in the capital Seoul at the time. So I took the 94...

24 February 2022 — I got gently berated by a reader today: “Kanthan I love your tweets but please cut out this terrible y'all term. It grates.” I sympathise; it can trigger a stereotype (accurate in this case) of the American South, as noted here: Whenever someone wants to make fun of a...

22 February 2022 — As a species, we’re programmed to take sides; even when we have no skin in the game. I know lots of people who will see a sporting event on TV involving people or teams they know nothing about and will immediately start rooting for one side. If we understand how that works...

20 February 2022 — Yesterday was World Pangolin Day and here’s what’s going down with our neighbor, Namibia. Namibia has recorded 320 cases of crimes involving pangolins since 2017 Authorities had confiscated 1 505 pangolin products, including 15 carcasses; 81 live animals, 193 skins;...

18 February 2022 — I’m sitting in a hotel room in Harare, Zimbabwe, and engaging in a bit of a gedankenexperiment. Here’s the scenario: 1. Almost 10% of Zimbabwe’s official GDP comes from expat remittances; most of this from South Africa in rands. 2. In spite of this, the Zimbabwe economy...

16 February 2022 — Here's a stat that Unicef trots out almost every year: Every two minutes, a child under five dies of malaria. In 2019, there were 229 million malaria cases globally that led to 409 000 deaths. Of these deaths, 67% (274 000) were children under 5 years of age. This...

14 February 2022 — So here I am, after a fabulous dinner, trying to make coherent sense around the nature of the world (which, truth be told, is no different from most days). And the core idea today is what if things don't go the way you expect them to? Hence the opening question which was...

12 February 2022 — An acquaintance of mine has become the southern African partner for nice piece of European technology in the off-grid energy space. He asked me whether I would be willing to spread the word to potential customers, and I responded: "Sure. What's the entry-level price per...

10 February 2022 — Duck l'Orange is a favoured dish at Chez Pillay which is generally reserved for those rare occasions when Dr B and I have the house to ourselves. So, there's usually a pack or two of duck breasts in our freezer. One such rare occasion manifested itself last weekend, and so...

8 February 2022 — Yale Kamisar passed away 30 January 2022 aged 92. He was an American legal scholar and writer and Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Most of us have not heard of him, but his impact on the legal world was ground-breaking. He is known in legal...