Hubble Snaps

.Amazing pictures from the Hubble space telescope in this slide-show. [Link via LRC]

Georgia

The recent removal of Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze (better known perhaps as the last Soviet foreign minister, a fact that has apparently not been forgotten by resentful ex-Soviet heavies) brings the Caucasus back into the news. The Atlantic had a detailed article on Georgia, in 2000.

Daily Links - 19/11/2003

• Via BBC World's "Reporters" programme:
  
  • Turkmenistan - an odd Central Asian country, where "Stalin meets Las Vegas".
  
  
  • China's hidden AIDS epidemic.
  
  


• Other links:
  
  • "Versatile" teachers help spread AIDS in Africa.
  
  
  • Alan Paton remembered.
  
  
  • Speaking of Paton, his writing has become popular again, thanks to Oprah's book club.
  
  
  • Jimmy Carter writes a novel. [via Slate]
  
  
  • Marshall Plan revisionism.[via antiwar.com]
  
  
  • Letters to George Bush on the occasion of his state visit to the UK. [via LRC blog]
  
  
  • Billionaire George Soros decides to finance Bush's opponents.
  
  
  • Brian at Crooked Timber discusses arguments against cloning.
  
  
  • Mickey Mouse turns 75. Also includes an explanation of why he's been keeping a low profile recently.
  
  
  
  Update: George Soros explains his opposition to what he calls "The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration".
  

Man falls out of window during interrogation

A man “fell" out of the window of the Scorpions' offices in Durban a few months ago. The story received some attention in the media. (I was alerted to it by the LRC blog). It seems to have dropped off the media radar since then.

I wonder what the status of the Independent Complaints Directorate investigation is.

How much does spam cost South Africa?

The IT industry and those who report on it are known for their tendency to generate publicity (and business) by resorting to hype and paranoia.

Y2K, overblown virus fears, the dot-com bubble and assorted bits of FUD have made me extremely wary of information put out by the popular press on IT issues.

So you will understand my scepticism when I read claims that email spam costs South African companies between "R 7 billion and R13.1 billion a year". Others report the figure as a nice, round, R10 billion a year.


I remember the figure being discussed on the SABC 3 business program, but I don't recall them explaining how the figure was arrived at. According to another site, someone at the local "Spam Summit" came up with the figure, but it doesn't say how he calculated it.

Spam is a major problem, and it probably does cost a significant amount in lost productivity and wasted computing resources. But, until I can get a solid explanation of how that enormous price tag of around R10 billion for spam was arrived at, I will assume that the figure is just another example of IT hype, swallowed by a gullible media.

South African English pronunciations

While searching for some information, I found a page about South African English.

Apparently:

"One difference between South African English ["as spoken by whites"] and New Zealand English is in the pronunication of 'ar' and 'ow', as in the pronunciation of the sentence 'park the car downtown'.
* New Zealand: pahk the kah dehwn tehwn
* South Africa: pawk the kaw dahwn tahwn"

"Pawk the kaw dahwn tahwn"? I know people who pronounce words like that, but they hardly constitute a majority of [white] English-speakers in South Africa who I know.

Although, I do remember a woman once telling one of my friends, "you have naas arse" (she meant "you have nice eyes"). We found it very funny, though the woman was quite offended when she saw us grinning...

Nadine Gordimer celebrates 80th birthday

Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winner, celebrated her 80th birthday in Johannesburg.

I have only read one of her books. My matric set work was July's People. It was an extremely difficult book to read. From what I remember, it was full of incomprehensible stream-of-consciousness writing. I don't know what my classmates thought of the book, since very few of them managed to read it (the standard technique for studying matric literature was memorizing set-piece essays from study-guides).

If “July's People” is representative of Gordimer's work, then she is highly overrated, and if it is still a prescribed book for matric, then I pity the unfortunate kids who have to hack their way though its dense, and unrewarding prose.

Oh yes, with July's people, there is also the disgusting parts that seem out of place in a school book....

Daily Links

During my web surfing, I encounter many interesting sites and pages, and it's silly to put each one in it's own entry. So I have decided to emulate Anil Dash, who has a page full of daily links (with minimal commentary) in addition to his regular weblog. So here are my daily links:

• The War Nerd on a potential territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine


• An illustrated article on Blockhouses of the Boer War


• More on the Boer War


• I occasionally visit the Gene Expression blog, and I did so today, if only to see what the latest theories circulating among "scientific racists" (other than Steve Sailer, who I read more often) are. I shall blog someday on what got me interested in the potentially distasteful topic of human population genetics - and no, it wasn't a belief in the superiority of any particular race.


• Pedicabs become popular in Las Vegas. Is there hope yet for the rickshaw drivers of Durban?


• Black Hawks down, as the US opts for a quicker handover of power in Iraq. "Saddam" makes a tape.


• Countries with troops in Iraq.


• British cameraman recounts his experience as victim of friendly fire in Northern Iraq.


• South African politicians accuse each other of racism as electioneering begins. (yawn)


• Are the terms “braai” and “barbecue” synonymous? - Not according to this site. It claims that what we call a braai actually involves grilling.


• As someone who is interested in maps, I will probably visit the Maps and Territories blog occasionally [via Crooked Timber].

I'd like to remind readers that my links to particular sites do not necessarily imply that I endorse the views of those sites, or that I agree with the content on those sites.

Getting the mob to support a war

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

- Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946, while awaiting the Nuremberg trials.

[Via LRC blog]


More information about this quote.

Home schooling

As someone who has a rather poor opinion of the public school system (more on that another time), I am interested in alternatives to the educational meat-grinder. So I found this father’s experiences as a substitute homeschool teacher interesting:

"People who have never witnessed a homeschooling scene, but know only about school from large classrooms in public school, have a hard time even imagining what goes on or how it all works. This is so clear whenever you read a mainstream educator denounce homeschooling; their ignorance is palpable, and barely worth responding to. How could they know what I saw before me? The students are internally driven to learn. They sense no limits to learning. Once one topic is mastered, they are free to move on. They feel a powerful sense of personal responsibility. Time is used extraordinarily well, not standing in lines or frittering away hours obeying orders from above…"

" The great merit of homeschooling is precisely that it provides an open-ended environment that permits the flowering of intellect that is as effortless in children as it is difficult in adults. Observing this at work, one is tempted to establish a first rule of education: set no limits (within moral bounds) to learning..."