Durban Robots

Two years after I first mentioned it, I found that the people in charge of Durban's traffic lights still haven't figured out that they need to change the lightbulbs regularly. Idiots.

Three years of blogging

The three year anniversary of the first entry on this blog just passed. How time flies.

Life insurance crooks

I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with someone who wanted to sell me a life insurance policy this week, who works for a huge "respectable" insurance company (which lately seems to be developing a reputation for ripping people off).

The high pressure tactics he used were quite remarkable (even resorting to emotional blackmail at times); although I didn't fall victim to his tactics, the experience left me very angry. A lot of innocent, less-savvy people are being ripped off.

Although most of the other people I've dealt wth in the financial services industry were relatively decent, people like him give the whole industry a bad name.

The sooner the (literally) blood-sucking bastards are brought under control, the better for all concerned.

Holy war hotting up?

The pope-Islam hostilities appear to be heating up again, ahead of his visit to Turkey.

The Time article contains the following rather interesting fact:

In late October, Benedict received a different kind of validation in an open "Your Holiness" letter from 38 of the best-known names in Islamic theology. The missive politely eviscerated his Regensburg speech but went on to "applaud" the Pope's "efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life" and expressed a desire for "frank and sincere dialogue."

The article refers, of course, to the speech the pope gave a few months ago, that got (small) parts of the Muslim world foaming at the mouth, which was praised by many of those who read it.

Now, in case you missed it, the letter from the Muslim heavyweights to the pope can be found here (by the way, Muslims need to improve their PR operations - it was fairly difficult to find this).

Unfortunately for the pope, it appears that his controversial speech contained some glaring errors, and wasn't as well thought-out as many of us first assumed. If he wants to confront Islam and impress Muslims as much as he impresses the chattering classes in the West, the holy father needs to up his game a little.

Borat movie: disappointing

I had high expectations for the Borat movie, but instead of rolling in the aisles with the rest of the people in the cinema, I was disappointed.

The movie is basically a collection of the usual Borat humour, as found on the TV show, unfortunately made so over-the-top and dumbed-down that it becomes embarrassing.

An example, I have seen a few funny clips where Borat meets with high society types for dinner, and there is also such a scene in the movie. However, in the movie he goes absolutely over the top, and after visiting the toilet he actually brings a turd back to the dinner table. Instead of talking about a prostitute as he did in the TV series, he brings one to dinner. Instead of exposing the latent prejudices of his hosts he just acts like a jackass, and when he gets kicked out, it's less funny than inevitable.

The scripted scenes could have been written by a cruder version of Leon Schuster, and were tedious as hell.

A few laughs don't make this movie worthy of the hype it has generated.

From the archives

I sometimes hear people claiming that "African culture" leads to people blindly supporting their leaders, regardless of their actions. Of course, this is not an exclusively African trait at all. At times, all countries, even the most advanced, get caught up in fits of leader worship.

I remember reading the neocon National Review Online's Corner blog coverage when Bush did his now infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo-op on an aircraft carrier back in 2003.

Here, for your enjoyment is a link to the fawning coverage from that day, three years ago (scroll down to May 1 and work your way up).

Looking at the references to bush as a "stud", and the praise for the now-embarrassing photo-op, one cannot help but cringe at the bullshit put out by this bloodthirsty outfit.

Hyperlinking bans

Looked at the "terms and conditions" section on a South African corporate website recently?

I noticed that at least two of the big four banks, a large listed IT company, and another top listed holding company have notices that require written permission for incoming hyperlinks to those sites. (I'd link to them, but, if their websites are to be believed, I could get sued).

I seriously doubt that search engines like Google ask for permission before indexing and linking to pages on those sites.

The draconian (and absurd) warnings on these websites, that prohibit even linking to their home pages without written permission, are a sign that a lot of South African companies remain absolutely clueless about the nature of the web.

[Take 2...Blogger wiped the first version of this post]

Hope

Once there was a busy road, full of vehicles. Although the road was wide, traffic moved very slowly along the road.

On this road there was a red taxi. The taxi was brave, and worked hard to end the traffic jam, along with some other taxis.

Eventually the traffic jam unblocked, and the traffic started flowing freely. The taxi was rewarded by being given its own lane, along with other taxis who had helped end the traffic jam.

But some of the red taxi's friends realized that, as an older model, the taxi, along with its friends would end up jamming up the traffic again because they didn't understand the reality of driving in modern traffic. They conspired to get the old vehicle off the road, using the taxi's own naivete against it.

Humiliated and broken, it looked like the taxi was destined for the scrapyard. But, suddenly, to everyone's surprise the taxi was released back onto the highway.

Now, for some time before the taxi's return to the road, there were rumours that it had a slow puncture. These rumours had started when it emerged that the taxi had driven over an area with sharp nails without a care in the world (at a time that vehicles driving over nails without caring was a major problem on the road). Did the taxi, they speculated, already have a slow puncture? ¹

Panic ensued, as the sleek new cars on the freeway thought they would, once again, be caught in a traffic jam. The taxi trundled along in the emergency lane, building up speed, when suddenly, a tyre exploded and it rolled off the road into a ditch, never to return to the road.

Did you know?

A number of American universities (including MIT) require students to pass a swimming test before they are allowed to graduate.

Here we go again

The pope quoted some offensive statements about Islam, and Muslims may yet react in a similar way that they reacted to the Danish cartoon crisis.

If they do react in the same way, it will be a confirmation of the pitiful state of the Muslim world, which, it seems, cannot learn from its mistakes.

This is the kind of controversy that made me support this pope. Good old fire and brimstone - if I was a Muslim, and really confident in my religion, I'd say "bring it on". Enough of the wishy-washy kumbaya bullshit - it's refreshing to have someone speak their mind. I'd personally rather have a dozen enemies that I knew about, than one that I didn't.

Muslims: the pope is your spiritual enemy. Get over it.

Updates:

• Abu Aardvark thinks that the sort of rhetoric employed by the pope strengthens Al-Qaeda's hand..
• An in-depth look at the pope and church from earlier this year.
• No huge riots yet, and now that the pope has clarified his statements, I wait for the usual suspects to start bleating about how his "capitulation" is a symbol of "dhimmitude" in "Eurabia".