In defence of anonymous blogging

Mainstream South Africa, and the Sunday Times in particular, have finally found out about the obscure pastime called blogging.

I even saw an advertisement the other day, for mixed veggies or something Stork margarine where a housewife spoke about how her blog helped her express herself.

Blogging is apparently the new hot topic in South Africa, years after the rest of the world got over the novelty.

What will the South African media discover next- Usenet?

In today's paper, Sunday Times columnist David Bullard joins in, and lays into blogging in general, and anonymous blogs in particular.

Much of his criticism is valid. Many blogs (anonymous or not) are cesspits. The amount of hate expressed on some blogs is shocking.

Of course mainstream journalists also screw things up -the Sudan Red hysteria that the Sunday Times whips up every couple of years is a good example. Mainstream journalists can be complicit in lying to the public, abusing their credibility (real or manufactured) to help drive nations to war.

But I'm not posting this to get involved the "MSM versus blogosphere" debate. I never cared much for the endless navel gazing of many bloggers. I am posting this in response to one of Bullard's remarks:

"I'm told that it’s possible to track down the author of any offensive website and perhaps that’s what the government should be doing instead of looking at legislation to gag legitimate publications. Better still, maybe it’s time the print journalists named and shamed some of the more offensive anonymous bloggers and published their physical addresses."

Now anonymous speech is a thorny topic, and while I know that mainstream journalists are threatened by blogging, encouraging the unleashing of the government's censorship pit bulls is a horrible idea (and who decides what constitutes "offensive" or "legitimate" speech anyway).

Instead of launching into a treatise into the value of anonymous free speech, I will quote the US Supreme Court, which sums up my position on this topic quite succinctly:

"...anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority."

Even members of the ruling ANC resort to anonymous speech when it confronts entrenched interests. The idea that anonymous speech is not somehow "legitimate" is appalling.

In any case, while it is technically possible to unmask anonymous websites, anonymous free speech has been a part of the internet from the beginning, and it will always remain so. If Bullard looked at Usenet archives of South Africa related newsgroups, from 10 years ago, or the comments sections on mainstream news websites, he would see that anonymous and offensive postings have always been a feature of online discourse in South Africa.

I have no doubt that the credibility of anonymous sources (including this blog) is lower than those where the names of the authors are known. This is how it should be, and the average person is smart enough to realize that anonymous sources should be treated with caution, and scrutinized more carefully. However, this does not justify a campaign to discourage anonymous free speech.

I hope that the government's attempts to censor the press fail, but if they do not, I am glad that the internet is available to those who wish to express themselves freely and without fear of retribution. Long may it stay that way.

Momentum Multiply: How not to run a loyalty programme

Momentum has two loyalty programmes: Save Thru Spend, available to its clients for free and Multiply, which provides additional benefits, for a monthly fee. Multiply is a status based rewards programme, similar to Discovery's Vitality.

There are two types of savings that Multipy offers: discounts and cash back into investments. It's a brilliant idea, and some of the savings on offer (steep discounts on gym memberships, movie, car hire and plane tickets) are good.

Unfortunately, the execution is poor. The Multiply website is down with alarming regularity, and has some appallingly uninformative error messages. Although the site does warn that it will have limited functionality after hours, someone doesn't seem to understand that the web is a 24x7 medium, and sites are not supposed to keep Pretoria civil servant's hours (I exaggerate, but only slightly).

Try booking a Nu Metro movie ticket (only allowed through Computicket) on a Sunday, and if Multiply is down, you are out of luck. Of course Sunday is "after hours", but tell that to my friend who wanted to book a ticket that day.

If the system is up, you have to contend with the confusing and clunky Computicket Multiply booking procedure. Did anyone do usability testing on that thing?

Want to book a plane ticket through the "low cost airline", and get a discount? You can't book on the website: you need to phone, or email(!) them. The airline's systems are probably not integrated with Multiply's. Nor, it appears are many of their other partners (Spar being a notable exception).

Points sometimes take ages to be updated.

This is a poor show. Momentum is a fairly slick company, and not all their systems are as bad as the Multiply one. But unless they fix their apparently half-baked Multiply systems fast, they will find that their loyalty programme is a liability, that reflects poorly on them.

Remembering the victim of another senseless murder

A few years ago I blogged about a Chinese immigrant who was shot in central Durban when I was nearby.

Today, another murder made the papers. The brutality and callousness of those that raped an elderly woman and then slit her throat, should cause outrage. But when I heard the story, I felt very little. There have been so many brutal murders, so much crime, that I felt a distant sort of rage, but no visceral reaction. No feeling of shock. Murder has become so much a part of our lives, and we are so conditioned to crime that very little causes outrage anymore, and that is an outrage.

When the history of this era is written...

perhaps forensic auditors rather than historians will be in the best position to describe South Africa's "miracle" transition.

Why is it fashionable to complain about crime only now?

Crime is a huge problem in South Africa and it has been been a huge problem for years. I have had family members hijacked, burgled, robbed at gunpoint (numerous times), tortured and killed, in the last 10 years.

Ordinary people have had to put up with crime for a long time, but the South African media seemed reluctant to move beyond merely reporting crime. Suddenly, though, along with big business, they seem to have found their voices, and are complaining that the government is failing in its most fundamental duty - to protect its citizens.

Is it because of the 2010 World Cup? Or is it the lame duck factor - with Mbeki's quasi-authoritarian reign coming to an end, are they less afraid of reprisals¹ from the Great Denialist and his henchmen? What has emboldened the media and big business?

^{Note 1: Even though they were intimidated into dropping the anti-crime campaign, I doubt that FNB would have even contemplated such a campaign 2 years ago.}

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.