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Showing posts from October, 2011

Getting older and getting drunk

Back when I was in my 20s, I met a wry old devil “on a train bound for nowhere”. All we had in common was a bottle of 10-Year-Old KWV Brandy and a 28-hour train ride from Cape Town to Pretoria - but it turned out to be an education. I was travelling on a First Class Government Rail Warrant, as was issued to serving officers who were being transferred from one billet to another. I was nearing the end of my National Service and was owed a quick leave home before the final stretch prior to clear-out and demobilisation. The “system” allowed for “travelling time” on both sides and in the Intelligence Corps. we'd had learned to “bend reality” enough to wheedle an extra day’s leeway on either side. Civilians usually avoided compartments with soldiers in them but he swung his nondescript suitcase onto the rack and an seated himself opposite me with a friendly nod. It was only after the second tea trolley came around. I’d exhausted the Cape Town newspapers and dispaired of the c

Sharpening my pen...

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Long ago, not long after I was given by first by-line, I received my first “nasty response” to an article from a reader. As a junior journalist, I was devastated. I took it to one of the senior hacks who had taken me under his wing. “Oh, boy! You’ve arrived!” he said gleefully. He first explained that you should appreciate any letter from a reader “because it means that someone is actually reading your stuff”. When I pointed out flaws and non-sequiturs in the reader's response, he told me to use them as “something to hang your riposte on”. He wasn’t nearly upset or concerned enough! “There’s nothing that plays more into your hand than a stupidly written letter. Be sure to quote the most stupid bits in your response.” His advice proved sound. After several decades – and probably several hundred: “Dear Sir, I was thoroughly disgusted by your comments on….” letters (as well as several that carefully and eruditely pointed out my mistakes, to which my reply was invariably a

Until some genius comes up with a better system...

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The main reason I'm a strong believer in parliamentary democracy  is probably because I think that humankind, throughout its trial-and-error (and lots of error) search for a ways to govern the ever-swelling, contrary and eminently fallible ranks of homo sapiens, has yet to come up with a less-imperfect system. That said, it has certain drawbacks, one of them being tangible lasting development. When the temples, cathedrals and palaces and even the public works under construction today have crumbled as all walls will, what will the great “buildings” of Europe be in the future? One factor is democracy itself. Democratic governments just can’t get away with the things non-democratic ones do. While the prospect of knocking down an entire neighbourhood to build an Olympic stadium was an administrative rubber stamp for Beijing, it would tie any European government to the Courts for a generation. The next problem is time. It differs per country, but four years i

Driving incognito?

What is it about people who drive dark-coloured cars and a resistance to using their lights? If you don’t believe me, make a mental check next time you are driving home in less-than-ideal sunny conditions. I’m obviously generalising (there are many drivers of dark cars who do indeed use their lights appropriately) but just one cloud in the sky and a noticable majority of people with white, yellow, red and other conspicuous-coloured cars have their lights on in a flash. But unless the dark blue and black cars nearly collide with something, they don’t even start to turn on their “parking lights”. Is it a sense of economy in light bulbs? At €5 a throw once every two years, if they are going to mean the difference between a truck driver seeing me or not on a rainy night, it’s a small investment. Or are they trying to “save electricity”? Now the engine, which is turning anyway, turns the alternator which charges your battery… ah forget it! Ok, a lot of the mid-career drivers on the

Bah! Humbug!

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In the politically correct Third Millennium (CE), nobody (including the undersigned) sends a “Christmas Card” any more. You send a “Happy Holidays” card to include everyone. Conveniently, the simple symbolism surrounding the Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice seems so entrenched in the collective consciousness that a card (or e-card, for which I argue in 21st Century Technobetics ) with a pretty flickering candle covers Christmas, Chanukah, Di(pa)wali, and many other adherences and traditions, both religious and secular. Now essentially, I don’t have a problem with that. We live in a shrinking multicultural world, and while my Irish Great-Great-Grandmother probably didn’t know anyone of a religion different to her own, it is entirely normal in today’s global corporate world to interact (albeit virtually) with people in Washington, Amsterdam, Beirut, Tel-Aviv, Brunei and India, all within the course of any working day. However, I have recently observed th

The Green Point Lighthouse and other memories

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Funny things that jog one’s memory. An old school friend who now lives in the USA recently sent me a DVD “walk down memory lane” he had compiled, and that really stirred up the silt. Then it got a boost the other day when I once again saw red (and white stripes) while reading a newspaper report from Cape Town mentioning the “Mouille Point Lighthouse”. It’s the GREEN POINT Lighthouse! Always has been. Always will be. Check Admiralty Chart 4150 if you don’t believe me. And if you check Google Maps, you get a superb example of the weakness of the Internet: It’s listed as BOTH. Proof that you need to subject whatever info you get over the Internet through an ultra-fine bullshit filter. An academic I met the other day suggested that with a plethora of information now freely and almost universally available (rather than only to those with the right library cards), the “new elitism” (eclipsing those of ancestry, wealth and traditional education) will be those with

A question of honesty

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On at least three occasions in my life, I have found lost wallets - in two of the cases with considerable amounts of money in them - and on all three occasions, I’ve managed to contact the owners and return them based on information in the wallet. Ok, so that’s what honest people do, and one could expect the same from anyone. Fact is that in each case, the person who lost the wallet was fortunate that it was found by an honest person because we all know in reality that unless lost overboard in mid-Atlantic, every lost wallet is “found” by someone, but lamentably few "find" their way back to their owner. When I was 45kg heavier, my XXL jeans had XXL pockets. Now that I've shed the weight, I'm sometimes pressed for pocket space. So, a few days ago, while leaving a restaurant and climbing into my car, my wallet dropped out and into the street. I only realised it about ten minutes later when I stopped outside my home. While I was driving back to the restaurant

An Old Soldier’s Yizkor

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What some (uninformed) people might consider an anomaly: The grave of a German-Jewish Officer in Langemark German WWI cemetery in the Ypres salient in Belgium. Alas, the nazi genocide of WWII has often left the dead - especially the German-Jewish dead of WWI - who fought as much for (however misguided) Keiser and Country as any British or Commonwealth soldier - forgotten. Fact is that (in 1914-1918) statistically, coming from the then largest Jewish community in the world, Jewish officers and men represented a far higher proportion of soldiers on the German side (especially on the Western Front) than on the British/Allied (the Americans, as usual, came late). So, Im Namen des Keisers,  from one Treue  Yekke to so many that History choses to forget: "YisGadal veYisKadash, Shmei Rabah...." Erev Yom Kippur 5772/2011 Tonight, I’ll light a Yizkor Candle in my heart. It won’t be a real one; I’ve forgotten to buy one. The Bracha escapes me. Emmes ,

The Shaman

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Call me what you will, for only the Truth is barbed. Call me a troublemaker when I ask the questions you don’t dare to. Call me antisocial when I refuse to conform. Call me a know-it-all when I’ve learned something you haven’t. Call me a Clever Dick when I’ve seen something you’ve missed. Call me arrogant when I show you how clear it was to see. Call me stubborn when I refuse to subscribe to ignorance. Call me heartless when I favour logic over emotions. Call me evil when I don’t worship your gods. And, in spite of what you might call me, (Because I’ve been called it all before,) Call me, as I know you will, because you always have: Call me, when you seek solutions to your problems - But don’t call me a fool, for it will only make a fool of you.   – AMB

Sometimes Microsoft rocks!

Ever since I used two 5.25-inch floppy disks to load and OEM MS DOS 3.1 onto my AT to support its spanking-new 20 Mb Seagate hard drive (most of my colleagues were still using floppy-only XTs) I became a devout "Gates grumbler". In those days, computer users were even more of a subculture than today, so to get by in Geeksville, you needed to interface using the correct protocols. Unless you were SysOp of a BBS – accessed with a 1200-Baud modem – you were nobody; you subscribed to the prevailing culture of “copy anarchy” and, unless you were a dyed-in-the-wool Apple bunny, you grumbled about Gates and Microsoft. Admittedly, a lot of it was simple indignation at being so utterly dependent on a supplier (there were occasional short-lived and feeble flashes in the pan of competition e.g. DR-DOS) that was fast becoming all-powerful. Also, as Gates was the Grand High Lama, Pontifex Maximus and Jedi Master of Geeks, there were probably also a fair number who envied his pock

My illustrious singing career

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Often purely by accident of fate, I have been fortunate to have crossed paths with a number of superb mentors; people who either directly or by example gave me wise and judicious advice, with the only reward being to see a keen youngster learn and grow. But you have to take the good with the bad... I’d grown up in a home that was always alive with music: And not the music the kids at school or their parents were hearing on Radio Good Hope. During the day, it was often cacophonic or strangely lilting exotic tunes on crackly 78 singles gleaned from my Mother’s latest seasonal escape in Turkey, Greece, Iran, played ad nauseam with a tinny crackly sound quality we would today associate with a third-world taxi or bazaar. Then, once my father got home, out came the classics. My paternal Grandmother had been a bastion of culture, arranging soirees in her home in Königsberg. This left my father and uncle with a keen ear and catholic tastes in classical music. Neit