This TV show dates from 1996. I’ve since met all the protagonists, although I can’t recall having met Kriek face-to-face to this day. Most amusing. The intro in Afrikaans is deceptive - the rest is in English. Fifteen minutes of fame for kokey:
Maybe there’s hope for Gordon Brown after all. In a joint press conference with George W Bush at Camp David, Bush riffs about a journalist who’s turning 38 today. (I quote from memory): “See, that’s what I like about this great country of ours. Here’s this fellow, under 40, and he’s asking questions of you and me!”
Deadpan, Brown replies: “Six members of my cabinet are under 40.”
No, really? So says Jesse Ausubel, a conservation biologist and climate researcher, in the latest International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. Sadly, the full text is only available to subscribers, but New Scientist cites the piece:
Renewables are “boutique fuels” says Ausubel, of Rockefeller University in New York, US. “They look attractive when they are quite small. But if we start producing renewable energy on a large scale, the fallout is going to be horrible.”
Instead, Ausubel argues for renewed development of nuclear. “If we want to minimise the rape of nature, the best energy solution is increased efficiency, natural gas with carbon capture, and nuclear power.”
Most of us share a desire for a low-pollution world. I think it would be both pleasant and productive. Environmentalists believe it will reduce, reverse, correct or otherwise change the climate and placate Gaia. If we’re only prepared to use the crude tools of mandated limits on energy use or enforcing inefficient alternatives, instead of relying on technological progress and human innovation, achieving this desire will come at a tremendous cost, both to the environment and to human quality of life. It’s nice to see a climate scientist and conservationist agree.
But wait. Ausubel is “setting himself up as a demagogue with this heretical stuff”, says John Turner of the US government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Should have guessed.
Remember when Telkom asked the regulator whether IP was a basic service, and when it replied nine months later, Telkom took it to court for not having jurisdiction in the matter? Well, here’s the sequel.
Telkom has thrown down the gauntlet to the regulator. Like any dominant incumbent with a legal department the size of the North Korean Army, it knows this game well. The regulator must respond to its proposed interconnection rates for other operators and value-added network providers. How it responds will show whether it is as impotent as its predecessor, or can regulate decisively in the public interest.
James Taranto, the editor of the Wall Street Journal’s online opinion pages, makes a good point in this piece. It answers those who ask why, if Saddam Hussein being an oppressive tyrant is a valid reason for intervention in Iraq, isn’t the same true for Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe. Referring to Barack Obama’s comment that preventing genocide is not a sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq, or one would have to argue America should have troops in the Congo or Sudan for the same reason, he writes:
Mr. Obama is engaging in sophistry. By his logic, if America lacks the capacity to intervene everywhere there is ethnic killing, it has no obligation to intervene anywhere–and perhaps an obligation to intervene nowhere. His reasoning elevates consistency into the cardinal virtue, making the perfect the enemy of the good.
It might make the world a simpler place if all the world’s problems had the same solution, and all the world’s problems could be solved at the same time, but they don’t and they can’t. Real-world complexity is not a justification for sitting idly by, bemoaning that we don’t live in an ideal world.
Instead of bragging about a stable economy and modest but consistent growth rate, South Africa can (and should) grow at least twice as fast to address its biggest challenges, namely poverty and unemployment. Temba Nolutshungu appears to agree in this superb article. Government mandarins would do well to take note. Political liberation has been achieved. Now complete the miracle by extending it to economic freedom. Stop failing at service delivery, and make poverty history. Extract:
Today, while the world generally is gaining in economic freedom, SA is saying, ‘Stop the world, we want to get off!’
We hear talk of nationalisation of steel mills and fuel production. Don’t the collectivists know that having public enterprises run businesses is bad for both consumers and workers? Because these state industries are incapable of competing on a level playing field, their political nannies protect them; they prohibit privately owned companies from competing with them, and constantly feed them with extra taxpayer cash even when there is no economic justification for doing so. The result is high prices, poor service, excessive taxes, and constant anxiety for workers.
The link above may not work forever, so the full article is posted after the fold. It’s well worth reading:
Patricia De Lille, all is forgiven. It appears the idiots that run our government aren’t any worse than the idiots that run the US Congress. Perhaps if you’re too stupid and unselfconscious for any real job, you put on a big toothy grin and get voted into a position where you can spend your days proving to the world just how Luddite and illiterate you really are. Check out this bizarro hearing of the Committee of Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.):
On Tuesday, July 24, 2007, the Committee held a hearing to examine recent developments regarding inadvertent file sharing over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, the impact of such sharing on consumers, corporations and government entities, and whether such sharing creates privacy or security risks for users.
No, seriously. They want to pass laws to make sure that “inadvertent file-sharing does not jeopardize the public’s privacy and security”. CNET News.com reports:
Also at the hearing, Mark Gorton, the chairman of Lime Wire, which makes the peer-to-peer software LimeWire, was assailed for allegedly harming national security through offering his product.
Wait till these people hear about e-mail. They’d have to ban the internet.
Sky reports that the flooding in England has led to sensational disaster-time perfidy. In the same ominous breath, it mentions looting and (gasp) the sale of bottled water for profit. Why is it that experienced journalists don’t undertand elementary economics? Rising prices for essentials in an emergency aren’t only natural, they’re actually good. They incentivise producers to increase supply, pay for enterprising individuals to get it to areas that are expensive to reach, and limit consumption by those who don’t really need it. The alternative is real shortages, bureaucratic costs and rationing. What would you rather have? Expensive bottled water, or no bottled water at all?
Pieter Dorsman offers a concise, clear overview of Dutch politics. Sadly, the overview is the only thing that’s clear. The murders of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, along with many deep fears about the sustainability of the welfare state, European competitiveness in a global economy, and the failure to handle immigration fears, have conspired to a funfair teacup ride for politicians in search of consistency among voter support.
George W. Bush gave what I thought was an important speech yesterday in South Carolina. Speaking to an audience that considered it worth applauding the notion of victory, he directly addressed the surrender camp. A reporter in Baghdad afterwards was surprised that he had to spell out in such detail what to him appeared to be the obvious, simple truth:
Al Qaida in Iraq is a group founded by foreign terrorists, led largely by foreign terrorists, and loyal to a foreign terrorist leader — Osama bin Laden. They know they’re al Qaida. The Iraqi people know they are al Qaida. People across the Muslim world know they are al Qaida. And there’s a good reason they are called al Qaida in Iraq: They are al Qaida … in … Iraq.
He made a strong case for the honeypot theory of fighting Islamic extremism and terrorist groups, and why this makes the Iraq war central to the larger war against terrorism. He also repeated that, “…however difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it. And we can win it.” This article on the Strategy Page suggests Bush’s comments might be more than just political platitudes:
What most of the troops, and Iraqi civilians, notice is the lower level of violence. Since the surge offensive began four months ago, Iraqi (military and civilian) deaths have declined by more than 50 percent, and American casualties are down by over a third.
Whatever your position on whether or not Iraq was the right place at the right time, the reality today is that precipitous withdrawal would be disastrous for Iraq, and deal a severe blow to America’s ability to combat terror and tyranny in future. It will hasten the “moral paralysis” that Thomas Sowell sees in how the US deals with Iran, for example. His comparison with pre-WWII France has been made before, but it remains an object lesson on the danger of appeasement, and the stupidity of negotiating with leaders whom you know cannot be trusted to do so in good faith. Since the security, liberty and prosperity of the world depends on a strong, able America, these things matter to me.
Gotta love the closing quotation in a Sunday Times article posted on MyBroadband about the latest scandal to rock the SABC:
“We would like it to be taken into consideration that the nature of certain of the allegations in the report involving us may be phrased in a particular way to create atmosphere.”
Whatever, dude. I’m sure the R1.9 million you’re alleged to have scammed from the SABC will pay for air conditioning.
