Try telling a greenie that environmentalism is a sort of secular religion, in which we are sinful and worthy of nothing better than death. Try pointing out the startling sociopathy inherent in fantasies of an afterlife without people to sully the purity of the Virgin Earth Mother. Spluttered protests of innocence are all you’ll get. Yet despite remonstrations that they’re all for human beings, the theme resurfaces time and time again. Humans aren’t part of the ecosystem, symbiotically participating in the evolution of life. Theirs aren’t lives worth celebrating, achievements worth honouring and innovations worth admiring. Humans are parasites, sucking the life out of the planet. Like children, wishing for release from the pressure and complexity of the world, they stamp their feet and scream, “I wish I’d never even been born!”

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According to the Independent Online, a show dreamt up by Lolly Jackson of Teazers strip club fame, is headed for DStv screens soon. Stripteaze will be broadcast from 1 September at 23:00 on ActionX.

Now judging by the quality of your average Idols entry, I’m not entirely convinced of the merits of a show designed to find the striptease champion of South Africa. Like most reality TV shows, this could be entirely horrible. However, the shrill seriosity and earnest whining of the mother grundies, religious nuts, and other self-appointed moral guardians of society make such a proposal entirely worth it.

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One might have thought CNN would earn kudos for its innovative idea to host debates between makers of YouTube videos and presidential candidates in the US. Not so. According to this blogger, the notion that the station will select questions rather than basing the choice only on YouTube user ratings is no fair:

…if CNN has total editorial control over what videos are shown to the candidates, it’s pulling the rug out from under the so-called “user-generated content” revolution.

Who do CNN editors think they are, deciding what goes on CNN?

Update, 24 July 2007: The Media Research Centre appears to have found at least one reason why CNN wanted editorial control. The self-described media watchdog organisation looks for left-wing bias in the media, and in the CNN/YouTube debates, found plenty. The Democratic field got 17 questions from the left, compared to six from the right. It says if the forum on 17 September, when Republican candidates will face the video masses, does not show a similar three-to-one bias towards their conservative base, we might have to “conclude that CNN/YouTube debates will have served as little more than prime hours dedicated to advancing liberal causes.”

In the wake of communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s diktat that a single national mobile broadcasting network would be created in South Africa, based on the DVB-H standard, news from Europe appears to support her:

The European Commission Wednesday urged national governments and industry to take up DVB-H as the single standard for mobile television in the 27-nation bloc.

While Wednesday’s call isn’t a legal mandate to solely use DVB-H to broadcast TV over a wireless handheld device, the commission said it may in 2008 propose binding rules requiring the exclusive use of DVB-H in the European Union.

Amazingly, it goes on to claim:

The Brussels-based executive and regulatory branch of the E.U. “is not choosing a winner” but is simply giving “the market the clear signal that it should move voluntarily, but quickly, to a single standard.”

The DVB-H standard is based on Nokia Corp. (NOK) technology for mobile TV, which the commission said is the strongest standard for mobile TV.

Needless to say, the industry opposes such intervention. It believes the Eurocrats are disingenuous when they say the move will be “voluntary” and they’re not “choosing a winner”. Granted, there are drawbacks to the market fragmentation caused by competing standards, and competition is not guaranteed to pick the superior solution in the end. But there is no reason to believe that central planning is any better at choosing the right winner. Worse, eliminating competition can actually harm consumers because neither quality nor price will come under pressure. Why would anyone have a motive to improve DVB-H now that it’s been chosen as de jure winner? In agreeing that people can’t be trusted to make their own economic decisions, I guess Poison Ivy will feel vindicated by the mandarins of Europe.

• This column was first published in ITWeb Brainstorm, a South African business technology magazine, on 1 May 2007. If you’d like to help them pay me, click here to subscribe. It looks better in print anyway.

Ever stared at a problem so long you just know the simple answer is right there, but you just can’t see it? That’s why we have politicians. To be brilliant for us dumb shmucks.

Take telecoms. I mean, here’s a conundrum. Despite all the hard work of Dr (don’t forget the Dr) Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, telecoms prices are way high in South Africa. While the world raced ahead, South Africa went backwards. We’re stuck deep in the last decade, at 1997 or so.

Thabo Mbeki blames Telkom. After all, it didn’t bring down prices, and it could have. It’s only concern has been for profit. How evil. I mean, who among us is ever motivated by profit? You? Anyone? I’m not. I’m a journalist. But Telkom is. Bastards.

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This isn’t my idea, but it’s funny. Unless you’re J.K. Rowling pondering self-sacrifice, that is. Passport, the Foreign Policy blog, notes the SAS heavies lined up to protect her for an interview with an American TV station, and speculates that an attack on the author that caused all the trouble would be great publicity for Al Qaeda, but it would also galvanise “thousands of irate Potter-heads”. Would the terrorists last long in the face of an army of nerds with broomsticks and geek chicks with magic dust? In the hundred-mile queues for Harry Potter Vol. LXIX, The Bedpan of Bereavement, the faithful throngs have proven their consummate commitment and endless endurance. After four thousand pages, the protagonists still haven’t got laid, and yet the wizard wands stand strong as they stoically read on, and on, and on. Bin Laden and his band of merry dementors wouldn’t stand a chance.

I was recently approached by the editor of Proud!, the new magazine of the dysfunctional protectionist cartel, Proudly South African. The brief was to write a piece about the great innovations in telephony at our telecoms incumbent Telkom. Stifling a laugh, I listened to the offer: work for half my usual rate, and use my byline to “lend the piece some credibility”. Naturally, I declined. Not so some other writers, one of whom penned a piece cheering South Africa’s electricity infrastructure. Apparently, it was “light years ahead”. I was unable to find out exactly how, because just at that moment the power failed, and the only light in the room was from my gas heater. (The content of this glossy brochure, bankrolled by the few remaining companies who pay Proudly South African for marketing, is only available to people who buy it at retail.)

Now there’s a new plan: given the exceptional service of Eskom, the monopoly electricity utility, why not raise prices? After all, other countries tax their energy use into the stratosphere. Why should a developing country with high unemployment and poverty rates pay less than Finland, Sweden or Canada?

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He might be crazy, period, but this fellow rants pretty eloquently about his dislike for the iPhone, its creator, its marketing, its fans and its features. Very funny (if a little crass). Nokia should send him a sales bonus.

Couldn’t agree more with John’s argument here. Whatever your views on whether the Iraq war was justified in the first place, or the reasons why it was justified, or how it has been conducted to date, the facts on the ground are what matters now. (I certainly don’t intend to re-argue this tired old debate.)

Those facts demand that the war is brought to a successful conclusion, so Iraq’s democratically elected government can govern the country and defend its people. To show that freedom is a common dream of all humanity, and not - as I wrote in this comment - just some cultural idiosyncrasy of the West. And even if you also disagree that there are philosophical or strategic reasons to win it, premature withdrawal will precipitate a humanitarian calamity far greater than the war caused. Greater, indeed, than Saddam Hussein brought on his own people. Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time the so-called “peace camp” stood by and watched. Does The Killing Fields ring any bells?

Silly trials beg for funny opinions. In Husain v Springer, Dennis G Jacobs, chief judge of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, obliges. (PDF link, see pp. 45-48.) Extracts:

… I concede that this short opinion of mine does not consider or take into account the majority opinion. So I should disclose at the outset that I have not read it. I suppose this is unusual, so I explain why. …this is not a case that should occupy the mind of a person who has anything consequential to do.
…
This is a case about nothing. Injunctive relief from the school’s election rules is now moot (if it was ever viable); and plaintiffs’ counsel conceded at oral argument that the only relief sought in this litigation is nominal damages. Now, after years of litigation over two dollars, the majority will impose on a busy judge to conduct a trial on this silly thing, and require a panel of jurors to set aside their more important duties of family and business in order to decide it.
…
Contrary to the impression created by the majority’s lengthy formal opinion, this case is not a cause célèbre; it is a slow-motion tantrum by children spending their graduate years trying to humiliate the school that conferred on them a costly education from which they evidently derived small benefit. A selection from the illiterate piffle in the disputed issue of the College Voice is set out in the margin for the reader’s fun.
…
If this case ends with a verdict for plaintiffs (anything is possible with a jury), the district court will have the opportunity to consider whether the exercise merits an award of attorneys’ fees in excess of one-third of two dollars.

Interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal, by libertarian lawyer Randy Barnett, about the anti-war stance of internet-darling Ron Paul. Of the libertarian contender for the Republican nomination, he asks:

While the number of Americans who self-identify as “libertarian” remains small, a substantial proportion agree with the core stances of limited constitutional government in both the economic and social spheres–what is sometimes called “economic conservatism” and “social liberalism.” But if they watched the Republican presidential debate on May 15, many Americans might resist the libertarian label, because they now identify it with strident opposition to the war in Iraq, and perhaps even to the war against Islamic jihadists.
…
This raised the question: Does being a libertarian commit one to a particular stance toward the Iraq war? The simple answer is “no.”

It describes rather well my own views on the war in Iraq.

As presented at TED recently, Jonathan Harris put his Universe visualisation applet online. It harvests data from all over the internet and presents it in a linked map, using stars and constellations as the metaphor. Very cool. Takes a bit of processing power and bandwidth, but the result is worth it. Pick a subject, explore, repeat. Click. Click. Click. Read. Click. Don’t forget to eat, drink and sleep.