Among the imbeciles and dancing monkeys that comprise the online freak show, some stand out with their singular gift for idiocy. These are among the things that piss me off:

• Idiots who can’t be bothered to read the posts they’re ranting about.
• Idiots who wouldn’t pass a third-grade comprehension test even if they did.
• Idiots who yell “blame the government” when the piece in question does this explicitly, in explanatory detail, repeatedly.
• Idiots who have a garden snail’s grasp of elementary logic, and think that a phrase of the form, “racists who have left” actually means “everyone who left is racist”. Apologies to any garden snails who feel their grasp of syllogisms is sufficient to make this comparison unfair.
• Idiots who copy-and-paste entire blog posts, and do it so carelessly that they include the first comments and half the code around them, just to indulge their mental flatulence.
• Idiots who can’t be bothered to respect copyright notices, quote sections under fair use conventions, or even just attribute what they rip off as grist for their blunt and creaky mill.
• Idiots who copy my images, but can’t be bothered to host them themselves, so I get to carry their traffic.
• Idiots who can’t be bothered to insult me to my face.
• Idiots who add ellipses to every headline, for no discernible reason other than to represent the drooling pauses in their thought.
• Idiots whose mommies let them type before they’ve learnt to read further than the headlines in large letters.
• Idiots who’re too self-absorbed to find out what someone’s opinions are before self-righteously lecturing them about those opinions.
• Idiots who’d miss the point even if they sat on it.
• Idiots who vomit all over their corner of “Cyerspace (sic)”.
• Idiots who anonymously insult others, but can’t figure out how to enable comments on their blogs.
• Idiots who categorise all their posts under “blogroll”, which is inaccurate by at least one letter.
• Idiots who don’t have either the wit or vocabulary to write a better headline than “Things that piss me off…”.
• Idiots whose mental furniture is limited to two short planks.

Alan in Asia, you’re an idiot.

The taxi industry is one of the most engaging examples of the self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit of South Africans. It proved that despite a government that at first actively repressed economic activity, and since liberation consisted of paternalistic central planners who failed to deliver services such as public transport, South Africans were able to create a thriving industry that for all its faults supplied an essential need with remarkable efficiency and at a price that caters for the poor who need the service most.

On occasion, however, it could do with smarter marketing, which doesn’t highlight the industry’s failures instead of its successes. Witness, for example, this photograph, taken on Saturday 2 February 2008 at 15:00, at 100km/h on the N1 North near the Malibongwe Road offramp in Johannesburg. One hopes that the occupants got a substantial discount.