My recent column in The Daily Maverick on the scandal at the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit, which calls anthropogenic global warming into question, elicited this published response. While I hope the final demand, that I be dismissed, was meant tongue-in-cheek, it is a particularly silly joke to make when one of the charges against the CRU scientists is that they got a critical editor at a peer-review journal fired. My reply appears below the letter, which attacks my column for “distortion and innuendo”.

Two articles online today. One, my weekly column on The Daily Maverick, is an overview of the climate scandal that’s developing following leaked e-mails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. This one will have legs, and I’ll likely have much more to say about it in due course. It is hard not to feel sorry for the true believers.

The other is about a marvellous little game I bought recently: Machinarium. A review of Machinarium is up at Duncan McLeod’s excellent new technology site, TechCentral.

Here are my thoughts on Murdoch’s broadside against Google and other online leeches, published today on South Africa’s top IT news site, ITWeb. I agree with him, feel for him, and wish him well, but I’m not convinced even he’s got the clout to recork the genie bottle.

Also, published on Tuesday on The Daily Maverick: Peace, love and schadenfreude. Why is being an advocate of free-market capitalism enough to get you damned? Poor people need the free market more than anybody else.

This story was great fun to write. It started as a humorous tweet on Friday night. By the end of the evening, I had my moon expedition all organised.

On Saturday, my plan to colonise the moon was published on The Daily Maverick. Thanks to the locals at Bosun’s in Knysna, and my friends on Twitter, for their contributions. The cherry on top was returning to Bosun’s to find that the people who though I was joking (or drunk) were muttering darkly about being left out of the story.

Hi all. I know I said I wasn’t blogging here, but now I am, just for the day.

It’s 9:30am on Sunday, and outside the city is complete chaos. I’m safely ensconced in the Theatre on the Square, where they’re keeping me under close protection from cyclists (and vice versa.)

The occasion is:

… TEDxJohannesburg, an innovative day of ideas and cleverness, organised with commendable verve and energy by Alicia Woolf. The idea is to live-blog the event. Essentially, that means I’ll be taking notes, and updating this post in chronological order. If all goes well, you won’t be spammed by multiple e-mails or RSS updates. Reload this frequently if you want to follow the proceedings during the course of the day.

Some notes and conventions:
* Normal text constitutes notes. Unless otherwise specified, or obvious from context (such as descriptions of videos or presentations) they’re as near to direct quotes by the speaker most recently identified.
* My own comments will be in [square brackets]. Don’t blame anyone else for them.
* The Twitter hashtag for today is #TEDxJohannesburg. I’m fairly sure lots of people will tweet the proceedings.
* PS. This post is, I hear, 7000 words long. It contains errors. I’m not going to fix them. I understand typos are horribly offensive, but I trust you’ll get over it within weeks.

10:24 Introduction about ideas worth spreading, and the format of independently organised TED events, known as TEDx. The day will include a selection of talks and lots of conversation about them. Videos from the official TED events will also be shown.

And Alicia Thomas-Woolf, the local organiser, takes the stage. Everyone wrote something they’d like to do before they die on their name tags. [Mine is “Colonise the moon”] We want to leave a legacy, because changing society starts with individuals who talk to each other. It’s been a very collaborative effort, organised by people with lots of passion, little sleep and too much caffeine.

The sign in the photograph is by Sidney Matebula, who sits on the corner of Coleraine and Ballyclare, selling newspapers and making beaded sculptures.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi all. It’s been over a year, and I keep getting asked when (or if) I’ll ever get around to blogging again. The answer is: I’m not blogging, but I am writing. This gives me little reason to blog and some good reasons not to.

Most Thursdays (and occasionally at other times) you can find a column on technology or telecommunications at ITWeb. Every Tuesday, my column on politics, economics and (anti-)environmentalism is published at the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Branko Brkic’s dearly departed Maverick magazine: The Daily Maverick. I also still write a monthly column for Brainstorm magazine, where the then-editor Brkic first convinced me to write opinion, and where current editor Samantha Perry continues to tolerate my invariably overdue mutterings.

Here’s what I’ve been up to since I stopped blogging, written while The Daily Maverick was still in pre-launch beta testing: Going cold turkey.

Since its launch, I’ve taken up one of my favourite cudgels: Too late to cool it? This week I penned a piece on the temerity of leftwingers who claim to oppose fascism: The irony of the left. I have many ideas lined up to fuel future arguments, so keep an eye on The Daily Maverick. Moreover, it is home to an eclectic group of brilliant reporters, photographers, analysts, commentators and columnists who offer some of the finest reading matter available on the South African internet. It is a pleasure and an honour to be published alongside them.

Elsewhere, this rant on power plugs for Brainstorm magazine elicited some vigorous nodding from readers, many of whom, unsurprisingly, share my pain.

Though a promising challenger has recently appeared (here’s to you, Duncan McLeod), ITWeb has for 15 years been the backbone and daily staple of the South African tech and telecoms scene. Among my recent ITWeb columns are an opinion about which commenters appeared to miss the point somewhat: Sure, fund the SABC with tax, an argument about who might be producing primary reporting in the future: Reviving the leisured classes, and a story about a man, The chief incompetence officer, which may yet have repercussions.

Discussion of or comments on my columns are best posted on the publishers’ respective sites, not only because they buy my bread and beer, but also because I’m more likely to read and respond there. I’ll post alerts of new articles and columns over here, however, so the many friends (and enemies) I’ve made here can follow me wherever I write. Speaking of following, I’m @IvoVegter.

Of course, the archives remain intact, and contain some 218 041 words in 520 posts, with 1 331 comments. Some of the topics I tackled, or responses I promised (but never wrote) will no doubt surface again on ITWeb, in Brainstorm or on The Daily Maverick.

Thank you all for reading and, most importantly, arguing with me. You’ve been a whetstone for my blade: sharpening my arguments, but innocent of how rashly I wield them. You rock — dangerous communists included.