Last week’s column for The Daily Maverick was about how the news keeps getting better on the climate change front. The dominoes keep falling, and they appear to be gathering speed.

My previous columns on the subject of climate change prompted an extraordinary rant from a cognitive science student named Michael Meadon. Perhaps in pursuance of his research, he looked at my face and concluded that I’m not entitled to an opinion.

It is too tempting not to rebut. Read Meadon’s post first, then read on: Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to reply to the two Australians who commented on this article: Can Africa Topple Australia in the Contest To Build the World’s Biggest Telescope?

All I got, however, was this: “Comment Submission Error. Your comment submission failed for the following reasons: Text entered was wrong. Try again.”

This summary rejection is somewhat puzzling, since the error is meaningless, and the preview worked fine. [UPDATE: After several more attempts, I appear to have succeeded in posting my comment. Looks like the Captcha widget was broken for a time, and it was this “text” that the error referred to. The comment remains invisible, however, with no indication of whether it is merely being moderated.]

However, because I think it’s important, I’ll post my comment on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope here:

Frankly, the SKA shouldn’t be built, except with private money. Not in South Africa, and not in Australia. There. Having got libertarian principles out of the way, let’s get to business.

It is true that Africa is considerably poorer, somewhat less politically stable, and composed of several more countries, than the island colony of Australia. The same is true for South America, Asia, and indeed Europe.

And nevermind McGruder’s blackness, or the dark skins of most Africans. Racist reasons for building it, or not building it, belong in previous centuries. Africa might move on, if the people outside Africa who incessantly disparage it would do so.

If anyone needs investments like these, it’s the 750 million people of Africa, many of whom are cursed with economies that Western do-gooders, along with vogueish socialism at home, have made dependent on foreign aid and debt relief. Africans suffer as a result of inadequate basic infrastructure and difficulty in securing basic education for their children. Not that some major economies in the West aren’t heading for the same socialist malaise, so there’s no need to whitewash reality.

Projects like the SKA will contribute to the development of physical infrastructure (like electricity and telecommunications), political infrastructure (like the SADC customs union that continues to make slow progress), and social infrastructure (like education).

In terms of the standard of its scientists, the sophistication of its economy, and the development of its politics, Africa is quite capable of hosting a Big Science project such as the SKA. It has problems, sure, but motives to solve them trump negativity and despair. No politician in Africa (well, very few) would be stupid enough to put at risk a major project with international visibility such as the SKA.

Unlike the two Australian gentlemen who commented above, I will decline to speculate on a country I do not know. Australia’s virtues or shortcomings are not mine to judge. I’m sure it’s a splendid place, full of shiny, happy people. However, they might show the same courtesy towards others. If anything, short-sighted and ill-informed comments by people who haven’t a clue about the reality of Africa should provide added impetus for siting the SKA in Africa.

I live in Africa, by choice. As a columnist, I am frequently critical of the socialism and corruption that so often hurts Africans. And while the West has a lot to answer for in this respect, I believe Africa should sweep its own doorstep first. But to do that, it needs brooms. And indeed doorsteps.

If anyone in Africa were sceptical of the local capacity to operate a major facility like this, and their reasons weren’t knee-jerk racism, I’d probably be among them. However, I’m not sceptical. I believe anything is possible in Africa. I have faith in the ingenuity and dedication of its people. I believe, based on the scale and sophistication of numerous other industrial and scientific projects, that Africa has the technical and organisational ability to make the SKA an ongoing success.

Most importantly, I believe hosting the SKA can only make Africa a better place for everyone in it.

And that is worth more than all the stars in the sky.

I’ll bet if the Science Insider blog was hosted in Africa, by an African, its comment system would have worked.

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself recently. I’d been cautiously optimistic about Siphiwe Nyanda’s early moves as the communications minister in Jacob Zuma’s new South African government, but things are looking increasingly grim for the general, as I discuss here: The general’s reversal.

It is important that people are able to assert their rights, if they are to achieve prosperity in a free society. But this does not mean that any law that claims to help them do this is automatically good. South Africa’s Consumer Protection Act, which comes into force later this year, is a case in point. I’ve read it — the whole long, convoluted thing — and found among a few useful provisions several that are good in intent, but will likely hurt consumers in practice. Here’s my Tuesday column on the subject, published yesterday over at The Daily Maverick.

I missed a trick, however. I should have shredded it, viciously, for sounding like it was written 20 years ago for some foreign market. Mail-order? Catalogue? Who in SA uses those? And what about those newfangled interweb thingies? I hear you can buy stuff over them, though I’m not sure how you’d send a package down a wire.