Delayed Justice

Forgive the layman in me, but my assumption of the law (or my idea of justice) is that you are only charged with committing a crime when the State has amassed sufficient evidence to be convinced of your guilt. I am entirely sympathetic, and understand the frustration of his supporters, with Jacob Zuma's opposition to further delays of his corruption trial. If the evidence didn't stack up properly when he was charged he should never have been charged.

This Natal Witness Editorial correctly sums up the impact if this trial on our land.
Facing a decision that one way or the other will surely be a turning point in the nation’s political history, the judge has an almost awesome responsibility not to be swayed or cowed by the forces brought to bear on him. And, once justice is done and seen to be done, the verdict and all its implications must be respected.
With all of its sub-plots, this trial will ultimately be a test of South Africas young democracy and its ability to find and maintain the crucial balance between the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government to the satisfaction of its people.

Let's get on with it.

Wallabies 2 - Poxy litte Pacific Islands 0

I'm loving the off-the-field wit & banter between the All Blacks and Wallabies. Clearly the Wallabies are least 2-0 up in the battle. First point came from the fabulous "handbag haka" and now we have the "camouflage caper". I'm waiting for the Kiwis to respond with similar aplomb, I'm not holding my breath though.

The $6million guitar

The Independent reports:
News that legendary bluesman Robert Johnson's guitar is for sale has excited fans around the world. But is it really his? Or is this another of the myths surrounding the man who is said to have sold his soul to Satan?

Before Robert Johnson's untimely death at a age 27, this man recorded only 42 songs. Despite this, his work is undeniably seminal.

UPDATE: The guitar (authentic or not) has its own http://www.rjguitar.com/ website.

Crime blogs

Mike Stopforth has a great analysis of the crime blog phenomenon and associated debate that is currently raging. He expresses many of the thoughts I had wanted say when I commented on the DeathofJohannesburg site.

Unexpected Driving?

Good rugby article by Zeena Isaacs in today's Business Day.

I'm intrigued by this though: “Our game will be very predictable if we drive all the time,” said [forward caoch Gert] Smal. “In international rugby variety is essential. Our plan now is to use it (driving) when the opposition does not expect it.”

At just what point in a rugby match does the opposition not anticipate that you might drive the ball up? The only time I can think would be to recklessly drive the ball up when defending the tryline. If that is to be the case then the opposition who read Smal's quote will now expect this, and so the occasion that the opposition does not expect the boks to drive will now be expected? So..I'm confused despite, or perhaps because of, my Logic 101 classes.

Good article nevertheless, and I'm not writing off the 'boks just yet. Perhaps I am last one with any remaining hope?

The price of petrol

A chirp on Cherryflava that petrol now costs almost as much as Jack Daniels got my spreadsheets out.

It's bad, but not that bad. I did the rough sums and can confidently conclude that we won't quite be filling our cars with JD & coke just yet.

1x750ml Jack Daniels = R125 (Makro special)
1/2l Coke = R8 (Pick&Pay special)
25 ml tot JD (R4.17) + 100ml coke(R0.40) + 75ml ice (free) = 200ml JD&Coke (R4.57).

Therefore JD&Coke = R22.83/litre which is still way more expensive than inland petrol at R6.73/litre.

Beer on the other hand is getting much more attractive (as if price ever influenced that!) - with Hansa Pilsener cans on special at Makro at R81.90 a case one is looking at just over R10/litre.

Rugby lessons

The Sharks, playing a game of patient ball retention and fantastic rolling mauls pulled out all the stops to come back from a significant first quarter deficit to beat the Bulls 37-28.

The All Blacks came out victors over the Boks by 35-17 (although the 2 tries apiece suggest the game was tighter than the scorline indicates).

Both of the All Blacks and the Sharks have been using the so-called squad rotation system. These teams have large squads and match teams are rotated from week-to-week to alleviate player burnout, and provide a broader base from which to select the best possible team for the games that really matter.

I wholeheartedly agree with Dan Retief's observations about Jake White's predicament last week: "But right now, the reliance on a single group of players is haunting him, with injuries hitting harder than they should. Graham Henry's dual squad system was planned well in advance, and the results are clear; Dick Muir may get a little flack for doing the same, but the Sharks will benefit in the long run. Blooding new players a year before a World Cup is cutting it fine, but perhaps there’s still time to broaden the base just a little."

This weekend was clear evidence of the benefits of this approach and while Muir may be haunted by the loss in the previous week to Griquas, the final count will only take place at the end of the season. The All Blacks have amazingly been able to win consistently with both their A and B teams.

Teams are measured on the their average performance over the season, and their ability to win the big games that count. They are not measured on individual perfomances. Much like golf, a blistering 18 holes on Day 2 of a tournament will grab a few headlines but those will quickly fade in the glare of a consistent  performance and a cool head over the last 9 holes by Tiger Woods.

The Springboks are lacking depth in certain areas, notably a backup kicker for Montgomery and a decent halfback combination. The Tri-Nations is probably a bit late to blood new players, as the unconfident performance by Pierre Spies against Australia showed but I, for one, will be willing to take the short-term knock if we can at least find a couple of world cup match winning potentials in the process. We have lost 3 games on the trot, it can't get that much worse (or can it?)

Now is time to at least blood five or six new players here. At least try Ruan Pienaar and Luke Watson?

A Message to the "Real Realist"

UT alerts me to this site. The Death of Johannesburg. Interesting and well presented but not pretty and so bloody negative. One sided views and with what sort of agenda I'm not sure. If only he (she?) would show the good with the bad. Despite my recent experiences I still think it's a great place and I sincerely do think something is on the bubble here. There is serious action in turning this around. I was driving through the dodgy side of town when the big Joubert Park clean up was taking place - this was a serious project, and was certainly doing a mental tally of how many beers I'd had when I drove through all these cops and redants.

Come on Mr so-called "Real Realist". Real realists give the whole picture and then pass judgment. You sir start with a thesis that Joburg is all rot and decay and then set out to prove it. I am not convinced.

They will stick you in the end

This post, and the next few seemed to disappear into nowhereland. Hence the fishy tests below, one of may finally came through. So here goes.

I once had a philosophy lecturer, who despite a penchant for tracksuit pants and red socks was without doubt a wise man. He insisted that it was not necessary to follow current affairs in any great detail and that daily reading of tthe newspaper or watching of the TV news was no more than a bad habit. Time could be better spent, he argued. Besides if anything really important did happen he was sure his secretary would let him know. This was in the days before the internet really gripped us, but I often wonder whether he wasn't right. Is it really worth to cram my brain with billions of trivial facts and a knowledge of diverse affairs? It is, I must admit a habit of sorts. (habit: A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.)

A recent research article by Irving Biederman indicates that there may be something more primal behind this thirst for knowledge:

The "click" of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.
"While you're trying to understand a difficult theorem, it's not fun," said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. "But once you get it, you just feel fabulous."

The brain's craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.
"I think we're exquisitely tuned to this as if we're junkies, second by second."

Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence. Only more pressing material needs, such as hunger, can suspend the quest for knowledge, he added.

So being a knowledge junkie is an addiction like any other. If not controlled it could destroy you. Simple rule - you can get too much of a good thing.
You need some knowledge... but how much I'm not sure. Maybe, maybe we just get too much knowledge?

I'll leave you with some lyrics from The Violent Femmes' ...Lack of Knowledge.

my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge

I wonder if I'm happy
wonder if I'm mad
I wonder why the whole wide world is so wonderfully sad
I don't know bout that but I can tell you this
that when I drink a lot of beer y'know I gotta piss... off

people should be pissed off
people should be pissed off
for lack of knowledge

read read read read read read read everything you can read and
learn learn learn learn learn learn learn everything you can learn

cause there is no tomorrow like today
and there is no today like tomorrow
and they will stick you, and they will stick you in the end

Make of it what you will.

How open minded are you?

Via Tammy . This ("How open minded are you?") quiz is rather fun & not far off I think:

***You Are 76% Open Minded***

You are so open minded that your brain may have fallen out!
Well, not really. But you may be confused on where you stand.
You don't have a judgemental bone in your body, and you're very accepting.
You enjoy the best of every life philosophy, even if you sometimes contradict yourself.

TEST AGAIN

Fishy fishy foo,
mail-to-blogger where are you?

O.R. Tambo International Airport

RUSSIA
Where were you born? St Petersburg.
Where did you go to school? Petrograd.
Where do you live now? Leningrad.
And where would you like to live? St Petersburg.

SOUTH AFRICA
Where were you born? Natal
Where did you go to university? Kwazulu-Natal (for my 3rd year of first year!)
Where do you live now? Ok it doesn't really work but you get the picture.
And where would you like to live? Kwazulu (No, not really but do you get the picture?, and I'm sure there is an example that would work).

Name changes in South Africa, as in Russia and around the world are merely reflective of a turbulent and evolving history. Live with it, get on with life. The name will change again in due course. Hankering for the good old times is indicative of a selective and blinkered memory.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" Alice asked the Cheshire Cat. 'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where. . ." said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. -  Lewis Carroll

Horror Scopes

One of my habits that I can't reconcile with reality or logic is that I check out my horoscope from time to time, particularly when I'm experiencing periodic bouts of self-doubt. I can find no justification or grounding for this practice as I am normally very sceptical of the esoteric. Daily newspaper comments are trivial but the the two sites that appeal most are astrocenter and Rick Levine.
I am clearly less sceptical about this than I ought to be but no idea why.

About remaining a philosopher

"Ah no, my good friends,once a philosopher, twice a pervert." - Voltaire

Anyone who knows the purported context that prompted Voltaire's renowned reply above might have an indication of a view of Jozi that I saw last night. Interesting to say the least.

W Words

Some W Words for ThirdWorldAnt

Wit – the brave face shown to reality that floats above the world’s problems,
Whining – something that people who see the glass as half-empty do plenty of. Not a favorite pastime of mine, unless I’m whining about whiners. I prefer wining with a bottomless glass of red at least half-full.
Whingers – a relative of those that whine a lot.
Woe – The emotion that anyone who has ever trusted my sports predictions or supported the Springboks and the Sharks has suffered much of.
Wazzup!! – a phrase that dates you and whacks you straight back to the turn of the century. Gained fame from a Superbowl Budweiser advert.
Wilde – An Oscar winner from a bygone era and great purveyor of wit. Such as this: “An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all” and this: “Do not divide people into good and evil, People are either tedious or charming.”
Wakerife – A new word I just found that seems to count in scrabble but that I can’t find a decent definition for.
Waits, Tom - A Jitterbug of a musician who spins on my turntable when the house is empty as noone else can bare him. "Never trust a man in blue trenchcoat, Never drive a car when you're dead", he wails.
Whore – what most of do we do for our daily bread
Wonderful – a close sibling of my favourite friend awe. Satchmo sings about it in a gravelly voice.
World – the place that I live. Can be Wonderful like Satchmo suggests or big & bad like a Wolf.
Wolf – as in “wolf it down” what I do to food when I have the munchies and most other times too.
Warehouse – what my brain feels like oftentimes : As David Bowie puts it in the song Five Years : “My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there”.
Wasteful – The sign of our times
Weissbier & Windhoek Lager – Beer, good better beer.
Whiskey or Whisky – amber stuff , nearly as good as beer
Wallet – what muggers are after and what I stuff into my skants to deceive them.
Wallpaper – Throwback from the past but a great 21st century Design magazine
Wittgenstein,  Ludwig - a clever man who wrote a tome called Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Writing – what I do for fun sometimes.
Walking – The thing I do to shake off the black dog (a la Winston).

Enough for hors d'oeuvres. Perhaps some more to come in due course.

On Friends and Garage Doors

A great bit of observation from Stuart Buck as he ponders about mates, particularly as one meanders through one’s thirties. While being relatively gregarious and always open to new people I am finding it harder and harder to forge fresh friendships. I’m talking real friendship (people who know when you’re happy or sad) here, not just regular socialising which the inventor of the braai ensured that there is plenty of in this town.

People simply do not have the time to nurture new friendships any more and have enough trouble maintaining those tried and tested childhood and university friends that they do have.

Stuart asks for solution. One of the comments to his post suggests the following:
1) Don't have many kids.
2) Avoid marriage, if possible.
3) Live in a dense urban city.
I wouldn’t choose any of those options outright, and I'm not sure that I agree with point 3, so would welcome other suggestions.

One of the comments in the article points out this lamenting excerpt from a forthcoming book by Joseph Epstein which makes for good reading.

It struck me that it is not an international distinction that must be drawn but rather that it is all about garage doors. If you have a garage door or two (and by virtue of that – probably have kids, mortgage and a time consuming career to pay for all of that) then you probably have less new friends.

Grahamstown - a blast

Not one to judge too harshly on the basis of my first visit and just one Saturday night (10pm to 4am) in the middle of the its biggest event of the year. But my quick & dirty conclusion is that Grahamstown is a blast. A blast from the past, that is.

The places that that I frequented with my brother-in-law* were full of drunken students, equal numbers of both sexes, mostly with a dress sense giving poor regard beyond basic functionality and warmth. Somehow I don’t quite think we were quite incognito on this visit. While we fitted in fine on the dress sense (lack of) and were probably up there with the best on the liquor front one does get to the stage where one cannot convince anyone that one is still an undergrad.

So while we had access to an overdraft and were using the proceeds of this to bash away at our livers with beer and jägerbombs, others were counting out coins to ratchet up their drink quota, or unashamedly (and successfully) hitting on us for drinks.

It was fun, but nowhere else have I recently come across student hangouts that were as similar to my student days as Grahamstown’s are right now.  I am not sure what this means about the place.

Oh the festival, what festival?

*As an aside, my brother-in-law shares the same first name as me. What are the odds of 2 sisters marrying a guy with the same first name? It’s chaos at family get-togethers.