Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Zuma going full circle – from apartheid telecoms and back

Zuma going full circle – from apartheid telecoms and back: Unbeknownst to many people, Zuma returned to the structure used under the apartheid government, which had a Department of Communications and a Department of Post and Telecommunications.

The cabinet of FW de Klerk, which ran South Africa from 16 August 1989 to 11 May 1994, had Roelf Meyer as minister of communications and Piet Welgemoed as minister of post and telecommunication.

Zuma’s decision to go back to the pre-1994 structure is seen as a mistake by many commentators – and they have a point.

In South Africa, telecommunications services were operated by the South African Post Office until 1991. It therefore made sense to combine telecommunications and postal services into one ministry.

However, Telkom became a public company in 1991, which meant that it started to operate independently from the SA Post Office.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Ten Reasons to Love Uruguayan President Jose Mujica

What did we do to deserve Jacob Zuma?

Isn't this more in line with tbhe spirit of the old ANC? The ANC of Mandela, Tambo and Sisulu?

Ten Reasons to Love Uruguayan President Jose Mujica - FPIF:
President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, a 78-year-old former Marxist guerrilla who spent 14 years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, recently visited the United States to meet with President Obama and speak at a variety of venues. He told Obama that Americans should smoke less and learn more languages. He lectured a roomful of businessmen at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about the benefits of redistributing wealth and raising workers’ salaries. He told students at American University that there are no “just wars.”

Whatever the audience, he spoke extemporaneously and with such brutal honesty that it was hard not to love the guy. Here are 10 reasons you, too, should love President Mujica.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

What is a Christmas beetle?

How your etymology and entomology can be confused, depending on where you live.

Confusion in South African English: A Christmas beetle in Gauteng is seen but not heard. A Christmas beetle in KZN is heard but not seen.

Flying peanuts, Christmas beetles, leaf chafers, May beetles / Melolonthinae (Invertebrates) by tony rebelo on 13th January 2012 | iSpot:

which Xmas Beetle? The Cicada, this chappie or something else (the Red Driver Ant, for instance) - Just google "Christmas Beetle South Africa" to get a taste of the discussion and see answerit.news24.com/Question/Are there still Christmas Beetles in South Africa? for an overview of how people dont even talk about the same thing.
My wife insists that what I call a Christmas beetle is a "hardie", but we both agree on the singing of Christmas beetles at Christmas time. We were both born in Durban, but I moved to the Transvaal at the age of seven, and so learnt some Valie ways. I know that the Christmas beetles you hear are really cicadas, but are rarely seen, and when seen they're green. But the Christmas beetles that you see are brown...

Analysis: An Arab spring for South African Jews | Daily Maverick

Analysis: An Arab spring for South African Jews | Daily Maverick: South Africa’s Jewish community is regarded as one of the most conservative in the diaspora, its blinkered support for the Jewish state characterised as an approach of ‘Israel – right or wrong’. But recent developments are recalibrating local Jewish opinion on Israel-Palestine, and posing challenging questions regarding the politics of sovereignty, security and democracy. By REBECCA HODES.

Impact of Social Sciences – How to manage a research library with Zotero

Impact of Social Sciences – How to manage a research library with Zotero: Keeping up to date with research and managing an ever-increasing number of journal articles is skill that must be well-honed by academics. Here, Alex Hope sets out how his workflow has developed using Zotero, Dropbox, Goodreader and his iPad.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Skitt's Skittering Grounds

Skitt's Skittering Grounds: Do YOU realize that the overwhelming majority of people have more than the average number of legs? A staggering fact, isn't it!

The Up-Goer Five Text Editor

The Up-Goer Five Text Editor: Can you explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? It's not very easy. Type in the box to try it out.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Why a South African Braai beats a US bbq | Peace, Love & Giraffes

Why a South African Braai beats a US bbq | Peace, Love & Giraffes: Trust me. I was skeptical too. When my then boyfriend, now husband tried to explain the beauty of a South African Braai, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really get it. It sounded like a basic barbecue. A gathering of friends and family eating food from the grill. “Our barbecues are great,” I argued. “My dad makes a mean burger.” But whenever we cooked out on the grill, my husband’s face said it all – he longed for his beloved braai.

Analysis: A dam(n) crazy idea | Daily Maverick

Analysis: A dam(n) crazy idea | Daily Maverick: Right now there are 10,000 cubic kilometres of water behind dam walls – five times the volume in the planet’s rivers. The weight is so great it triggers earthquakes, and geophysicists estimate that the redistribution of weight from reservoirs may be having a measurable impact on the speed the earth rotates, the tilt of its axis and the shape of the gravitational field.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Disinformation, Carl Bildt, and Eastern Orthodoxy | David Heith-Stade's blog

Disinformation, Carl Bildt, and Eastern Orthodoxy | David Heith-Stade's blog: I usually don’t write on current political issues, but during the last days there has been a piece of “news” circulating on Russian websites about which Russian, Greek, and Finnish friends have made me aware.

A recent English version of this piece of “news” has the following headline “Carl Bildt thinks that Eastern Orthodoxy is main threat to Western civilization.” (Carl Bildt is the foreign minister of Sweden; therefore, I have been asked about this.)

1959. Extension of University Education Act No 45 - The O'Malley Archives

1959. Extension of University Education Act No 45 - The O'Malley Archives: This act made "it a criminal offence for a non-white student to register at a hitherto open university without the written consent of the Minister of Internal Affairs" (Lapping 1986: 184).

It also "provided for the establishment of a series of new ethnically-based institutions for Blacks, together with separate universities for Coloureds and Indians"

Monday, May 12, 2014

Have We joined Satan’s Side? - A Russian Orthodox Church Website

Have We joined Satan’s Side? - A Russian Orthodox Church Website: In reality, war does not begin when people start shooting at one another. It begins when certain convictions, upsurges in awareness, or news darken people’s reason and they stop seeing what is most important in those near them. They stop understanding that within the person near them – or not near them but, relatively speaking, “on the other side of the barricade” – there is much more to love than to hate.

Something terrible is happening to us now, when we stop seeing in our neighbor that which is most important, profound, and authentic. As a result, Satan is running the show. We are only giving occasions for the demons to rejoice, for their revelry, when, during our Pascha, we say “Christ is Risen!” to someone, but at the same time write terrible things about others on Facebook and rejoice that someone has “knocked off” someone else, and so forth. Hell is triumphant.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Free Family History and Genealogy Records — FamilySearch.org

Free Family History and Genealogy Records — FamilySearch.org



Getting better, though I still miss some of the functionality of the old one, like the ability to download Gedcom files.