Digital immigrant

Eskom wants a $3.5 billion loan from the World Bank and it looks as though their application will be denied. The US won’t vote for or against awarding Eskom the loan but the other 23 members of the World Bank’s board of executive directors will. So I have a suggestion — those 138 companies who profited from reduced electricity tariffs should sommer give Eskom $3.5 billion, which is R25 billion all in all.

Bonus prize goes to those 10 companies who had had the most profitable business deals with Eskom — they get to pay the bulk of the prize.

Cause you see, these reduced business tariffs are part of the reason for Eskom’s failure to provide the proper service they should give us. And poor people have paid far too much for the parastatal’s incompetence and fraudulent tactics. Let big business pay for a change.

Caveat: This is only possible in a world where these companies won’t pass on the cost to their consumers.

An email exchange about Bushisms and Rumsfeldisms got me thinking a bit. Yeah, really just a bit because yesterday was unbearably hot. Our friend Donald Rumsfeld once made the following observation:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

So I’ve been in love with this since I read about it late last year. And I’ve been talking to people about it. But Mr Rumsfeld forgot about the fourth category — unknown knowns, ie, there are things we know but we don’t know that we know them.

Remember that time in Standard 1 when your teacher wanted to know what bees eat? Your hand shot up and you told her that the bees eat royal jelly. That is an example of an unknown known, ie, you didn’t even know that you knew the answer until the teacher’s question got your mind working. You were surprised and chuffed with yourself. And remember that time in Standard 9 when one of your teachers wanted to know which country had had a border conflict with Ethiopia? You surprised yourself by answering that it was Eritrea.

So perhaps I should write Mr Rumsfeld a friendly email to let him know about this fourth dimension.

So I had drinks with a friend last week and we had the conversation that I have so very often with some people: why is it that everyone else has so many friends and we don’t? Or rather, why is it that there are so many people around us — at restaurants, putt putt courses, and shopping malls — who are ‘accompanied’ by friends or family, and we often end up doing things alone? Because my friend and I do have friends. We probably have an average number of friends whom we can call to celebrate that promotion (I’m still working on getting mine) or on whom we can rely to go see a movie once a week or so.

But we feel it is not adequate. We feel that we should hang out with a different friend every night, and especially at the weekends.

I think part of the problem is the media. We watch Sex and the City and think we should all have 3 friends with whom to have breakfast — every single day of the week. And we want our posse to be as stylish, sexy, intelligent and independent as the SATC bunch. So we feel a bit abnormal when the posse doesn’t appear.

So I was thinking. Could it perhaps be that those accompanied people we see at restaurants, putt putt courses, and shopping malls also feel the same? Could it be that those accompanied people also only team up with a friend once or twice a week? And that you will find them lounging in front of the television for the rest of the week?

So the Richard Dawkins Forum kinda tanked last week and ‘our people’ are now like the Jews — scattered among several fora. Please, everyone, come join us at Rationalskeptimism where new topics won’t get moderated.

I don’t generally do nylon but this Prada handbag isn’t too shabby.

I’m not too sure whether I like or love this handbag. It’s very Samantha from Sex and the City. It’s a tiny bit gaudy, which isn’t something I’d expect from Valentino.

The only thing I dislike about this Miu Miu bag is the logo. I guess that’s why I like Woolworths bags so much: they don’t have any logos.

It’s funny how I can admire this Judith Leiber bag but not the fugly swan purse from that SATC episode. But no, I’d never buy something like this.

I like this Emilio Pucci clutch. It’s cute, it’s smallish, and it’s bean-shaped.

Yeah, I know. It’s nearly March already and I’m only now giving a think to my new years resolutions. I don’t do silly resolutions such as ‘lose weight’: something like that is too vague. Besides, I don’t even know how much I weigh

So here goes:

1. Learn to play the guitar. Everyone’s doing it these days — yeah, even my 2-year-old niece — so hopefully it’ll turn into a  jam session at some time. But I don’t want to stop at learning how to jam; I want to do math. I was half decent at it in school and I’m sure that I can kick arse if I apply myself a lot more.
2. Buy property. I’ve been saying this for the last 5 years but I think this is the year I’ll finally convince myself — I’m still not 100% convinced that it’s the cleverest thing to do — to buy.
3. Be more interesting. It can’t be too difficult, eh? But a great part of being interesting really means being interested [in the person you're talking to]. So it’s time to dust off How to win friends and influence people.
4. Explore. I’ll start with a trip to Parys.
5. Become a hell of a lot more self-aware. It’s difficult to do but this isn’t optional. I used to scoff at people who read The power of now. But that was back in the day and I now realise just how important it is to savour every moment.
6. Become big and strong. I’ve been to two boxing classes and I regularly go to yoga classes. I want to have strong legs and a flat tummy. One of the women at the boxing class has the hardest punches I’ve ever experienced. I wanna be like that.
7. Learn to construct flawless arguments. This means I need to argue more often. Not all the time, just more often.
8. Consume less sugar. It makes me hyper. Go figure. Sure, I could just go to the gym after work but that means I’d have to walk around our office block 3 or 4 times a day just to get rid of all that extra energy until I can get to the gym. Not on.
9. I’ll fill my days with more stuff to do. Cause the more you do, the more you can fit in every day.
10. I’m gonna [lay]buy experiences, not stuff. So I went to one of my favourite vintage stores at the weekend and I saw this awesome ‘Made in Italy’ leather briefcase. I’m not a lawyer [yet] but it’s an awesome bag. I wanted to lay-buy it until the end of next month. Problem is that I already have an awesome bag; I don’t need yet another one. So I’ll lay-buy myself some experience instead.
11. I want to make as many mistakes as possible so that I can learn from them while I’m still young. Then life will be so much easier when I hit my 30s and 40s.

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I think about this a lot when I’m driving around. And then I promise myself I’ll write about it when I get home. But I never do because other things distract me. So I was thinking about memories. What they mean to us, why we remember some things but not others, and which things I’ll remember in the future.

I do this because often I’ll remember something pleasant. This sometimes happen when I’m having a craptastic day. Such as today. The memory helps me to get through that moment and, eventually, the day. Exercise helps, too.

It could be something silly, such as my favourite doll’s name from when I was a wee one. Or perhaps I remember my childhood crush — Andrew. Oh, how I’m smiling now!

So I’d love to know from you: which things do you think you’ll reflect on next year or in 2012? Will you remember a special moment from today?

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So I’ve been trying to find information on beauty products’ efficiency as well as their benefits. I did a bit of googling and found a post on The Beauty Brains about the top 5 myths about mineral oil part one and myths about mineral oil part two.

The first part talks about the 5 myths and gives reasons why they are illogical. I bolded the last two sentences to show the contrast between this section and a comment — also in bold –  in the second half of the article. So now I ask you with tears in my eyes — what’s the point in using mineral oil aka baby oil if it doesn’t provide the skin with moisture?

2. Mineral oil dries the skin and causes premature aging. Mineral oil works as a barrier between the skin and the air. It acts as an occlusive agent which prevents water from naturally leaving your body through your skin. It will not dry out your skin or cause premature aging. Quite the contrary. It will provide moisturization.

The comment in the second half:

thebeautybrains January 7, 2008 at 8:27 am

Angel,

And snake venom will kill you. The point is that there are plenty of natural materials that are not “good” for you.

Most of your comments are just a rehashing of things others have said. If you could include some proof to back up your opinions it would be nice.

Your car example…the parts exposed to oil do not rust. Not all the parts are exposed to oil all the time.

You’re trying to create a straw man logical fallacy. I never said mineral oil imparts moisture. It doesn’t. Go back and read through the comments. This has already been discussed.

What is your proof that plant based oils soak into your skin? The fact that they are organic is irrelevant. They don’t soak in any different than mineral oil.

Where is your proof that petroleum based products will lock microbes in your wounds? More unproven propaganda.

Finally, mineral oil doesn’t add vitamin A or C to your skin. And what exactly do vitamins, mineral or fats do when applied to your skin?

Either/Or Logical fallacy…
“And by default- if it NOT putting any kind of vitamins, minerals, or fats of any kind into the skin then logically we have to call it what it is: a filler.”

It’s an occlusive agent put in products to increase the level of moisture in your skin. This is proven by the fact that when skin moisture levels are measured with a device like a corneometer, they are higher when mineral oil based creams are used.

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A Google search for information on whether ‘slams’ is a pejorative word led me to an article by Ashraf Johaardien about his struggle to find information on the disappearance of the words teram-akasie and kanala in the Cape Malay community.

He doesn’t mention his feelings on the struggle to find any information but this is [yet another] an example of erasuring a people’s history.

So yes, there can be many reasons why he failed to find anything about the disappearance of teram-akasie and kanala from the Cape Muslim community on Google. But we live in a Western world, even though we live in Africa. Many white people still refer to themselves – and to others of their tribe – as European. Never mind that many of the Afrikaner tribe can’t speak any European languages.

Some of the best reasons that I can think of are the following:

1. The POC community exists only to make jokes about
2. POC communities exist only in pictorial books in Exclusive Books stores
3. Few people in [white] academia see POC as worthy of research
4. There are few interested [insiders] people who chronicle the history of POC dialects’ language quirks.
5. The publishing industry is not as transformed as they would like to think(pdf)
6. And POC communities are only worthy when they exude ‘blackness’, ie, poverty.

Another example of this erasure is ‘Daisy’ Dube’s murder on 12 June 2008. Few online South African newspapers mention this murder; I learnt of it from a comment on a blog that had criticised the blogger slash comedian for his sketch about a transwoman.

Rarely even do we get to write our own histories. That honour is reserved for people such as Chris Ledochowski, John Liebenberg and David Goldblatt. Don’t forget about anthropologists and sociologists. But they are nearly always fond[er] of stories that contribute to the single African story. And these stories all conform to the ‘one true’ way of telling stories about Africa. POC who do not fit the narrow mould of their story are erased. Their experiences are discounted as not ‘black’/'authentic’/'African’ enough.

The other reasons why few ever hear our stories is not there are too few people creating content. And the number one reason for this is systemic racism. This is racism that is built into our society and that might be eradicated in a couple of thousand years, though I highly doubt that. Umuzi’s writer page shows that only 11% of their writer base is black. Oops, sorry, K. Sello Duiker is dead. So out of the 98 writers on that page, only 11 are black. And Sir Richard Branson is a British citizen. But Umuzi has more POC writers on their books than Jonathan Ball Publishers; I could only find one living black author on JB Publishers’ fiction page.

Solani Ngobeni, the former International Young Publishing Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, said this: “We are not documenting our own stories and history; instead, we are allowing the former colonial master to do so on our behalf and then to resell it to us. Shame on us African publishers!“

I’d bet a substantial amount of money that most publishers believe they are being fair in sourcing unique stories to be published. But the reality is that transformation needs to happen sooner rather than later. And not just on junior levels. We need people in senior positions, people with clout, who can help us to get everyone’s story out there. This means that POC should be promoted and not side-lined.

Online media, on the other hand, does not rely on publishing houses; online media relies on eyeballs. But to start an online media empire one needs tools: decent broadband, some type of computer, networking, a smattering of good fortune, and writers. Oh, and time, too. These criteria exclude more than 95% of this country, let alone people of colour.

We don’t need more blogs written by POCs with Gammat jokes; we need more POC blogging that dissects the news and offer analysis; we need more POC blogging about fashion theory; we need more POC blogging that criticizes something, anything, everything; we need more POC blogging that can challenge the stereotypes the [white] media creates and perpetuates of us.

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