It was about 3am when the noise of a car being stealthily driven down the drive awakened him from slumber. Fearing that criminals were attempting to invade, he drew his firearm and shot at the vehicle. When Rudi “Vleis” Visagie looked inside he saw that he had shot his daughter, Marlè, in the head. She […]
Author Archives | Gavin Chait
An unexpected Hush
I bought Hush one of those new life-blogging collars about a month ago. It’s the version with a GPS and wifi transmitter and takes a picture every half-a-second of whatever happens to be in front of him. I thought it would be something to remind me of the day going on outside my studio. I’d […]
S&R Honors: Ivan Toms and Lawrie Schlemmer – what we were we still are
Waiting for a miracle “How long are you prepared to wait?” I asked. It was 1991 in the Eastern Cape city of Port Elizabeth and I was in my final year of high school. Nelson Mandela had been released in 1990 with me hovering over the television, my camera on a tripod, in a futile […]
The NRA proposals trigger the Gun Event Horizon
The NRA’s press conference and suggestions were somewhat astonishing: Don’t regulate guns, regulate video games. Don’t blame gun-owners, create a database of all the mentally disabled/ill and track them. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” which boggles the mind. Congress should authorise armed […]
Playing Far Cry 3 in the aftermath of Sandy Hook
The Atlantic describes “Far Cry 3″ as the “First Video-Game About the Millennials.” John Walker, at rockpapershotgun.com, describes it more prosaically: “A group of wretched white rich kids arrive on an island for a holiday of self-indulgence and thrill-seeking, their fear of leaving adolescence exposed by their need to jump out of aeroplanes rather than […]
Finding Rodriguez and recognising talent fallen along the way
The Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on Saturday night was packed. The stage oddly sparse and brightly lit. The band entered and took up their place and then a man, all in black with long, black hair, was led out on stage. And Sixto Rodriguez began to play.
Cigarette sellers and ticket touts: our strange relationship with entrepreneurs
I am not, ordinarily, afraid of rising early. However, when it is winter and 4am and one of the mizzly-drizzly-dawns where the fine rain settles into every warm crevasse, nestling down and sapping all heat, it better be a good reason. This particular morning I had risen, dressed and driven to the centre of Cape […]
If I wanted America to fail…
On Earth Day (which was Sunday – keep up) the inchoately titled Free Market America … er, foundation, released a video entitled, “If I wanted America to fail” in which they tackle the knotty subject of climate change and carbon pricing through the medium of a patronising preppie grossly oversimplifying a complex problem. No, please, go […]
Why Obama warning the Supreme Court is a "bad thing"
A country’s highest elected representative warns its most important judicial body that their review of a controversial piece of legislation against the terms of the constitution is judicial activism and an attack by an unelected body on the needs of his government. He promises to set up a judicial review to look at and, potentially, […]
Freddie Mercury
In 1995, only a year after South Africa’s first democratic election, I was working at a community centre in Nyanga, a shanty-town alongside Cape Town’s international airport. The centre had started a project which aimed to give HIV-positive single mothers a safe place to live and work. My self-appointed task was to assist with setting […]
Politics, the Devil’s Excrement and remaking the 99%
There are still nights when the nightmares take me. I am in the shop I made, standing behind the till. My wares are on the shelves and I wait for customers who never come. I see them passing by the windows, looking in. Their faces, a mixture of curiosity and contempt I dare not interpret. […]
You are the one percent.
“Prices are set on the margin,” goes a general statement in economics and finance. It sounds a bit glib as an explanation for the current abject state of the global economy. How for the “want of a nail” could the battle be lost? Think of an airplane consisting of 100 seats which only breaks even […]
Terry Pratchett and the redemption of the Orcs
It was Sun Tzu who said, “Always leave an escape route for a surrounded enemy, for a soldier with no prospect of escape will fight with the strength of ten men.” A person with no escape has nothing to lose, they have lost everything already, and so they will take many with them. When I […]
Obama can't do "math"
Speaking in urgent tones from the Rose Garden at the White House, Obama rejected Republican arguments that his proposals amount to “class warfare,” saying it comes down to “math.” “It is wrong that in the United States of America a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax […]
Eager Keynesians vandalise and loot stores across Britain in order to stimulate economy
Samuel Maynard Hicks is a skinny and shy-looking youngster, yet his eyes burn with fervour in a face mottled with ash and dust. His fingers are blackened; soot and grime mark out his fingernails as his hands twist a dog-eared copy of “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes. “It […]
Torchwood – why global conspiracy plot tropes no longer work
In the final moments of Children of Earth, Captain Jack Harkness – sometime immortal, but really a “fixed point in time and space” – must make a terrible decision: sacrifice his grandson, Steven, in order to channel a transmission and destroy alien invaders. In so doing he will save 10% of the world’s children whom […]
S&R Honors
Click here to learn more about past honorees...- Profiling the Tea Party: In defense of the IRS. Sorta. Or not.
- Saturday Video Roundup: “Imagine the Band,” by John Lennon and Wings
- The Rest is Noise (6)—Descent into the Maelstrom
- I hate handguns, but I have still considered owning one
- Redneck jokes are racist
- Mystery Unraveled: How a white, moderate, married, churchgoing, middle-class, middle-aged woman could vote for Obama
- An open letter to Burt Rutan, regarding his WSJ commentary on human-caused climate disruption
- Meet the men of Match.com: Really, guys, are you serious?
- Climate scientists still besieged
- Pelosi on Bush: “He’s not worth impeaching”
-
Samuel Smith: One more thing. Re: Organizing for Action and othe…
-
wufnik: I tend to agree. There are a couple of other thing…
-
-
Jim Booth: May be much to what you say, here, Wuf. Think abou…
-
Frank Dilatush: Interesting Sam, I thought I spoke _directly_ to t…
