The M&G‘s Faranaaz Parker round up of five interesting things happening in the world while you weren’t looking.
NHI debate heats up
Medical doctors got a taste of reality TV on Friday morning during the opening session of a South African Medical Association conference on the National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme.
During a Q and A session at the tail end of the morning session, a doctor from Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital agreed with independent health and social security expert Alex van den Heever’s critical view and called the ANC’s NHI proposal “a romantic document” that was “not well thought out”, eliciting laughter from the other delegates.
Then, when Olive Shisana, who heads up government’s ministerial advisory committee on the NHI, was called on to respond to audience questions on issues such as staffing and funding, she first took time to rebut Van Den Heever’s presentation.
She questioned the validity of his data and said Van Den Heever was “working tirelessly” against the NHI and that, coming from an economics background, wanted a social security system for funding healthcare instead of an NHI. “How do we get you into the party to actually make a contribution?” she asked.
At this point the assembled doctors began mumbling among themselves and it wasn’t long before Shisana was being heckled to answer delegates questions instead of debating with Van Den Heever.
If this is anything to go by we could be in for some real drama when government’s proposal is officially released for public comment.
Youth league smackdown
The DA Youth this week tried to beat the ANC Youth League at it’s own game.
DA Youth chairperson Mbali Ntuli sent a statement out through the DA’s official media channels that was more reminiscent of a blog post than a press statement.
In the tongue-in-cheek statement, Ntuli follows Julius Malema’s logic concerning the nationalisation of the mines and university funding through to it’s logical — or rather illogical — conclusion.
Times Live posted the statement online soon after it was released. The story quickly leapt to the top of the website’s “most popular” list and racked up over 200 comments. In a youth league fight for publicity, perhaps this is a first round to the DA Youth.
Sweet Cheesus
“Grilled Cheesus” was trending on Twitter this week resulting in a flurry of posts from South African tweeters who felt left out of the loop. Well, blame perennially delayed M-Net or DSTV for your cluelessness.
The curious term is the title of the third episode of hit musical TV series Glee, which aired in the US this week. Season one of Glee aired in South Africa on M-Net earlier this year. Season two has yet to air.
Glee follows the lives of high school students involved in a school’s “show choir”. Think competitive singing and dancing, in costume. Both plot and musical selection are usually structured around a theme and this week the theme was religion.
When Finn Hudson, the school quarterback and glee club co-captain, sees the face of Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich, he leads the glee club on a gospel kick. Among the songs featured in the episode are Barbara Streisand’s Papa, can you hear me from the musical Yentl and REM’s Losing my religion.
Pirate greenies get cut-throat
Environmental activists always take the moral high ground. But now a damaging
scandal involving members of the anti-whaling group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has broken out.
The high publicity group, which is featured in the Animal Planet’s series Whale Wars, is renowned for its aggressive approach to protecting marine life. The group is known for interrupting seal hunts, destroying the large drift nets used in commercial fishing and ramming whaling boats.
Peter Bethune, captain of one of Sea Shepherd’s protest boats, has claimed that the organisation’s founder, Paul Watson, ordered him to sink their own boat following a confrontation with a Japanese whaling ship in order to win public sympathy. Watson has denied the allegations.
Given Sea Shepherd’s confrontational and aggressive tactics and its eye for the theatrical, Bethune’s story doesn’t stretch the imagination too much. It also feeds into the growing “crazy greenie” stigma and gives members of Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, which supports whaling, something to crow about.
It’s likely any damage done to Sea Shepherd’s reputation will be measured by Whale Wars, when it is is picked up for another season.
Science fiction becomes science fact
California-based engineering firm Berkeley Bionics caused ripples this week when it demonstrated the use of a bionic exoskeleton, dubbed eLEGS, which allows paraplegics to walk.
Now, the way New Scientist reports it, this news is exciting because it’s the first time an exoskeleton has been designed with the aim of restoring walking to paraplegics. This is opposed to existing exoskeletons, which augment soldiers with super strength.
Wait, what?
Yep, all those super-strong exoskeletons we’ve seen everyone’s favourite super heroes climb into — Ellen Ripley in Aliens, Wikus van der Merwe in District 9, Iron Man, Avatar? All old news apparently.
But back to helping people walk.
The current system — which resembles a backpack with attached leg-braces — is bulky and requires the use of crutches. Scientists hope that someday the system can be scaled down so that it can be worn inconspicuously under clothing.