Is it just me or has there been a sudden wave of innovation in the techno-world over the past few weeks? It just seems as if there is, suddenly, a whole bunch of cool stuff I need to try. I am not normally prone to gushing, but I’d like to enthuse about three cool tech things that have captured my attention lately: a gadget, a great local bandwidth-busting internet service and a nifty, free piece of software.
The all new Land Rover Discovery is without doubt the most important new product from Solihull in decades. It’s also a genuine class leader, with a solid mix of hi-tech electronics complementing tried and tested 4X4 mechanicals to give it superb on and off-road performance. <i>Wheels & Deals</i> went to Namibia for the launch.
Twice over the past few years small black economic empowerment (BEE) deals in agriculture have trumped multimillion rand deals to win the BusinessMap Empowerment Awards. The latest is the purchase by Grasslands Development Trust of 100% of Grasslands Agriculture. This is the real deal, with the trust, comprising 49 Grassland Group farm workers, buying a 478ha dairy farm.
The radio had reported it. There was a war. Penguin, excited and nervous, ran to his fellows in Penguin Palace and shouted breathlessly: “There is a war, it’s on the radio.” Penguin Senior, an earnest sort of fellow with many worldly achievements under his daily, hand-tied, silk bow tie and chairperson of the World Penguins Trade Association, pressed his chest out and asked, “Where?”
The Vietnamese government has passed a decree to allow the punishment of people who discriminate against HIV-positive individuals in the country. This allows the government to fine anyone who, for example, publicises test results, names, addresses or photos of HIV-positive people without their consent.
"One of the things to understand when trying to comprehend what Japan is all about, is that it’s a formalised society, with multiple layers of rituals and traditions stretching back to a time when the Western world was still living in straw huts, making dung fires and thinking a distance of 5km was a long journey." Ian Fraser looks eastwards and tries to unpack Japanese culture.
”Forget the tabloids. South Africa’s small-town and suburban newspapers are where the best stories and writers can be found. I came to this appreciation as a judge in this year’s Caxton community newspapers competition. Take the tale told of the Van den Bergs, as recorded in the Randfontein Herald.” Guy Berger samples some of the pleasure premiums in SA’s small-town rags.
As a child I developed the belief that old age would be a glorious estate, a time of enlightenment and peace, and everything before — childhood, adolescence, the subsequent decades — simply the chaotic dues you paid before achieving geriatric nirvana. This belief has taken a knock with the news from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons that its fastest-growing market is pensioners.
Last week’s call by the United Nations Population Fund to governments to increase spending on reproductive health may prove to be hard for Kenya to implement. Kenya has no budgetary allocation for reproductive health. Concerns are mounting that without state commitment to provide family planning in Kenya, maternal mortality may continue to rise.
It is the early 1980s and I am eight years old. Two dark nipples are firmly stuck on my chest. I think of them as inconsequential parts of my body. I touch them when bathing and forget them as soon as my hand moves to more useful parts. Is there space to nurture and raise sexually confident children in a world where violation of girls’ and women’s bodies is common practice?