It’s always a tough question to answer: What exactly do you do, the day after a wild party, when you have drunken and unconscious friends lying around your place? Do you leave them alone and let them sleep it off? Or do you take advantage of the fact that they are unconscious, to play with them, decorate them and make them look stupid — and then take pictures to show everyone on the internet?
With new technology on the horizon and the presence of big-name multinationals in the local media research space, can we expect vast changes in the structures and methods of media measurement? Kevin Bloom investigates.
The question was put by a Thai official who wanted to know why none of the networks had put out an alert. They all have full-time meteorological expertise, all have people who know (or should know) that an earthquake of such magnitude out at sea causes a tsunami.
Pity business owners, especially agricultural. On top of all their woes, they are being asked to contribute to the national effort to reduce unemployment. The free market, driven by competition, is by and large the only way goods and services can be efficiently made and distributed. The agricultural sector faces a difficult balancing act in unpredictable markets.
The eyes of the Anglican world, Christianity’s third-largest denomination, were last week focused on an agreeable Victorian Italianate mansion in Northern Ireland. Anglicanism’s biggest cheeses — 35 of its 38 primate archbishops and presiding bishops — were sequestered inside, supposedly praying about the church’s future. This urgent desire for a united Anglicanism is a recent development.
With almost half the Cabinet comprising women, the face and shape of power has changed in South Africa. Many of the women lead the clusters, the groupings of individual ministries through which policy implementation increasingly takes place. The country is a world leader in female public representation and last week’s briefings by the full Cabinet provided an opportunity to assess their performance.
In mid-January, British Chancellor Gordon Brown went to Africa in a bid to relieve the locals of the burden of their debt and Britain from the burden of its history. ”The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over,” he argued. But the truth is that the atrocities committed in Camp Breadbasket were as consistent with Britain’s colonial tradition and invasion of Iraq as Brown’s statements are with our post-colonial amnesia.
The men’s magazine market is vigorously over-traded. If you’re white, that is. Still, Sean O’Toole wonders whether SA’s new majietas’ title really is a major departure from the formula.
I wonder if the education big shots – those with the lion’s share of responsibility for the education system – sleep well at night. If I had their portfolios, I don’t think I would. The interminable list of education shortcomings, coupled with the hard fact that the lives of youngsters – and the future of our nation – are at stake, would keep me tossing and turning in a cold sweat.
There is a growing tendency in the news media to write on President Mbeki’s successor. This is little more than idle speculation.