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Is there some way to stop people saying "I hope this finds you well?" in their emails?

Readers of a certain age (in this case, I suspect this means anyone over 30 or so) will remember that there was a time when nobody started an email with the sentence “I hope this finds you well”.

Sometime in the last 5 or so years, some evil cabal has decided to tell secondary school pupils – and even (theoretically) fully-hatched people in the workplace – that all emails have to begin with…

Trusting ourselves after lockdown, and responses from the religious community to services being permitted again

South Africa will move to level 3 of our Coronavirus lockdown on June 1. More economic activity will be permitted, we can exercise anytime (within the curfew hours), buy alcohol, and attend religious services (in groups of 50 or fewer). We won’t be able to buy tobacco, even though the state’s case for this restriction is threadbare.

But even as the gradual resumption of something resembling…

Politics in a pandemic: the rationality of restrictions

South Africa has been under lockdown for seven weeks now, in what seems to be one of the most restrictive Covid-19 lockdowns anywhere in the world. And while most people I talk to still support the lockdown in general, there seems to be increasing dissent regarding some of its regulations – even outside of the Twitter echo chamber of outrage.

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Noakes and (threats to) vaccine-assisted herd immunity.

Professor Tim Noakes has published a response to Nathan Geffen’s criticism of a recent radio interview, where Geffen argued that Noakes was running the risk of misleading the public and “demean[ing] the scientific and medical community”.

One reason I haven’t written about Noakes for 18 months or so – despite his recent interest in climate-change scepticism, and his continued misrepresentation…

Concerns regarding the City of Cape Town's amendments to the management of public spaces by-law.

Last week, I suggested on Twitter that Capetonians might want to comment on the City’s “management of public spaces” by-law amendments before the deadline of May 17, but didn’t say why, hoping that people would read the amendments and decide for themselves.

But in case it’s useful, here is a short summary of my concerns. You are free to copy and paste them into your responses if you choose, or…

Who will we be “after” Covid-19?

When I was selling books on the floor of Olsson’s Books, an independent bookstore in Baltimore, MD 30 years ago, Robert Pirsig’s Lila: An Inquiry into Morals arrived in one of our regular shipments from the distributors. Lila was the sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1992.

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Today is day 10 of South Africa’s coronavirus lockdown, which has been implemented with a resolve rarely seen in our country, with the military deployed to assist the police in keeping people in their homes. Unfortunately, neither they – nor the police – are (in general) accustomed to much besides being authoritarian. They certainly don’t have a history of “shower[ing] our people with guidance…

Eusebius McKaiser (host of a show on Radio702) and I were meant to be part of a public discussion at WiSER(based at Wits University) on COVID-19 and its social implications later this week. The conversation was in the end postponed – not because of health risks (although that is now an utterly sensible reason for postponing), but because some people thought that a philosophical conversation was…

FW de Klerk, [some of] the DA, and crimes against sanity

Sometimes a technical definition of something matters significantly less than the demonstrable effects it has had. If Harvey Weinstein is acquitted of the various rape charges he’s facing, that would have no implications for the women he has abused (if he is indeed guilty, as I believe he is).

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The Democratic Alliance and its uncertain future

One of the few positive recent developments for the Democratic Alliance is the fact that Mbali Ntuli will be contesting for leadership of the party at their elective conference in May this year.

I say this because, as a current ex-supporter of the party, I’ve long been trying to persuade friends that there are still liberals of the “right” sort in the party, but that they are mostly younger…

Repealing Section 6 of the Civil Union Act

Friday December 6 is your deadline to indicate your support for repealing Section 6 of the Civil Union Act (via the Civil Union Amendment Bill), and you can do so by writing to Mr Zolani Rento (email) or Mr G Dixon (email). I’ve offered some reasons to support the repeal before, and repeat the invitation made in that post to copy and paste whatever you like from it in your submission.

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The Democratic Alliance “2.0” and how they have (allegedly) killed the liberalism of Suzman et. al.

With critics like Ismail Lagardien about, it’s not so obvious that political parties need to spend time defending themselves, rather than simply pointing to negative opinion pieces about them while trying to resist guffawing. This is because while much of what Lagardien says contains a kernel of truth, this contribution is hyperbolic – and prolix – enough that it would only entrench existing…

Bread from air: Fritz Haber, and the unpredictable outcomes of visionary thinking

We pick the narratives that we prefer. And if we find a guru, thought-leader or intellectual who speaks to our values and dreams, confirmation bias means we celebrate their successes, and forgive them their failures. In reality, though, they’re going to be the same mixed-bag as the rest of us, albeit often operating at a higher level of complexity and consequence than we are.

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Sboros on Noakes and academic “mobbing” at UCT

The text below was submitted as a letter to The Cape Doctor, a South African Medical Association publication for medical professionals in the Western Cape. In the August 2019 edition, Marika Sboros includes my name in some of her fantastical musings, and I felt that a rebuttal was in order.

Given that the publication is typically only seen by its subscribers, I post the text of that letter…

Zille vs. Haffajee on hate speech and the EFF

Before we talk about what the law says, we should talk and think about what sort of society we hope for the law to help create. The law is always going to be an imperfect tool for managing millions of often selfish, confused, partisan, and otherwise compromised humans.

So when talking about liberal values such as free speech, it is legitimate to ask whether past, current or future formulations…

Race-based party membership: Steven Friedman on BLF

Steven Friedman is right to say that BLF should be allowed to compete as a political party, even though they limit membership to black voters only. He makes this case in his Business Day column of July 31 (paywalled), but you can also read it on his Facebook wall.

The South African Electoral Act says that parties may not discriminate on racial grounds, and while that means the BLF is legally…

The glorification of violence, and the case of Andy Ngo

Early this morning, Quillette(a conservative-leaning online magazine, founded by Australian writer Claire Lehmann) editor and photojournalist Andy Ngo was the target of antifa (anti-fascist) protest while covering a rally in Portland, Oregon. The banner photograph is from when he was admitted to the emergency ward for treatment. He also had some of his photographic equipment stolen during the…