The latest Economist has an article on corruption in South Africa. It makes for pretty frightening reading.

Examples

The article mentions several high profile cases of corruption: Zuma, Cwele, Selebi, etc.

There is also discussion of several other examples of corruption.

• 400,000 civil servants getting welfare payments to which they are not entitled
• 6,000 senior government officials who failed to declare business interests and are awaiting disciplinary hearings
• 423 prison officials disciplined for corruption; 26 criminally charged
• 923 corrupt officials from the ministry of public works have been ‘brought to book’

Reasoning

Corruption among those in power is a human condition. However, it seems that ANC officials are especially prone to corruption.

Even Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, explains that too many “comrades” regard election to office as simply a chance to get rich.

The Economist also mentions that corruption in South Africa is exacerbated by “a culture of entitlement to compensate for past suffering under apartheid”.

In other words many in the ANC feel entitled to take their fill because of our history. As I have blogged in the past, a feeling of entitlement has been shown to make corruption significantly worse.

Silver lining

The ANC claims to be working on several corruption busting laws and measures including:

• Laws to facilitate swifter and reliable prosecution of corrupt officials
• A review of the ANC’s deployment policies which currently put people into jobs based on having the right connections instead of the right skills
• Tougher rules and more openness on the awarding of public contracts
• Better protection for whistle blowers who are often suspended for “poking their noses into smelly areas”

It seems like everyone is having a go at Jacob Zuma.

I believe that he is in the wrong. But it seems my reasoning is different to that of the majority of South Africans.

Unprotected Sex

By having unprotected sex with various women Zuma is setting a shocking example. He is selfishly risking the lives of his wives.

He deserves strong criticism because:

• It shows terrible disrespect to his wives. Zuma has literally risked the lives of his wives so that he could have a shag.
• It also sets a horrendous example to the men of a country plagued by rape and by HIV/AIDS.

For these reasons Jacob Zuma should be vilified.

Polygamy is not morally wrong

Many people are criticizing Zuma for practicing polygyny (one man with more than one wife).

But why is polygamy morally wrong? People assume polygamy is wrong but they seldom back up their conviction with reason.

If all parties are voluntarily entering the relationship I don’t see the problem.

Many people assume that polygyny is bad for women. In fact polygyny is beneficial for most women. Sharing half of the best man is often better than all of a bad man.

Monogamy benefits the average men, who would have no wives in a polygynous society. It does not help the average woman who could have a happier life in a polygynous society.

These women are voluntarily marrying Jacob Zuma. If they were unhappy then they would leave him.

Conclusion

• Zuma should be criticized for unprotected sex
• Zuma should not be criticized for having multiple wives

I’ve always been taught that different areas of the tongue are sensitive to different taste types.

Turns out that this is a lie!

All tastes can be detected all over the tongue.

The myth seems to have arisen due to an incorrect translation of a paper written in 1901.

During the 1930s some Himalayan Tahrs escaped from the Groote Schuur zoo near UCT. They bolted onto the mountain and lived happily up there for the next 70 years.

In 2004 SANParks controversially decided to cull them because they are an alien species and were causing damage to the indigenous species. I agreed with that decision.

But, I can tell you for a fact that they didn’t get all of them.

Yesterday afternoon I saw three tahrs grazing right next to the path on Platteklip Gorge. They were right above the site where I saw someone jump to his death exactly 2 weeks ago.

I was able to walk really close to them and they just looked at me. They’ve obviously forgotten about the culling almost 6 years ago!

I’m no Apple fanboy, but even I was looking forward to seeing what the Apple tablet was going to look like. It was announced last night and since then it seems the whole internet has been making fun of it.

With good reason.

This image basically sums it up:

Someone has also put together this parody video of Hitler reacting to the news. Hilarious.

It seems that for decades the world’s most successful directors have been taking out full-page ads to congratulate each other on records.

When Star Wars beat Jaws for the box office record Spielberg took out this ad congratulating George Lucas.

The tradition is explained in this Reddit comment:

“Later, after ET retook the record, Lucas ran an ad with R2D2 putting a crown on ET’s head.

Then in 1997 when the Star Wars Special Edition regained top-grossing spot, Spielberg’s congratulatory ad showed a long line of movie characters with R2D2 zipping past to the front of the line.

This ad of ET returning the crown to R2D2 fits in there somehow as well. I hadn’t heard of this one before toefer dug it up.

I guess it’s time for Jim Cameron to run an ad congratulating himself for beating his own record.”

This is my favorite version – the congratulations sent from Lucas to Cameron when Titanic took over the record.

The old anecdote says that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Economist has a fascinating article describing experiments into this effect.

These experiments show that there is in fact a causal link between power and corruption. Even more interestingly, they may point to the reason for this link.

How the experiments work

The researchers used “priming” techniques to make test subjects feel either powerful or powerless.

Once primed, both high-power and low power subjects were asked to rate the morality of various situations. For example the researchers asked subjects to rate the morality of cheating on taxes or of taking an abandoned bicycle.

The results

The experiments showed a significant difference in the judgments of high-power and low power subjects:

• High-power = Judge others more harshly than yourself
• Low-power = Judge others more leniently and yourself more harshly

Power does indeed seem to cause people to judge themselves more leniently than others – they are moral hypocrites.

The entitlement hint

It seems that powerful people not only abuse the system, they also feel entitled to abuse it. This proved to be an important hint and the researchers did more experiments to explore this entitlement.

In these experiments the subjects were primed again, but this time entitlement was split from power:

• High-power subjects who felt they deserved to be powerful
• High-power subjects who felt they did not deserve the power
• Low-power who deserved to be powerless
• Low-power who did not deserve to be powerless

These subjects were also asked to rate moral actions of themselves and others.

Again the powerless judged others leniently and themselves harshly. This was true whether they legitimately powerless or not.

As expected, those who felt entitled to their power judged others very harshly and themselves very leniently.

The interesting result is for those who were powerful but felt the high-power position was undeserved. These subjects were lenient on others but very harsh on themselves.

This was the exact opposite of the normal result for high-power test subjects.

The reasons why

Why would undeserving powerful people be harsher on themselves than others? That is the opposite of the usual reaction to having power.

The answer to that question provides an elegant explanation for the whole set of results.

Humans evolved living in smallish groups with dominance hierarchies. In such hierarchies all of the experimental results make sense.

Powerful (dominant) members of the band can get away with bending the rules (judging themselves more leniently). They should also deal harshly with anyone lower in the hierarchy taking a chance (judging others more harshly).

Powerless group members should be submissive – they should judge others (normally more dominant) leniently and themselves harshly.

When people from low in the hierarchy find themselves temporarily in powerful positions they are in danger of attracting punishment from the true dominants.

So they act extra-submissively by judging themselves extra harshly and being extra lenient on others.

It all makes sense!

Marie Claire SA just love what they call “The Naked Issue”. They get South African celebrities to pose naked in order to “raise awareness” for various charities.

I’m sure that it doesn’t hurt sales either.

My wife took one look at this image in the latest edition and said in a sympathetic voice “Oh no”. I thought the picture looked great so I asked her what could possibly be wrong.

Jules is a graphic designer and a perfectionist, so she noticed immediately that some poor designer had cut off Jeannie’s tummy. She pointed out that something looked funny about the stomach.

Even I could see (once shown) that the designer who cut off the tummy took things a little too far and chopped off some thigh at the same time.

It’s embarrassing for Jeannie D, but I strongly suspect that Jules was feeling sorry for the designer. And the editor that signed off the image.

This kind of mistake is Julie’s nightmare!

We all know that these images are retouched. But something like this just puts it right in your face. For instance, now I looked more closely and I strongly suspect that some of her bum has also been removed.

It all seems a little silly in the edition that is supposed to be natural.

The Economist has an article on education in South Africa. Some of the facts from the article:

• South Africa spends about 5% of GDP on education – more than any other country in Africa
• About 50% of students drop out before achieving a Matric
• Only 15% of Matrics get marks good enough to enter university
• The Matric pass rate has fallen from 73% in 2003 to 61% in 2009

The results are drastically different for white and black students. For example, matric mathematics results are enormously different between the two races.

The article goes on to speculate about the causes of these dismal results. Obviously the historical impact of Apartheid policies on black education is mentioned. The OBE initiative also cops some blame.

But why would results be getting worse even 15 years after Apartheid and despite affirmative action programs?

The Economist speculates that the appalling quality of teachers is also to blame. The article notes that teachers’ unions prevent teachers from being evaluated – a sure recipe for bad teachers. If someone isn’t evaluated on performance, then they aren’t going to perform.

Teachers really should be evaluated on their performance – just like the rest of us.

Yesterday evening I was near the top of Platteklip Gorge on Table Mountain when I saw someone fall to his death.

It was an insane moment. I almost literally didn’t believe what I had seen.

It was a little after 5PM and I was about 10 minutes from the top when I heard what sounded like rocks falling above me. I looked up and saw a person tumbling through the air and landing with a very load crack about 100m up the slope from me.

A few more rocks fell, some birds went nuts, and then there was just silence.

There was another hiker just down the slope from me and we looked at each other for a second.

He said: “Did you see that?”

I said “What the fuck! Holy shit!” and then we both started walking upwards.

The body landed about 3m from the path but I missed it the first time (luckily it wasn’t easily visible). The result was that the other guy (Michael, a British tourist) and I arrived at the body simultaneously.

It was a surreal moment.

I knew what I was seeing. It did sink in. I’d just seen someone fall to his death and the injuries were truly horrific.

But we were both very calm. No freaking out, no puking or feeling sick. No shakes, or stuttering. Just calm.

I pulled out my phone to call mountain rescue but had no signal so another hiker who had just arrived called from his phone.

Then we just sat down to wait.

I became worried that he was still alive and we weren’t helping, so I went back to check his pulse. I didn’t need to check. His injuries were very extensive and he was very obviously already dead.

A while later two people leaned over the top of the cliff and started shouting down to us. They said that they had found a backpack and a suicide note. That actually made me feel a lot better.

A little later the mountain rescue chopper flew up into the gorge and winched down a medic. I went to help him with his kit and showed him where the body was.

“Victim is blue. Repeat, victim is blue.”

Without going into details, the mountain rescue guy (also named Mike) was extremely professional and took over the scene. He radioed in for more assistance and offered us trauma counselling before sending us all down the mountain.

All of the emergency services guys were very professional and seemed very organised. It’s great having pro’s like that around.

The only exception was that nobody could find a body bag. It was already quite dark and the evening wind had started pumping down Platteklip so the chopper couldn’t go back in there. Consequently they weren’t able to bring him down until morning.

I’ve chatted to the cops this morning and it seems that this was a desperately unhappy old man who was determined to end his life.