The Economist has an article on Zuma, South Africa, and the recession.

Summary:

• The current recession means that many of Zuma’s grand campaign promises are falling aside
• This is causing serious problems among the impatient poor masses
• It is also causing problems among his powerful left leaning COSATU and communist allies
• The fact that Tito Mboweni is leaving (suspiciously timed) suggests that perhaps Zuma is giving in to pressure
• It will be crucial to see if Zuma is able to “hold his left-wing allies in check” during the recession

In short, my take is this:

South Africa is full of poor people (40% of our population is below the poverty line).

These poor masses are impatient to improve their lot. They also believe that this is their right and will happen fast.

• Many believe their current situation to be the direct result of past injustice
• They have all been promised quick and drastic change by the ANC

With good governance and hard work their lot should improve – but only over time.

This is a problem because:

• We do not have good governance. Especially at the extremely important municipal level we often have shockingly bad governance
• The ANC promises unrealistic and quick results. Zuma made lots of mad promises during the campaign which are now falling by the wayside

So we have an already impatient, poor and jobless population being continually disappointed you surely have a recipe for unrest and possible disaster?

These days reading content online can quite a pain. The content that we want is lost in an ocean of junk (see image).

On top of that every site has different text styling, text sizing, etc, etc.

I recently came across a great solution: Readability.

Readability is a ‘bookmarklet’ that will update any site you’re looking at to be more readable.

This is how it works:

1. You choose some preferences up front (i.e. font size and type)
2. Drag the link provided onto your browser links bar
3. When you’re reading a site with a lot of gunk hit the bookmark
4. Readability will update the site to make it more readable

Basically the program will go through the page and extract the ‘content’ and then show only that content according to your formatting preferences.

In the example image here Readability would find the blue block and then show then content of that block according to your preferences.

Because the program must figure out which content is relevant this process doesn’t work every time. Some sites are not compatible.

That said, I find Readability very useful and often make use of it.

This article reports on an experiment investigating the impact of various photos in lost wallets.

240 wallets were distributed on the streets (in Britain). Each wallet had the same random items in it, but no cash.

The only difference was a single photo included:

• Photo of a baby: 88% of wallets returned
• Photo of a puppy: 53% of wallets returned
• Photo of a family: 48% of wallets returned
• Photo of an elderly couple: 28% of wallets returned
• Card showing recent charity giving: 20% of wallets returned
• Control with no extra items: 15% of wallets returned

Even in such a small experiment the baby photo obviously had a significant emotional impact on those who found the wallets.

Irrational human nature at work again.

Google has just announced that they are developing an operating system for release in 2010. When it comes to Google nothing surprises me anymore!

The Idea

The idea is to create a simple, fast and free operating system for users who do everything online.

Windows is bulky, complex and fragile because it was developed for a world where each computer must bundle everything the user needs.

The Google OS is being designed for a world where users do everything online. By removing the bulk and complexity you get an operating system that is very fast, secure and stable.

Why it will work

It is important to note that the Google OS is currently targeted at netbooks (tiny, cheap, portable laptops). This is the perfect market for an OS like Google’s and it should pave the way.

There are still plenty of reasons to think that Google’s operating system is stupid.

1. We need Word and Excel

Meet Google Docs. Google and others have developed replacements for the essential desktop tools. Word, Excel, calendar, email, Powerpoint – they’ve all got working online replacements. It’s no coincidence that Google just brought Google Apps out of beta.

I’m even writing this text online – not in Word!

2. What if I’m offline?

Even in an increasingly wired world we are sometimes going to be offline. What then?

Meet Google Gears. Not many people know it, but Google has produced software that allows web applications to be used even when offline! Gears is still in it’s infancy, but it when applied correctly it works.

3. Net speeds are increasing all the time

To really work we need bandwidth and lots of it. Luckily that is happening anyway (although not fast enough in South Africa)

Why are they doing this?

Google is releasing the operating system for free and open source. They’re doing us a huge favour for nothing! Why?

Google needs us all to be online. They want a world where everyone does everything online where they dominate. Fine by me.

In the wake of the recent miracle survival in the Yemenia Flight 626 crash I came across this even more amazing crash survival.

Summary:

• In 1971 Juliane Köpcke was in a plane that broke apart 3km above the Amazon jungle
• She found herself in free fall while still strapped into a row of seats – she remembers seeing the jungle spinning below her
• She landed in thick jungle and lost consciousness
• She woke up the next morning with cuts, concussion and a broken collarbone as her only injuries
• She knew that her best hope was to follow a river downstream which she did for 10 days despite her injuries and having almost no food
• Eventually she was found and rescued by Peruvian loggers

That’s pretty amazing stuff!