tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55979062024-03-13T15:45:26.162+02:00OpinionationsPhilip Machanick’s views on the worldPhilip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.comBlogger205125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-41777341846093186012022-12-06T20:20:00.002+02:002022-12-06T20:20:06.675+02:00Was Ramaphosa Set Up? The report by the Section 89 Independent Panel headed by retired judge Sandile Ngcobo raises more questions than it answers. The difference between the Arthur Fraser version and the Cyril Ramaphosa version is intriguing and hints at many possibilities. I explore one here: what if Ramaphosa was set up? Was it a dirty trick by the Zuma camp to entrap him? If so: should we feel sorry for Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-33583112665861908242021-02-18T12:50:00.004+02:002021-02-18T12:58:20.743+02:00Facebook outYou may be wondering why when you try to use the Share on Facebook button, you get a message like “Your message couldn't be sent because it includes content that other people on Facebook have reported as abusive.”I’ve been wondering too.Either Facebook’s AI is broken or malicious actors have reported the site.I’ve been getting this since March 2020 and Facebook does not respond to requests for Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-23537056666042892932021-02-14T13:09:00.000+02:002021-02-14T13:09:12.939+02:00Trump’s New Clothes?That was remarkable. Trump’s lawyers managed to increase the number of Republicn Senators voting against him. Who knows if they could’ve pulled off the impossible and got him convicted if they kept going.The Republicans now have a huge problem. The Trump carbuncle is not lanced. No, I don’t mean this Lance Carbuncle.But what I wonder the effect is on his base, particularly the hundreds facing Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-36828803093381151232020-11-01T10:32:00.009+02:002020-11-03T14:15:49.876+02:00A novel experienceA few days back, I published a new novel, The Superpower, on Amazon.Why do I self-publish? Partly because this is a hobby: it would be grand if one of my books turned out to be popular, but I do this because I like doing it, not to get rich. I want to do things like mix US and UK spelling (partly out of personal preference, partly because I have characters of both origins and also to give readersPhilip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-63608822674012749942020-03-29T12:29:00.000+02:002020-03-29T17:24:05.862+02:00How America Dies
US “conservative” values that prioritise economy over lives are risking both.
Since 9 March 2020, over 90% of new US COVID-19 cases have occurred over the previous 10 days.
Stop and think about that. EVERY DAY, count back 10 days and the total new cases is over 90% of the total EVER reported in the US (up to that day).
This is why US hospitals will saturate. This is also why the death Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-57930375670308747102019-12-13T09:47:00.000+02:002019-12-13T09:47:36.251+02:00The Little Britain Election
We wake up today to the Democratic Republic of Little Britain.
Vladimir Putin, whose career in the KGB topped out at Lieutenant-Colonel, was a bit player on the Soviet side of the Cold War. The strategy was to undermine Western rivals by selling socialism as the alternative to capitalist exploitation. This message resonated most strongly among the poor. The response in the West was Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-76194127115450792412019-08-02T17:07:00.001+02:002019-08-02T17:07:57.244+02:00Economics of climate: Step back from ideologyWhat is economics, in essence?
It is an optimization problem. You choose your measure of interest and make it as good as possible.
From there, opinions vary. What is your measure of interest? Some say growth – the rising tides raise all boats crew (they have never had a leaky boat). Others say equity – inequality they say is not an acceptable price for growth. Sustainability is another measure:Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-56909622763852679022019-04-22T20:09:00.001+02:002019-04-22T20:09:57.933+02:00Tiramisu
Ladyfinger biscuits highly discounted – what are you going to do?
250ml cream
250g mascarpone
75ml marsala
5 tbsp sugar
2 shots of espresso
200g pack ladyfinger biscuits
100g good dark chocolate
Whisk the cream, sugar, mascarpone, marsala and sugar vigorously until the mix comes together and the cream thickens.
Line a bowl with the half the biscuits and drizzle over one shot of Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-91987544849823575002018-12-17T15:29:00.000+02:002019-04-03T12:30:52.515+02:00Strawberries and Cream Ice Cream
Finished product; ice cream maker in thebackground
Summer – Ice Cream Time
But what to buy? The commercial stuff has suss ingredients. What’s palm oil? Scraped off workers’ palms? Here’s mine.
Ingredients
Custard
350ml milk
150ml cream
3 egg yolks
100ml sugar
Cold ingredients:
250ml cream
250g frozen strawberries
Method
Make the custard.
Set up a double boiler (or Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-15121993839476376532018-10-08T13:10:00.000+02:002018-10-29T09:29:00.524+02:00Liberation from Trump
Why do Trump supporters accept or overlook his constant lying?
I liked my Quora answer (see link on the question) so here it is again…
A way to look at it is to start from the distinction between lying and bullshitting.
Lying:
construct a consistent narrative that distorts or replaces facts with
falsehoods. A liar is vulnerable to fact checking. Kavanaugh is a case
in Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-4855569096106025982018-09-30T10:01:00.000+02:002018-09-30T10:09:38.269+02:00Kavanaugh: What does the FBI need to investigate?How much investigating does the FBI need to do to determine that Kavanaugh is not suited to the US Supreme Court?
Exhibit #1: his 1 July calendar entry with the rather obvious smoking gun. Why would be be going for “skis” with a list of people Ford said were at the party if she was mistaken about details or making it all up?
No way she could have seen the calendar in advance.
So I Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-31688062712057441202018-06-08T17:23:00.000+02:002018-06-08T17:23:29.700+02:00Solve the right problem – dustless chalkHere is a lesson on how not to do new tech. Make sure you know first what problem you are solving.
Chalk was the greatest educational technology ever. You can write anything with it, draw, do arbitrary mathematical notation, correct as you go.The only real problem is that it makes a lot of dust when you erase.So: we need dustless chalk.Instead, they gave us whiteboards. Slightly less erasing Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-90852872320047667612017-12-24T09:07:00.000+02:002017-12-24T09:07:52.936+02:00iPhone slowdown: class action against predatory lawyers?Some people are threatening a class action lawsuit against Apple after the company admitted slowing iPhones down to protect them against sudden shutdown when the battery is weak.
Apple’s biggest mistake was failing to announce this feature to users. For those who want speed at all costs and don’t mind the risk of the phone suddenly shutting down, maybe Apple could provide an off switch for the Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-40881873886271160672016-06-27T10:04:00.000+02:002019-09-19T10:57:28.642+02:00How Brexit Broke BritainThere has been a lot of analysis of the Brexit vote; this article is one of the best.
What is missing is the peculiar dynamics by which the position of a party that scored less than 13% of the vote in the 2015 general election and only won one seat was able to secure over 50% of the vote in a referendum on the position they were advocating.
The Tories won about 37% of the vote in 2015 so even Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-70593740563779665962016-06-25T17:12:00.000+02:002016-06-25T17:12:10.092+02:00Vegetarian Panna CottaThe secret to good panna cotta is powdered agar-agar. Agar-agar is a gelling agent derived from algae (usually seaweed). You can also use gelatin, though gelatin is made from animal parts and can also be tricky to work with.
Here is my formula; scale it down if you want a smaller quantity. Some recipes substitute milk for some of the cream.
1 litre milk
300–400ml sugar, depending how sweet you Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-28723200977992419442016-06-18T19:24:00.000+02:002016-06-18T19:24:53.708+02:00Of Clubbing Springboks and Other Unspeakable Crimes
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Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-87144810814614779602016-04-22T22:47:00.001+02:002016-04-22T22:47:21.591+02:00How Justice FailsAt the university apparently still called Rhodes over the last week, there have been some disturbing events. A group of students published a list of 11 names of alleged rapists, and attempted to ferret them out of university residences. Protesters also invaded lectures and barricaded streets.
When vigilante justice arises, it is usually a consequence of the failure of regular justice. So you Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-48243272118789805802016-04-01T08:42:00.001+02:002016-04-01T10:30:12.964+02:00South Africa adopts new currencyTshwane, 1 April 2016 – The South African government today announced at a press conference that South Africa is to rename its currency. The rand will be replaced by the gupta, and the cent by the zuma. Treasury has produced a sample image of the new 200 gupta note to illustrate the changes. Present were President Zuma, representatives of Treasury, present and former Finance Ministers and Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-52965991245934351272016-03-12T17:00:00.003+02:002016-03-12T17:00:49.584+02:00How education theory could be used to help shape genuine democracy
How education theory could be used to help shape genuine democracy
Philip Machanick, Rhodes University
Come 1994, many South Africans assumed that the official end of apartheid meant “job done – we are a democracy.” But despite an excellent constitution and world-class public institutions, the country looks increasingly dysfunctional.
So if a great constitution and carefully designed public Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-53721901944090743562016-03-05T09:24:00.000+02:002016-03-06T18:04:38.510+02:00The Great Right Wing Attack on FeminismRight wing sites and their followers on social media love bashing feminism. The usual tactic is to highlight some extreme action or statement as if it is all feminism is about. Sometimes this is made up or something more reasonable is taken out of context – but any movement has adherents who take things to an extreme. If you take those extreme events – whether imaginary, exaggerated or real – as Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-52173820043815301482016-02-23T19:45:00.003+02:002016-02-23T19:45:56.399+02:00The Survivor Fallacy
Survivor Bias
Survivor bias is a particular kind of logical fallacy – if you only recount the experience of the survivor, you leave out the victim. It is part of a wider sort of fallacy that I call survivor fallacy – basing your theory of the world on only looking at evidence of survival.
In a certain sense, there is value in only looking at who survived because that represents a kind of Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-75910868199357350622016-01-04T19:56:00.000+02:002016-01-04T19:56:19.472+02:00The Missing MiddleI present some thoughts on why political opposition to the ANC is failing to make much of an impact on the ANC’s support base.You need to take care not to lump all ANC supporters together.The rural poor have had genuine advances: running water, RDP houses, fuller schools. That the water supply is unreliable, the RDP houses fall apart and most of the schools are little better than day-care centresPhilip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-27867135806099978632015-12-06T11:44:00.000+02:002015-12-06T11:44:47.551+02:00A Tale of two Window 10sRhodes University donated a very old PC to a local NGO and I set it up for the NGO. Though my preference is the free software route the practical reality is that I am not an NGO supporting NGOs so the easiest thing is to install what they are used to and that enables them to share documents with others, and that means Windows and MS Office.The machine came with XP and that is a concern because itPhilip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-48019262992404235802015-11-17T18:15:00.000+02:002015-11-17T18:15:52.096+02:00Muddle EastSome have responded to the recent Paris atrocities by saying, “So what? The People of the Middle East are suffering far worse at the hands of the West.”
You can feel bad for the people of Paris and still point out the hypocrisy of allowing Syria to be torn apart without a whimper of public protest, or 300 African schoolgirls disappearing with only moderate protest, or so many other appalling Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5597906.post-38300644457639087612015-11-17T03:47:00.000+02:002015-11-17T03:47:50.111+02:00Yale: It’s About RacismI am on a short visit to the University of Michigan during my sabbatical and all hell is breaking loose at university campuses including Yale, where there have been angry protests.
Back home, campuses have been in turmoil over protests against institutional racism. I hardly expected US universities to emulate this to make me feel at home, yet here we are.I read the original Yale email and the Philip Machanickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03164887573361181817noreply@blogger.com0