Are you an Occamist?

Someone once quoted Shakespeare to the philosopher W. V. O. Quine: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The remark was meant as a put-down, a sort of "Yeah, what do you know?" To which Quine is said to have responded: "Possibly, but my concern is that there not be more things in my philosophy than are in heaven and earth." Quine was an Occamist.

On the other hand, I have heard that in an episode of The X-Files, Fox Mulder dismisses Occam's razor by renaming it Occam's Principle of Unimaginative Thinking. Let a thousand paranormal and pseudoscientific flowers bloom. Mulder is an Anti-Occamist.

Interesting post on Occam's Razor here.

For the kids

The 20 most loathsome South Africans: Number 17: The Real Realist

The real realist is the owner of a blog called “Why South Africa is crap”. It is supposedly dedicated to “revealing the truth about the failed South African 'Rainbow' nation and monitoring its decline into a Turd World Hellhole.”

In principle there is obviously nothing wrong with trying to dig up news that is for whatever reason not properly covered by the media. However, my problem with this guy and his blog already starts to manifest itself in, and is very well summed up by, his pseudonym, the name of the blog, and the nomenclature in his blog motto.

Firstly, his carefully chosen name. He’s not just a realist. He’s not even a real realist. He is nothing less than “the real realist”. Only he knows the “real” truth, he says.

Secondly, the name of the blog. He’s not saying that he feels South Africa is less than perfect. He doesn’t even stop at saying that to him South Africa is crap. He is stating that South Africa is crap as an objective fact. If you don’t think SA is crap, he says, you are simply delusional. He explicitly or implicitly makes it clear in every second post that he has completely given up on SA, and any person that suggests that they do not agree with him 100%, is thumped into the ground by His Greatness and his cronies. I don’t need anyone with such a childish, arrogant, stupid name telling me how to feel about anything.

Thirdly, the blog motto. The fatalistic “failed” I can handle, but the “Turd World Hellhole” is too much. Because it doesn’t just stop there, oh no. Any native of a poorish country is referred to as a “Turd Worlder”, by the Almighty Realist as well as his disciples. Certain human beings are said to be human excrement. What’s more, any non-white South African is referred to as a “New South African”. This guy categorizes on a level of detail only marginally superior to a newborn who is still coming to terms with the fact the universe can be divided into more than just himself and the rest.

He’s not even a good writer: his foremost tool in his comeback armour is the exclamation mark. That really is just about all he has to offer. It’s not unusual for him to refute a perfectly good argument with something like “Now you are talking complete bollocks! That’s hilarious! Your comments are stupid!” Just that, nothing else. The frustrating thing is that it is a very effective strategy if you’re trying to convince an idiotic readership. Most of them are simply angry, stupid racists that can’t get over the fact that a white skin no longer guarantees them the American Dream. They can’t think for themselves, so they assume that the odd comment expressing anything on the sane side of the Apocalypse must be obviously stupid if there are more than three exclamation marks in the Almighty Realist’s reply.

Case in point:

His Holiness The Real Realist misquoted a few numbers (a 50% weakening of the rand becomes 100%) regarding the ZAR/USD exchange rate, and promptly proclaimed with the conviction of a four year old with a new Superman costume jumping of fa roof: “I think I’m starting to see a pattern here”. Like he's understating an obvious fact.
He claims that since 1994 things have basically been going to shit, according to the numbers. The real truth is that there isn’t a pattern by a long shot, which I’ll demonstrate below. I tried to protest, but only got a relentless bombardment of exclamation marks in return.

The graphs below show some of SA’s most important vital statistics (excuse the horrible layout, I blame www.blogger.com). I don’t pretend to be an economist, but there is no pattern of regression in these numbers. The red parts of the graphs show SA’s progress since 1994 (when the new government was inaugurated), the black parts everything that happened between 1960 and 1994. (There is nothing special about the starting date, that is simply as far back as the data at my disposal goes.)

For the more technically inclined, the scales on the vertical axes are all logarithmic (the exact numbers are irrelevant), just to make interpretation more intuitive, and the horisintal axes denote the date. The straight line shows the trend in the data pre-1994, and extrapolates it to 2006. In simple terms: the straight line determines whether SA has made better or worse progress since 1994 (than between 1960 and 1994).

As you can see below, yes, the rand has weakened at a slightly quicker pace than it did in the Apartheid days. But if there’s any pattern, it’s a very positive one: the rand stood at something like R14 per dollar a few years ago, and now it’s at about R7. A remarkable recovery.

As the other graphs show, however, SA’s GDP growth and share markets (the ALSI represents about 99% of the SA equity markets) have accelerated, and inflation has decelerated since 1994.

No-one can deny SA has a lot of problems and faces a lot of challenges, and who knows where we’ll be in 10 years’ time, but the last thing we need is some idiot giving tens of thousands of us the impression that we’ve regressed in areas that we’ve actually made some very good progress, against all the odds.

dead people Mensa wishes had been members

Mensa must be the dumbest smart people on the face of this earth.

Case in point:

Since 1991, Mensa America has had the arrogance to induct defenceless dead people into its so called “Hall of Fame” (I’m sure these geniuses got this from baseball or something. America must be the only country in the world where artistic and intellectual pursuits imitate sports). According to wikipedia, they have thus far claimed the scalps of 14 famous intellectuals that have crossed over to the dead side:

· Nicolas Copernicus, Inducted 1991
· Marie Sklodowska Curie, Inducted 2005
· Charles Darwin, Inducted 1991
· Leonardo Da Vinci, Inducted 1990
· Thomas Edison, Inducted 2003
· Albert Einstein, Inducted 1990
· Euclid, Inducted 2005
· Benjamin Franklin, Inducted 1990
· Galileo Galilei, Inducted 1991
· Isaac Newton, Inducted 1990
· Louis Pasteur, Inducted 2005
· William Shakespeare, Inducted 2005
· Socrates, Inducted 2004
· Nikola Tesla, Inducted 2004

None of these people were actual members of Mensa, of course.

Notice how Shakespeare only cracked the nod in 2005. He must have been the subject of heated debate (“Yes his little stories are neat, but how did he contribute to the US bottom line and its quest for world dominance people? God Bless America.”)

How funny that the “High IQ Society” makes IQ tests look stupid.

Terror in the sky

Interesting article of the terror plot recently foiled in England here

UN is 'not Africa's messiah'

From news24

Johannesburg - United Nations special envoy to Africa Stephen Lewis "is not Africa's Messiah" and does not understand the country's HIV/Aids programmes, according to the health department.

"We reject with contempt the statement made by Stephen Lewis with regard to response of South African government to the challenge of HIV and Aids," said department spokesperson Sibani Mngadi in a statement on Saturday.

Mngadi said Lewis' comments should not be seen as the views of the UN and its agencies, which continued to work on HIV/Aids with SA.

On Friday, Lewis told the International Aids conference in Toronto, Canada, that SA could "never achieve redemption" for its HIV/Aids policies as 600 to 800 people a day died of Aids in SA.

Lewis said what the South African government was doing was "wrong, immoral and indefensible".

He accused the government of expounding HIV/Aids theories "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than a concerned and compassionate state".

SA government has tripled the budget allocation for the HIV and Aids over the last four years from just over R1 billion in 2002 to R3.5bn in 2005. This allocation constitutes 90% of resources currently being used to implement HIV and Aids in South Africa," said Mngadi.

He said Lewis should say whether any other country had distributed, as SA did, more 340 million male condoms and close to three million female condoms each year free of charge, or had put more people on anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment than SA had.

Mngadi said what Africa needed was not an "unsubstantiated attack", but delivery on the many resolutions made by international organizations and other countries on "addressing poverty and underdevelopment which increases the vulnerability of our populations to diseases".

I can tell you now, the UN is the most non-confrontational organization in the world. If Steven Lewis is shouting at Manto, it means he must consider her beyond diplomacy... Consummate diplomats do not get enraged easily.

What the UN does not understand is that these people are not evil per se, they are just uneducated and uncouth.

And yes, it can be as simple as that.

And in a totally related story: Manto gets a new Merc

For a scathing factsheet on this dumb as dirt piece of shit, please see the DA's Fire Manto site.

Science podcasts

Do any of you listen to podcasts much? After listening to one on Dr. Borlaug this morning on my way to work, I have decided to check out more science related podcasts. I have found one cool website so far, The Science Show. Tomorrow morning I think I'll listen to a commentary on Not Even Wrong - a newly released book highly critical of String Theory. I read about in the UK Times, via aldaily, and it sound pretty interesting.

I will probably also check out the topics of the formation of the solar system and plate techtonics.

Any other recomended sites?

Is calling someone a racist not racist?

This story is indicative of the politically correct bullshit pervading our society. Calling someone a racist should not be an argument in itself. Even if I say I think I am better than you, so what? You have your existence to prove me wrong. If a person is going to constantly invoke the spectre racism to win an argument, I will start thinking this person is an idiot, unable to have a dialogue or argue a point.

Its like the Dark Ages, when blasphemy was invoked to settle a dispute. I thought we were over that.

I guess not

Search Narratives

from wikipedia:

"On August 4th, 2006, AOL released a compressed text file on one of its websites containing twenty million search keywords for over 650,000 users over a 3-month period, intended for research purposes. AOL pulled the file from public access by the 7th, but not before it had been mirrored, P2P-shared and seeded via BitTorrent. News filtered down to the blogosphere and popular tech sites such as Digg and Wired News.

Whilst none of the records on the file are personally identifiable per se, certain keywords contain personally identifiable information by means of the user typing in their own name (ego-searching), as well as their address, social security number or by other means. Each user is identified on this list by a unique sequential key, which enables the compilation of a user's search history. In fact, in a test, of whether it was possible to do so, the New York Times was able to locate several individuals from the released, and anonymized, search records alone.

AOL acknowledged it was a mistake and removed the data, although the files can still be downloaded from mirror sites. Additionally, several searchable databases of the report also exist on the internet."

You can use www.aolstalker.com to browse these logs. It's interesting to see the narratives that appear in some of these people's search histories. Here are some excerpts from the user 14162375 :

14162375 marriage counseling
14162375 spy on the wife
14162375 spy recorders
14162375 signs of cheating
14162375 tracking cell phone numbers
14162375 dealing with cheating wives
14162375 divorce lawyers
14162375 cheating wives
14162375 saving a marriege
14162375 sex products
14162375 sexual techiques
14162375 www.americagreentings.com
14162375 stop your divorce
14162375 alchool withdrawl sintoms
14162375 disfunctional erection
14162375 cheating therapy
14162375 women’s urine blood
14162375 spy from a distance
14162375 listen through walls
14162375 car sound recorder
14162375 car conversation spy
14162375 spy on wife
14162375 phico card readers
14162375 st. petersburg fl medium
14162375 psychic
14162375 psychic st.pete fl
14162375 get my wife back
14162375 i want revenge to my wife
14162375 get revenge from a wife cheater
14162375 munchies
14162375 lisbon jobs
14162375 divorce and kids
14162375 my wife wants to leave me
14162375 how do i get my wife love me again
14162375 need help getting my wife back
14162375 i want my wife bach
14162375 i need my wife to get back to me
14162375 my wife doesnt love animore
14162375 i still live whith my wife can i get her bach
14162375 i want revenge towards my wife
14162375 making my wife suffer as i do
14162375 making even with my wife
14162375 get my wife back
14162375 foxsoccerchnnel.com
14162375 get my wife back
14162375 avoid breaking up
14162375 my wife doesn’t love me anymore
14162375 stop breaking up
14162375 get even with my wife
14162375 husband revenge
14162375 how to harm my wifes lover
14162375 infidelity
14162375 catch your wife having an affair
14162375 baby monitors
14162375 my cheating wife
14162375 i want to kill myself
14162375 suicide help
14162375 helpe me with suicide
14162375 i want to make my wife suffer
14162375 kill my wifes mistress
14162375 my wifes ass
14162375 a cheating wife
14162375 recording home survellence
14162375 audio room surveillance
14162375 www.cornerspyshop.com
14162375 get rid of cheating wives
14162375 sore muscules
14162375 make the infidelity suffer
14162375 i am so italian
14162375 the portuguese mafia
14162375 www.ymca.comportuguese mafia
14162375 www.airportugal


And user 2917636:

2917636 date rape
2917636 is it normal to cook you rfriend breakfast after he rapes you
2917636 the morning after being raped
2917636 sexual assualt

I'll be spending hours on this site.

The drug league table

The UK Science and Technology Select Committee, which advises the government, commissioned an assessment of 20 legal and illegal stimulants to examine the actual social and physical harm they cause based on scientific evidence. Here is the table they developed:



More info in New Scientist

Interesting to note that alcohol and tobacco rank higher than many illegal drugs that we were told by authorities will surely fry our brain, like LSD, pot and ecstasy.

Denial

From The Independant:

South Africa's Aids epidemic is driving a new health crisis in the country as women, fearful of appearing to be HIV positive, are becoming obese in record numbers.

Nearly one third of women in South Africa are now severely overweight, Tessa van der Merwe of the International Association for the Study of Obesity has revealed, as a combination of new fears and traditional, cultural factors encourage excessive weight gain.

"Regretfully, there is a perception that if a black woman is thin, she might have HIV/Aids," Ms Van der Merwe said.

Deep fry your fear in fat

Be an organ donor - get a South African driver's license

The other day when I received my renewed drivers license, I couldn't help but notice that the Organ Donor Foundation of S.A. found a perfect place to advertise:



Maybe the Organ Donor Foundation and the South African Traffic Department got some kind of deal going. Maybe they share the profits from the organs harvested from vehicular accident victims. That could at least be an explanation for the ridiculous road death toll we have in this country: almost 13,000 in 2004.

What a strange place.

The 20 most loathsome South Africans: Number 18: Pieter van Zyl (fat ref tackler)

What an ambassador to South Africa. Heck, to rugby in general ("Fans like me is what rugby is about... I'm not sorry that I did what I did”). He eternalized the stereotypical South African male to millions watching that fateful game of what was reportedly rugby. Till he shoved his disgusting weight around, the ugly, beergutted, hate-filled piece of Apartheid excrement masquerading in a Springbok jersey was nothing more than an abstract notion to those spectators.

Not that anybody should care what any rugby aficionado thinks, but still: that disgusting hairy beer belly and intoxicated idiotic eyes are now indelibly etched into the minds of even rugby-loathing foreigners who just innocently watched the news or read the next day’s paper.

Far be it from Mr. van Zyl to publicly apologize to his fellow South Africans (I don’t care about the ref so much, he was shit). Instead, he subsequently sues SARFU for banishing him eternally from all rugby parks. He feels hard done by this decision, did not see it coming at all. Felt it was unfair.

But did you know this: Mr. van Zyl is not some poor simple manual labourer or even the shady manager of a cash-only liquor store in Boksburg, oh no, he is a successful businessman who has reportedly made considerable dough in the mining business.

He’s a multi-millionaire. In itself a compelling argument in favour of communism.

Mr. van Zyl spends his time gallivanting the rugby world to get kommen dronk, swear, and shake his fist redfacedly at the ref and players who can’t hear him or see him, even if they wanted to, which they certainly do not. This is his life, I shit you not, I did my homework. I can only speculate that upon return to his ostentatious bad-taste-oozing "eclectic" mansion he beats up his god-help-her wife, who soon relents and performs her womanly duty.

It’s been an unfortunate few decades for white South Africans: First apartheid, now this guy. He should be taken outside and shot, or worse, he should go sit in Madiba’s corner, with The Very Best of Celine Dion (1986 - 1989) playing all the while. For at least an hour. Nonstop.

loss

What’s the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?

For me it was this dead creature I found lying in the middle of the road. I was driving back from my parents' place (since happily divorced), on my way to face another daunting week on Stellenbosch campus. This usually involved a relentless series of awkward and overwhelming events of sitcom proportions. I always spent the weekend at my parents’ in Somerset West, the idea of having a social life not yet having occurred to me. (How many people only discover and buy into the whole “going out and getting fucked” thing at 22 years of age? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.)

This was always the utter low point of the week. But driving my usual route (I fear uncharted territory), I got ready for my only respite on a post-Carte Blanche Sunday evening: a glimpse of my friends, two neighbourhood owls. They sometimes sat on this tennis fence in the yard on the corner of Buitenzorg and Oldenland, a block away from my house, other times on the higher of the two roads ten meters from where it flows into the one that meanders up the mountain.

But this time I could only see one owl, unapologetically sitting in the middle of the road with what seemed to be a smaller animal, a tender prey I presumed. As I got closer the visible owl flew away in its wide-eyed austere way, settling on the couple's favourite tennis fence. From there they have a clear view of the road and the little creatures that scurry underneath streetlights for food and shelter for the daytime, when humans come out to do their thing.

This is where my story takes a wrong turn. I drove past and stopped next to the lifeless animal. To my utter dismay, it perversely turns out to be the other owl. It was completely in tact, but must have been struck by a car, some fucker like me driving around the corner, on his way to some nowhere. I opened my door, and the car light that ingeniously automatically switches on upon breach of the perimeter, reflected on the still unsettlingly wide open, disproportionately large eyes of the bemused owl’s partner. It was alive and proud and magnificent a few minutes earlier, now it is dead, its being having irreversibly left an imprint on the neural pathways of its widow or widower, who will yearn in vain for its partner until the day it too must die.

Since then the place I grew up in has been sold to a foreign rich bastard who all but destroyed the 70-year old house called Buitenzorg (thus the street of the crime’s name). It was the the mansion of a farm-like setup, back in the day.

And so we all yearn for a previous state of things that can never be restored.

The 20 most loathsome South Africans: Number 19: Ferdinand Rabie (winner of first Big Brother SA)

Ferdi is the guy you hated in high school because he inexplicably managed to have a lot of sex,

but you didn’t mind it so much because you knew he would turn out to be a bald, hairy drunk who shits on his own lawn.

There’s something very wrong with a world that turns someone like Ferdi into a folk hero. He has no discernable talents, not to mention a speck of originality. If your counterexample is his trademark “Wakka wakka”, DO come on. Its utter lack of wit and the way it can be used in any situation only belies a dull, undiscriminating mind. I’m willing to bet that expression is in any case not even his creation; it reeks of the type of incestuous vernacular bred in any boys’ high school. Only he found it sufficiently amusing to choose to hang on to it for the duration of his life. Small things.

Jealousy doesn’t enter into it. If reality TV game shows have taught us anything, it’s that being unable to incite jealousy can get one a long way in your quest for 15 minutes of fame. His popularity is a direct consequence of the fact that it’s practically impossible to be jealous of him. How could one be jealous of a virtual caveman? That’s why people voted for him: give HIM the fame and fortune. That way, we’re still only jealous of n people. n+1 would be too much to bear.

Non-white or non-Afrikaans South Africans look at this anti-person and assume that this is what us white Afrikaans males are all about. That we’re a bunch of dimwitted troglodytes

that drink beer all day and can sit in a house for 40 days straight without saying one, solitary intelligent thing, intent on fucking proper English concord up the ass every half chance we get.

And that’s too much to bear. Don’t even think of telling me that I am being melodramatic. In my industry it is clear to me that those not within my demographic assume we’re simpletons until we have repeatedly and tangibly proven otherwise.

But I was wrong about Ferdi: he’s actually the kind of guy that binges and takes a dump on the most public of lawns,

one that is surrounded by 17 cameras broadcasting 24 hours on international satellite television. "What!? Ferdi just shat on the lawn!? That's so sweet! Quickly, somebody give the guy a million bucks!"

the blog profile

Selecting "favourite" artists for your blog profile is serious business. Your profile is your face and clothes in cyberspace, and should be given the same careful consideration, treated with the same care.

Many panic and actually select their favourite artists, the cyberspace version of not paying attention to the clothes worn by your peers, ignorant of what is obvious to the socially successful. You only end up looking like a child lost in an amusement park, too overwhelmed to laugh and play with the other kids.

This post should be seen as nothing more than a wakeup call. There is no static formula, that is the nature of any dynamic efficient market. Leniency should not be asked nor given, and pity is the kiss of death. You must make your optimal statement, where optimality should be a function of only your taste in people. Any other consideration is merely a distraction, there to lead the weak astray.

The rookie mistake is to include too many consensus artists in your selection, for example someone like Robert de Niro. Everybody knows Bobby (God rest his soul) used to be the king: you are making no statement whatsoever. Pointless, unless you only want to impress others who do not understand the subtleties of the game. Unfortunately most people find them uninteresting, even their own kind.

Of course, that's a rule of thumb. Like I say: there are no static formulas. Formulas can exist only fleetingly. Through their effectiveness and ability to spread they quickly render themselves obsolete.

A good example of the esoteric nature of the game then: breaking rule number 1 above can be very effective when a good mundane selection is artfully juxtaposed against an especially unconventional and cutting edge collection. This should not be attempted by just anyone.

Mere mortals to their eternal frustration sense a brilliant compilation, but they find the dynamic canvas too overwhelming to see the big picture at all clearly. They can never emulate such an assembly, and therefore respect and envy the mysterious statement made.

Ultimately there is just one way to be sure you have successfully crafted your portfolio: you attract the attention and approval of those who have blog identities that you find attractive, even if only on the surface. This is the only criteria, connecting with others is always the point. If it isn’t, you've come to the wrong place.

So a word to the wise: take the time, once a month (like I said it’s a dynamic, fast moving and unforgiving racket) to make sure your choices fit just right. Lure them into your consciousness, never allowing formulism to expose the limits of your artistic insight and foresight. And never trust anyone that says appearance doesn’t matter.

The 20 most loathsome South Africans: Number 20: Patricia de Lille

A face you can trust


Patricia de Lille deserves her place in the 20 most loathsome South Africans not because of her career, which in general was respectable, but because when the moment came to speak truth to power, she shirked, and in a grand betrayal chose power over truth. Her actions during the 2006 Cape Town municipal elections negated all that came before, and it is this moment by which she will be remembered. She is loathsome not for what she was, but for what she could have been.

In early 2000, the Democratic Party (DP) formed a coalition with the National Party (NP), named the Democratic Alliance (DA), in order to stand up to the dominant African National Congress (ANC). In the 2000 municipal elections, this coalition was able to beat the ANC in the most hotly contested municipality, Cape Town, with 56.5% of the vote to the ANC’s 38.15%. However, Martinus van Schalkwyk, that spineless last leader of the NP and traitor to the Afrikaner people, decided to cross over to the ANC on the promise of more of whatever it was he believes make a man. The actions of this liar, combined with the nonsensical floor crossing law, took Cape Town municipality away from its democratically elected council and gave it to the ANC.

During the 2006 municipal elections, everybody knew that Cape Town would once again be one of the most contested municipalities. Before the elections, many smaller parties, including the DA and Patricia de Lille’s newly formed Independent Democrats (ID) decided to put their differences aside in order to be effective opposition to the ANC.

On election day, this coalition was able to beat the ANC, thanks to so many of the members of small political parties refusing to be bought or intimidated by ANC rapscallions. Of the 210-seat council, the DA won 90 seats, the ANC 81, the ID 23, with the rest split between smaller parties, most of them backing the DA.

It was a good day for democracy in South Africa.

Enter the politician’s fear of death. Patricia de Lille had always prided herself on standing up to ANC domination, and up to this point in her career she had lived this promise. But straight after the results of the Cape Town elections were posted, the ANC approached De Lille with an offer that must somewhere have made reference to her eternal soul. They offered her a place in their fold if she sided with them, and the two-faced liar turned on a dime. Like Anakin choosing the Dark Side, she broke off from the coalition and walked over to her sworn opposition, just like that.

It all came down to the vote for mayor. As no party had a clear majority, the mayor would be the power player in the council. It all seemed over for the DP, as Patricia de Lille now backed the ANC’s notoriously incompetent and corrupt incumbent mayor, the dim-witted Nomaindia Mfeketo. Yet when the votes were counted, the coalition had miraculously won by the smallest of margins - 106 votes for the DA’s candidate Helen Zille against 103 for Mfeketo. There were efforts by the ANC and ID to disrupt the voting, but the dye was cast.

And Patricia was left out in the cold, without an ideological house to call her home. She tried everything to reverse the count, even calling for the city to be placed under provincial administration, but her lowly efforts were in vain. When the DA offered De Lille two seats in the 9-seat mayoral council, as would have been the case if De Lille had not betrayed the coalition, she responded with a demand for a change in government from the mayoral executive to the executive committee system, a move that would have excluded the smaller parties from the leadership fray.

At this late stage, having betrayed and been forgiven, she could not accept those who forgave her, because in them she could see what she no longer was: An honest human being.

And so the book closes on Patricia de Lille.

Introducing the 20 most loathsome South Africans

A few of us patterntubbers have compiled a list of the 20 most loathsome South Africans. Over the next few weeks we will be counting down these wretched individuals, posting on a new character every two days or so.

I hope you all enjoy

Withnail

While tying my shoelaces this morning (a feat that demands quite a lot of concentration from me, 4 times a day), I for no good reason whatsoever thought of the movie Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987). Although, I was feeling a bit defeated, and I suspect it involuntarily made me think of the last scene in this film. This is one of my all time favourites, so touching, that I have come to associate melancholia itself with a picture of a dejected Richard E. Grant in the rain, a bottle of wine in one hand, and an umbrella in the other. If not one of the best pieces of acting I’ve seen, definitely one of the most convincing.

This film is one of those where the sum is greater than the parts. No-one involved ever got close to emulating their work in this film. It all came together, like some parties somehow just “work”. And you remember them for the rest of your life, without ever knowing the exact source of your nostalgia.

Richard E. Grant (aka Richard G. Esterhuyse) delivers what is without a doubt the best performance of his career, while Richard Griffiths as gay “uncle Monty” is at once believable and ridiculously eccentric . “Danny” will go down in history as the dope head to end all dope heads, and the joint he smokes as the joint to end all joints (it literally looks like something you could beat your wife with). I’m convinced many millions of brain cells have perished as a direct consequence of Ralph Brown's uncanny performance. The chemistry between the Withnail and I characters, I have no doubt, is one of most compelling I’ve ever experienced in a movie. They are the ultimate odd couple that somehow just belong together, complete each other: McGann, the neurotic “I”, and Grant, the impulsive hedonist that just does as he pleases, a drunk who’s allergic to alcohol. Their incomprehensible (but 100% devoid of any pretence) relationship is an entity in its own right, almost an extra character in this movie.

I think what sets this comedy apart from most truly funny comedies is how it succeeds in creating some of the most eccentric comic characters without ever sacrificing the viewer’s inclination to feel genuine empathy for them. You ultimately realize this in the last scene.

Anyone who hasn’t experienced this gem is doing himself a great disservice. It is easy to see why it has managed attract such a substantial cult following. One of the ultimate word-of-mouth films, in the same league as the Big Lebowski, Donnie Darko, This is Spinal Tap or any cult classic for that matter. Any self-respecting dope head should see this movie at least 10 times.

But to get back to the final scene:

The “I” character had just heard that he had won the lead role in a play (they are both struggling actors), against all expectations (especially Withnail’s). Withnail walks his friend to the train station to see him off. It’s clear at this stage that Withnail knows that their paths will part and that it’s the end of an era: nothing will ever be the same again. A successful career awaits “I”, one that Withnail has long ago resigned himself to never having. But more sad is that he is losing his dear friend. Up until this point he seemed like he only cared about himself and drugs and alcohol, and that he’s the type of person who just takes life as it comes. You unexpectedly and suddenly feel extremely sorry for Withnail, because you find out for the first time that he loves his friend more than anything, and he is lost without him.

He is ultimately a tragic figure. Then, in my all time favourite monologue, the pathos is only compounded by the ironic brilliance of Withnail’s haunting rendition of a quote from Hamlet, alone at a park after dropping off “I”, and hence a rendition no-one ever gets to see:

"I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this mighty o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust. Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither."

consider yourself warned

Is it just me, or do advertisements and blurbs become more and more irritating as one gets older?

When you’re young, the concept of consumerism seems like a wholly theoretical construct (if you had even heard of it). It appears alarmist, the kind of thing only a paranoid schizophrenic concerns himself with. Of course, you’re soon disillusioned as you start to realize that everywhere around you are people and businesses that would do anything to make a quick buck off of you.

False advertising.

In my opinion the rules in South Africa are not anywhere near strict enough. For example, there is an ad on TV by an investment manager (I think Sanlam Investment Managers, but I might be wrong) that proudly says something to the effect: “So you’ll know EXACTLY what you’ll have when you retire.”

This is bullshit. There is no investment product out there that can tell you exactly how much you’ll have. I know this only because I work in the industry, but the average person will assume this is true and run off to the nearest Sanlam broker.

Then there’s the new JSE ad: “There’s nothing scary about investments”. I’m an investment analyst, and trust me, it’s scary. There are few things that scare me more than the equity markets. They are brutal. Ask those who invested everything in Di Data (there were many, and this kind of behaviour is encouraged by ads like these) and lost 25% in 2 months, 88% in one year, and 97% in 2 ½ years. It is irresponsible for the JSE to advertise to the average South African, plain and simple.

It’s easy to dismiss this as a boring and irrelevant issue, but do that at your own peril. One day, whether you like it or not, you’ll be 60, and you’ll want to retire. If your financial planner was incompetent (or shady enough to sell products that maximise his commission), it could mean that you will have to work until the day you die. It won’t seem as mundane an issue then.

I have spoken to many highly intelligent people who do not have the foggiest clue where their pension is being invested. Sometimes you’ll get a confident “Coronation”. So what? Coronation (or any other asset manager) provides 100’s of products, each appropriate for a different group of people. Not knowing where your pension is invested is like living in Johannesburg and sleeping with the front door wide open.

You do get guaranteed products. They generally guarantee you won’t lose money over a period of 5 years or longer. What they don’t tell you is that they guarantee your money back, not because they are so skilful, but because they invest a large portion in a government guaranteed zero-coupon bond. The rest is invested in growth investments, like equity. A sufficient proportion is allocated in the bond so that when the bond matures in 5 years, they could pay you back your money with the redemption amount, even of they completely lost the other proportion invested in the equity markets. This takes NO skill whatsoever. Not only do you pay an unnecessary fee for them to have no skill, you lose a lot of the upside potential you would have had had you been fully invested in the equity markets.

Now for the clincher: what they don’t tell you is that it is nearly impossible to lose money on the equity market if you keep your money invested in an index-tracking equity fund for a period of 5 years or longer. The All Share Index has backtracked over a 5-year period maybe once or twice in 80 years, and even when it happens, it’s unlikely that you’ll lose more than a few percent (i.e. more than the cost of the guaranteed product). If you get sucked into this product at the age of 25, by the time you’re 65, you could easily have a third of the pension you should have had if you were invested in the appropriate product. Easily.

So to recap on guaranteed funds: you incur costs and lose upside potential, for something you don’t need, and takes no skill whatsoever: Use THAT as blurb.

Another example: Outsurance and their “outbonus”. The outbonus isn’t some altruistic miracle. You don’t get an outbonus because they’re nice people. It’s simply priced into your premium. Simple as that. You pay them, they pay you back. But only if you’re good.

Then there are these ridiculous products sold as “life insurance that pays out something while you’re alive”. There is currently some TV infomercial that rants on about it, but I can’t remember what company it is. Again, this is included in you premium. You are paying for two products, you just don’t know it. They aren’t nice people, they’re insidious tricksters. You end up investing a portion of that premium in an investment that could be completely inappropriate, and losing a portion of that to unnecessary fees. All the average person thinks is "waita minute, I actually get money back? Jeez, that's much better than only getting money when I die, heck, count me in".

An inappropriate investment can easily mean that your retirement is deferred from 50 to 70. Think about that. Absorb it fully.