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Going Cashless
I’m in Harare this week, getting ravaged by its banking crisis. So when this popped up in my inbox, my thought was: how appropriate. Seems to me that the privilege of going cashless is reserved for those that have all the cash they could want, whenever they want it. Because choosing to forgo it? Well, that’s faith […]
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The Presumption of Competence?
Pygmalion, from Greek myth, was a Cypriot who found himself “not interested in women” after he saw the ladies in his home town prostituting themselves (it seems they had irritated the goddess Aphrodite, and her idea of punishment involved a loss of shame and their whoring to exhaustion). But somehow, Pygmalion managed to overcome his puritanical […]
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Hedonism: It’s Hard Work
I took a time-out this week to write a little something about holidaymaking for the girls across at travelwhores.co.za. Read it here: Holidays Rule: The Professional Guide I apologise in advance to any sensitive readers (and my mother): the appropriate tone required the occasional f-bomb. And while you’re rifling through the Travel Whores’s website and being […]
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Cities gone feral…
Note: this is an older post, but it’s a topic that I still think about. And unfortunately, my morning ran away with me, so I’m sharing it again. Have a great Monday. RA. BBC Radio 4 has a podcast called “Pop-Up Ideas”, hosted by Tim Harford (of “The Undercover Economist” fame). It’s admittedly a bit […]
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All The Diamond Advertisers…
Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s an old post on diamond advertising. I recently saw someone comment on Facebook about diamonds. Mostly, they were complaining that our diamond obsession is just the result of a massive advertising campaign by de Beers (here’s the link). Which may or may not be true, but it did make me […]
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Is it really a great time to buy a diamond?
According to a weekend article on moneyweb, “It’s a great time to buy a diamond”…even if “fewer people want one”. There is also this graph: Which basically says that polished diamonds are relatively cheap – as in “relatively cheap when compared to other luxury items”. So this takes me back to a Geneva auction in 2013, […]
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This issue of “Religious Liberty”
2016-04-06 As fiscal conservatives fall over themselves to keep religious liberty unregulated with yet more regulation, I’m just so endlessly bored. Although perhaps I should apologise for that, seeing as the obvious “Christian” thing to do here is legally enshrine the right to not bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. I mean, I’m a Christian, and I’m so obviously persuaded. […]
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