Monthly Archives: April 2024

Spectre of ANC-EFF coalition: Low probability, high anxiety

After the fog of war lifted from the industrial-scale slaughter which characterised the killing fields of the First World War, which ended in 1918, a psychoanalyst offered an acute observation. Sometimes, he suggested, the difference whether a soldier was awarded a medal for gallantry or was executed for cowardice, "depended in which direction the person [...]

Cough syrup slogan saga: Lessons beyond health

The political history of South Africa during the apogee of apartheid in the 1960s and early 1970s is well canvassed, even if interpretations remain deeply contested. Less attention is paid to the cultural dimension of living under a dour state-imposed Calvinism – no television, no Sunday sport or entertainment, and a draconian censorship regime which [...]

Whom you plan to vote for is a small question that has massive implications

Last week's death of social psychologist Daniel Kahneman, 90, was commemorated by economists across the world even though he never studied economics even as an undergraduate. But he did win the 2002 Nobel Prize for economic science. Puzzles, biases and paradoxes were core to Kahneman's insights. In fact, he, along with his lifetime collaborator Amos [...]

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