Card Skimming: How Safe is your PIN?

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs 2 Comments

In short, not very safe. After having my AutoBank Card cloned about five years ago, I know the stabbing numbing fear when one discovers amounts being surreptitiously drawn out of one’s account. In my case I suspect that the culprit was an ATM at Hillfox. I was suspicious of the machine but in a rush, I used it anyway. Last week it happened to friends but in a restaurant.

 So how safe is one’s money and what steps can one take to prevent the illegal cloning of one’s cards?

 Main picture: How does one know whether this ATM has been tampered with?

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Absurd Adverts Promoting Smoking from Yesteryears

By Dean McCleland in Health, Other Opinion Pieces 0 Comment

Once smoking bore the cachet of cool, elegance and sporting. Viewing the adverts of half a century ago they are so utterly laughable that it strains one’s credulity to believe that adverts would tout smoking as an elixir. Yet they did. Much like latter day adverts proclaiming miracle cures for obesity, their continued message is believed when manufacturers and human belief coincide.

Main picture: Amongst the many supposed benefits of smoking was weight loss

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Vitamins: Caveat Emptor Definitely Applies

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs, Health 0 Comment

Contrary to received wisdom, more vitamins are not better for one. Far from it. Mae West might have stated that more is better, but she was referring to sex and not to vitamins. The overconsumption of vitamins could be benign as in the case of vitamin C where the excess is merely excreted or it can be toxic in the case of vitamin A. Is the unregulated vitamin supplement industry unscrupulously opportunistic and is science able to substantiate definitely what levels are required?

Main picture: Is this the way that nature intend us to take our vitamins?

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Humans as Guinea Pigs in the Limelight again

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs 0 Comment

The ultimate litmus test of experimental drugs and technology is the human acting as a surrogate guinea pig. This is the gold standard. The recent fatality of a driver using an experimental Automated Driving System called Autopilot has brought this issue to the forefront of what constitutes ethical testing once again. 

Should testing standards ever be relaxed in order to fast track development such as occurred with this self-driving Tesla and what, if any, controls need to be implemented to ensure that humans do not perforce become the 21st century guinea pigs.

Main picture: The remains of the Tesla S which is at the centre of the self-driving vehicle controversy

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Genetic Engineering: The Genie is out of the Bottle

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs, Health 0 Comment

It is one thing to predict that a breakthrough is imminent but it quite another to actual effect that leap forward. After researchers with cheery optimism had cried wolf on numerous occasions, the scientists & technologists have finally found an inexpensive and undemanding method of editing DNA. 

How is this feat performed and will it be the panacea as predicted?

Main picture: CRISPR will be the game changer. The die is now cast and genetic engineering will now be a reality

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The Paradox of the Ethical Carnivore

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs, Health 0 Comment

In all likelihood I will be vilified by the Vegetarian fraternity for even posing the question of ethnics and meat eating. To them it is an oxymoron, a casus belli using their favourite weapon, the politics of rage by casting their views in melodramatic terms. Call me old-fashioned, even heartless, but I have no intention of banishing meat from my menu. This is not to say that I nonetheless face a moral dilemma. I have always concurred with the widely held view that it in spite of being bred for the pot, these animals must be treated humanely whilst being mindful of the ecological consequences of the methods in which they are farmed.  

 Herein lies the paradox as alluded to in the title of the blog and not the fact of eating meat.

Main picture:  Caring owl feeding an injured owl with 2 broken legs and a damaged wing estimated to be 1 year old. To find out more about this incredible bird go to its very own website at http://www.thecaringowl.co.za/

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Superb Quotes on Marriage

By Dean McCleland in Other Miscellaneous Topics 0 Comment

 

David Bissonette: 

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

 

Sacha Guitry 

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can’t face each other, but still they stay together.

 

Socrates

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.

Sigmund Freud 

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

 

Anonymous 

“Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”

 

Sam Kinison 

“There’s a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It’s called marriage.”

 

James Holt McGavran 

“I’ve had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and the second one didn’t.”

 

Patrick Murray 

Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you’re wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you’re right, shut up.

 

Nash 

The most effective way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once…

 

Anonymous 

You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.

 

Henny Youngman 

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

 

 

Rodney Dangerfield 

A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong.

 

Anonymous 

A man inserted an ‘ad’ in the classifieds: “Wife wanted”. Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: “You can have mine.”

 

Anonymous

First Guy (proudly): “My wife’s an angel!”
Second Guy: “You’re lucky, mine’s still alive.”

 

What it Means to be African

By Dean McCleland in Current Affairs, Opinion Pieces 0 Comment

The logical culmination of the unmitigated disaster that is South Africa at the moment and the lamentable performance or rather the continued non-performance of Jacob Zuma, has resulting in my casting about for explanations for the inexplicable vacuous behaviour of the ANC and many of Zuma’s appointees. This article by Prince Mashele in the Sowetan on the 9th May 2016 places one explanation on these events. If so, South Africa’s future is rather dire as it too will succumb to the fate that has befallen the rest of Africa. No wonder the world’s smart money is not on South Africa succeeding. 

Pictures:  Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens using my Samsung J5 cell phone this morning

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What a Wonderful World

By Dean McCleland in Inspirational 2 Comments

To this day, I can still recall when I first heard this haunting melody by Louis Armstrong. In all likelihood the reason why I can still recollect this moment so vividly is because it evokes memories of incessant pelting rain. The song, the magazine on WW2 that I was reading, and the dark foreboding sky, are all inextricably linked. 

This day was the 1st September 1968, the day of the raging floods in Port Elizabeth. 

These pictures evoke the same memories and evince the same response

 Main picture: Jet wash in the morning mist

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