More ways in which America is unquestionably superior to South Africa

1. Washing machines. Reading Noah's comedic masterpiece about handwashing stuff made me appreciate once again what a magnificent appliance the washing machine is. I bow down and give thanks to the mines, the iron smelters, the steel foundries, the (probably) Chinese manufacturers, the 104,400 ton freighters, and the national transport system that makes it all possible. ( Dryers, on the other hand, seem to me to be mainly an expensive waste of electricity. Wet clothes are why God made the sun.)

2. Low crime. By developed world standards, America is a rather violent place. But in my corner of Colorado, we sleep with the doors and cars unlocked. That is simply unheard of in South Africa, and it's quite the psychological relief to not be constantly looking over your shoulder. It's the kind of thing you don't really notice until you stop doing it, like a muscle you didn't realize you were constantly clenching. (I'm moving to DC though, lets hope I don't get beat up by random douchebags.)

3. Road construction. I remember some road repairs in South Africa that had started before I got there in July 2009 and weren't even close to finished when I left in August 2011. Here I saw a road resurfacing out here in the boonies that, though it was a fairly simple and small project, was finished in about three days. I never saw anything even get started in that time in South Africa.

I know I was saying South Africa's got the edge when it comes to dynamic governance, but by that I meant that they try and do big, ambitious projects. Because it's South Africa, once they're started, it probably takes quite a bit longer than it would here, but at least they're trying. Here we've got way better construction crews and the like, we've just got a "can't do spirit" that precludes basically everything except desperately needed repairs.

Comments

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actually b

Varanus albigularis albigularis

That is the Latin name for the white-throated monitor lizard , a large reptile native to southern Africa that can grow up to two meters long (see pictures of one at the Oakland Zoo here ). In Setswana, it's called a "gopane." I saw one of these in my village yesterday on the way back from my run. Some kids from school found it in the riverbed and tortured it to death, stabbing out its eyes, cutting off its tail, and gutting it which finally killed it. It seemed to be a female as there were a bunch of round white things I can only imagine were eggs amongst the guts. I only arrived after it was already dead, but they described what had happened with much hilarity and re-enactment. When I asked why they killed it, they said it was because it would eat their chickens and eggs, which is probably true, and because it sucks blood from people, which is completely ridiculous. It might bite a person, but not unless threatened. It seems roughly the same as killing wolves that

Internet Writing and the Content Vacuum

It's been a few times now I've had full weekday control of the Monthly 's headline blog, Political Animal, and I feel like I have a decent idea now what it's like being at the top level of blogging. (Not to say that I am at the top level, of course, just that I've walked in those shoes for a few days and gotten some blisters.) Anyway, the first thing I've noticed is that it is really, really hard to do well. I've had days before when I just didn't have anything to do and ended up at home writing 4-5 posts in one day on this site, but pro blogging is an entirely different beast. The expectation is that during the day you will write 10-12 posts. This includes an intro music video, a lunch links post, and evening links and/or video. So that means 7-9 short, punchy essays on something , with maybe 1-2 of those being longer and more worked out thoughts. This ferocious demand for content is both good and bad. The iron weight of responsibiliy—the knowledge

Ryan Cooper

Search This Blog