Clive Simpkins

Obama gets swatted by PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have done very good work over many years. Now they're in grave danger of giving even cosmetics-free, earnest-looking, earringed, pony-tailed bunny-huggers a bad name. They've taken President Barack Obama to task for (successfully - good for him!) swatting a fly during an interview with CNBC at the White House. The idiots are sending the Prez a 'humane' bug catcher (true) so he can in future (me being facetious) tell the interviewing anchor person to hold while he humanely traps said fly and then (their words) 'releases it outside'. I think this would embarrass even a Buddhist. And just when did a disease-carrying house fly become an 'animal'? Someone's clearly flunked entomology 101. If you needed any further evidence of incipient planet-wide insanity, look no further. Dear grief! Read the online story here or click on the article below to open in a new window.

Posted by Clive Simpkins

Microsoft’s unique naturalist research techniques

Dunno 'bout you, but I can't (consciously) kill a spider. I'm forever taking a drinking glass and a sheet of paper to apply my rescue and relocation (R&R) technique. I put the glass carefully over the fella, making sure I don't squish any über skinny legs, and then very gently and incrementally slide the sheet of paper in under the glass until the emigrating arachnid is safely ensconced in the resulting capsule. We then blast off for a safe nook in the garden or against an outside structure if I intuit a penchant for urbanisation.

To the horror of those around me, I steadfastly refuse to allow an overnight cobweb to be vacuumed or feather dusted. So my study is progressively taking on the appearance of a Hollywood kiddies' scary movie set. I value the role these chaps play is nailing Braamfontein Spruit mozzies in summer and an odd assortment of midges and other noo-noos in winter.

The trigger for this posting is that one has, I am totally convinced, been sent by Bill Gates. OK, Steve Ballmer then. I now have a spider located underneath a shelf directly above the keyboard of my notebook computer docking station. He descends on an ultra slender thread to pause within centimetres of my tapping fingers. Now of course, you've heard of keystroke-logging spyware devices, but what a crafty mechanism when you have a seemingly real spider with a pair of mini binoculars, physically positioned above the victim's keyboard. He has a spider's eye view of exactly what I'm typing and what websites I'm surfing. Even if he is reading them upside down. But then maybe his binocs are those fancy prism jobs used by the US military. Who said it was only Dick Cheney who had Halliburton connections?

If you think I'm just being paranoid - the moment I focused my digital camera on him to take a pic for this posting, he scuttled to the back of the shelf and disappeared. Now if that isn't proof...

I now have one more stress in my day. What if, as is my wont, I thoughtlessly snap closed the lid of my notebook and rush off to a meeting – to arrive at said destination with a splatter surrounded by eight threads on my keyboard? A la a pressed flower book. Bill or Steve could at least have equipped the little guy with motion sensors that emit a beep when one gets too close to him.

What's the point of this posting? Please don't squash spiders. Not only is it unkind, disrespectful and cruel, but you're messing badly with Microsoft's qualitative research program on consumer patterns in Africa. Have a nice day now, y'all. ;-)

Posted by Clive Simpkins

Go visit the Speakers101 website

A new website for speakers by speakers

 

A long overdue initiative has just been birthed. Seasoned Toastmasters, Adolph Kaestner and Jacques de Villiers, both professional members of the Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa (PSASA) have launched a new website, named Speakers 101 It's designed to market professional speakers, MCs, coaches, trainers et al. Both of these worthies are skilled Internet fundis, so speakers can look forward to a site with very respectable Google and other rankings.

Most websites featuring speakers don't showcase the full gamut of services, products and collateral that make it easy for potential clients to choose someone for their need or event, who offers optimal strategic fit. You can book a speaker direct from the site and it even has a ballsy (public) individual speaker ranking and appraisal system which is a great idea - if slightly terrifying! ;-).

Having people inside the industry sector to market peers and colleagues makes huge sense. They understand speaker branding, the nuances of the business and what it takes to bring the right people together. The investment required to be part of the Speakers101 marketing push is eminently affordable and anyone in the field who doesn't go for the listing is doing themselves a grave disservice. I'm already on board and delighted to be part of their prescient move.

Bravo to the guys and may Speakers101 be the rip-roaring success it deserves to be!

A great case for vegetarianism

If you're a non red-meat eater, you're in trouble. Unknown to the public, the British, naughty buggers that they are - inject their chicken with pork and beef extracts to plump up the breast meat in order to secure higher prices. No kiddin'. Go read here. It makes a great case for vegetarianism because you just don't know what animals are being fed when they're alive or (as it now turns out) injected with once they're dead. Seems they get injected anyhow if they're destined for freezing because the flesh on the cadaver 'becomes tough'. Ugh!

Remember the 'mad cow' (BSE) disease transmission to humans of a few years back? Seems we never learn.

Melamine in animal feeds and baby products courtesy of unscrupulous mainland Chinese.... and so it continues. Maybe time to give the animal proteins the heave-ho?

Posted by: Clive Simpkins

OK, so we'll blame the rain. That can be the only explanation. It dissolved any sense of sartorial sense at Prez. Zuma's State of The Nation address in Parly. In Freudian terms this is Patricia de Lille showing deep meegevoel (empathy) with the Kaapse Klopse - a tad ahead of their annual carnival.  Being Boss of the diminishing ID, she chose not to wield her own brollie! Maybe someone can share this attention-getter with under-siege Gordon Brown, the British PM and help him make a splash. Grief Pattie, wot wuz yer thinking'?

Mrs. Jacob Zuma (MaKhumalo) steals the show for all the wrong reasons

Omigosh! With all the talented black designers at hand - David Tlale, Errol Arendse, the Sun Goddess duet and Gavin Rajah to name but a few, Mrs. Jacob Zuma - MaKhumalo - had to go and wear this outfit. Eina!

It's not even traditional - which, had it been, would have averted the charge of it being a capital fashion offence. This is a tasteless fusion of disastrous proportions and it angers me because it unnecessarily exposes her to ridicule.

The ANC should have started yonks ago helping this (evidently) wonderful, down to earth woman get her ducks in a row for higher office. Etiquette, meet and greet, fashion sense, a crash course in English - a thousand things that would have been done as a routine in a developed economy. Why do ANC egos always get in the way of doing things right first time? Terrified to ask the colonialists? They've been there, ya know.

To unleash this self-effacing and matronly woman (in open sandals in 10 degree temperatures) at a high profile event like Msholozi's first State of the Nation Address is unfair, unkind and unacceptable. The 'look' if it can be called that, must have people around the world snickering up their condescending sleeves.

Get help - and fast. This must not be allowed to happen again. MaKhumalo deserves better.

When you send unsolicited e-mails with quotations in them...a caveat

Pictured: Screenshot of unsolicited e-mail received by me.

Dunno who Toby Deenik is, but he's clearly decided that I should be the unwilling recipient of his unsolicited e-mails - and without an unsubscribe option.

Since he's raised his head above the parapet, let me take the logical potshot and say that if you really, really must use quotations from eastern sources in your e-mail or website signatures, then please take the trouble to get the spelling correct. Getting people's names wrong is rank amateurism. Name and form are inextricably interlinked and to mess with name spelling is the gravest discourtesy of all.

In this case, Toby dear can't spell 'too' correctly and he's got Jawaharlal Nehru's first and surname wrong. Pandit Nehru (pictured) was India's first and longest serving Prime Minister. Toby clearly feels that the Nehru referent power adds something of value to his e-mails, but he's done little other than expose himself to ridicule.

A parenting e-mail newsletter I receive often quotes Gandhi - and despite me mailing the author several times she persistently spells the great mans' name Ghandi. Sad.

A newsletter from a leadership development company arrived in my in-box, announcing with justified fanfare, the participation of a high profile business person on one of their programs. They had both parts of his company name wrong. Not a good impression.

It's important to realise that if someone hits a spelling glitch early in a piece of corresondence from you, they may simply not read any further. It speaks about your lack of attention to detail and your sloppy quality control. Sure, we all make typos - but when it's stuff with an expected lifespan, take the time and trouble to get it right. If you're a lousy editor, get someone else to proof it. Capish?

Susan Boyle was badly advised

Scots singing sensation Susan Boyle was poorly served by whoever was advising participants in the Britain's Got Talent blockbuster TV show. It's PR 101 that if you sing the same song in the final that you sang to get into the competition in the first place, you'll look like a one-act comic. So was she set up? Or just personally naive?

It hardly matters I guess, since with the dollar-eyed Simon Cowell in the equation, she's sure to be pushed, or more accurately, given recent events, cossetted into stardom. She's the stuff of which reality TV is made. It'll be fascinating to see who undertakes the not inconsiderable task of morphing the cygnet into a swan - if that's their strategy. Or will she be consigned to recording studios instead of the live concert stage? It remains to be seen.

Piers Morgan, Cowell's co-judge, was making like Sigmund Freud regarding the mental health of Susan Boyle. A gibbering Irish shrink - former British 'Big Brother' TV program psychologist, Dr. David Wilson - also tried to add his tuppence worth. He looked (and sounded) so agitated, flustered and incoherent that one wondered whether he shouldn't have been checking into the rehab clinic for rest therapy instead of Ms. Boyle. ;-) Talk about the Roman arena phenomenon with the voyeuristic philistines 'tossing their sweaty nightcaps into the air' as the Bard might have said. Eish!

If thugs and disreputable people in our SA govt worry you... take heart.

In the chaos that was Israel's election and following the ouster of former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni, you may have missed this now outdated but no less sinister piece of information...

From Skynews.com: Netanyahu Unveils 'Hotch Potch' Government

8:12am UK, Tuesday March 31, 2009, Dominic Waghorn, Middle East correspondent

Benjamin Netanyahu comes in from the wilderness today after 10 years in opposition to return for a second stint in power as Israeli Prime Minister. (This is not the sinister bit - read on).

 

Many see Netanyahu's Middle East peace pledge as an empty gesture. It has taken him seven weeks of horse-trading to cobble together a coalition government. You can call it a broadly balanced centrist government or a terrible hotch potch of disparate groups, depending on your point of view.

(This is the sinister bit). From the right, there is Avigdor Lieberman (pictured) once a nightclub bouncer, now ultranationalist leader of the Yisrael Beitenu party. To his critics he is racist, anti-Arab and extremist.

He once pleaded guilty in court to hitting a child in the face and he is currently being investigated for corruption. He will be the government's foreign minister (and is now also deputy Prime Minister). Lieberman is right-wing but fervently secular, an opponent of the religious factions that have such power in Israel's diverse, small-party politics. ends.

My comment: 'May the Keeper of Israel watch over them and their Arab neighbours.'

UPDATE 31st May 2009. A real anti-democratic ugly is about to be perpeyrated by Avigdor Liberman and his party. Read here.

If you’re a conference speaker – make the client sign a contract

You've worked with a multinational food and beverage company for several years. You've worked with their Exco. You have the ear and respect of the Chairman. They ask you to set aside 6 days of your diary to facilitate at their leadership conference roadshow because the last one you facilitated got rated the best they'd ever had. They give you the dates by e-mail and send the agenda, asking for your further input. Do you get a contract signed under such circumstances? I didn't and I've just been stung by them 'revising' what they're going to do at the conference and canning my involvement. All with just 8 working days to go before the first leg of the roadshow.

The training and development manager involved in this whole saga was avoiding a briefing meeting on the conference right up until one day before he left on an overseas junket. He only agreed to the briefing before departure because I insisted. At the start of the meeting I said, 'Tell me how my role will play out this time.' His response: 'Let's leave that for the end.' For the next hour he proceeded shamelessly to pick my brain on his own presentation at the conference, themes within it, ideas for facilitation of the conference itself, ideas on pre-conference work, his personal problems, his recent mugging and the like. He got HUGE intellectual capital out of the meeting. Not unexpected because the previous year his brain was a desert and I had given him total concept and execution for the previous conference, for which he was very happy to take the credit. Only at the very end of this meeting did I realise that all bases had been covered and there was effectively no role for me at the conference. Even then and only when I said, 'So you're indicating I won't be at the conference,' did he mumble some platitudes and say that he really just wanted me to 'design a table facilitation exercise'.

For this conference I'd also recommended a brilliant speaker to match their strategic intent. I asked the speaker to reserve the dates 'in case'. That was done. This spineless man then claimed he'd contacted the speaker but the person concerned 'was regretfully unavailable'. A direct lie - which I've subsequently pointed out to him. He had the lack of EQ and intelligence to ask why I 'alleged' that he was unprofessional, lacking in ethics and plain dishonest. Isn't this sort of moral blindness amazing? He's certain to do brilliantly in the field of politics if he makes the move.

Cutting to the chase I mulled the situation and e-mailed the Chairman expressing my surprise at the (for me) very unexpected and tawdry behaviour from his organisation. In short order a mealy-mouthed apology came through from said training and development manager. Judging from the Chairman's mail to me, I realised he had effectively guided, briefed or dictated part of the training dude's apology. Collusion? Backside-covering? Dunno.

Sparing you a dreadfully long saga, they agreed to pay a one day fee as compensation of sorts and had the temerity to remark that their 30 day payment terms would normally apply but 'they'd see if they could change that'. Breathtaking chutzpah. A week ago they mailed to say they'd EFTd the money into our business account. Five days later no money. E-mails to the incompetent training and development manager and his assistant – neither have had the courtesy to reply to that or my voice mails. When I personally ran the gauntlet of their accounts department, I was told they'd 'paid the wrong vendor' – I kid you not. But it gets worse: 'That vendor is paying us back tomorrow and when they do we'll pay you.' So now I'm bankrolling the unethical multinational because of their own incompetence. As the saying goes, truth is often stranger than fiction. I've now contacted their European Head Office so they don't do this to anyone again.

Why the long story? To my grave disappointment, I now realise that in some cases, the client's word is no longer their bond – regardless of relationship duration. It's about what suits them. My recommendation? Even if it's your granny – make the old dear sign a contract, won't you? Your cash flow will love you for your foresight. Now, may I bill you for the tutorial? And no 30 day payments, mind! ;-)