Nonqaba said ...

Steve Kerr head coach Golden State Warriors was once a player. Hoop players are notorious for the ego. It goes back to the neighborhood basketball court where they cut their teeth. It’s a stage for many things outsiders will never understand. However, the main show is foot work, shooting hoops and drama around the rim. It’s all good because some aspects ended up being part of professional basketball, although the NBA will never give neighborhood basketball the credit. We easily label some players as bad boys, but never coaches, who can be so bad that they intentionally lose championships for personal agendas. Ridiculous. How can you say that? All NBA coaches want  the Larry O’Brien Trophy and subsequent bling bling - championship rings. A coach that has been there, is more dangerous because that itch has been satisfied. We saw it in 2020, in the ‘bubble’ where some coaches were in a hurry to go back to their families so they intentionally set players to fail. Other coaches had to rush

Senator Elizabeth Warren campaigned on the issue. The call for the United States to cancel student debt needs re-engineering, because of its position as leader of the ‘free world’ free to make money. We cannot talk about free enterprise without mentioning interest. Students signed on the dotted line that they’ll pay interest on federal student loans. It’s the American way. It is called capitalism, the grout of so-called developed countries. Interest. What is interest? Punishment. It’s punishment for not having cash money thus forcing you to approach banks to buy a house, car, vacation or starting a business. When you buy a condo or a flat, you sign every page of the bank loan agreement. There’s another punishment down the road. Interest is somewhere in those pages but you’re are so happy about being a homeowner, you miss the little section that says interest keeps growing, if you miss payments. The Biden administration might be sympathetic to the idea of student debt cancellation, but

Ursula M. Burns former Xerox CEO. We used to attend conferences and workshops before COVID-19. Someone introduced us and we walked confidently to the stage to do our business presentation. Then the audience lost interest. They started checking their phones although there are signs that say SWITCH OFF PHONES. We felt it on stage and shifted the blame. ‘It’s because I’m A Woman.’ HAIR IS A DISTRACTION It’s not because you’re wearing a dress or a skirt. It is because you devalued yourself as an authority in computer science, business or whatever your speciality is. How? The hair. Removing your hair from your eyes every minute gives the message that being a woman is more important than the reason why you are on stage, sharing knowledge with your peers. It is distracting. It gives the impression that maybe you are not that brilliant, because if you were, you would have known that you’ll be on stage, and would have controlled your hair, so that it doesn’t remind the audience that you’re a wo

Lockdown is bad news from all angles because it will make us neglect survival tactics we built over time. Time management for example. Before this virus, we allocated time for everything. We had to, otherwise the whole family and work wall would crumble. Lockdown is nibbling at that skill because it has made us time-free. We are glued to electronic devices 24 hours a day. Ironically, we don’t  take baths or showers, despite having so much time on our hands. Forget about doing laundry, let alone clean the house.   Once upon a time before COVID-19, we were so good at time management we adjusted seamlessly to changes around us. There are many examples. 1.  Road construction. Four lanes reduced to one. No problem. We didn’t want to be late for work or school, so we woke up earlier or found alternative routes. 2.  Snow storms. We cannot use that as an excuse for being late. So, leave the car at home and take the train or bus. 3.  Terrorism led to office buildings, hospitals and other places

Georgia and first time voters. Kids who became ‘grown’ legally because they turned 18, voted for the first time in the 5 January Senate Runoff Election. There was a lot of optimism about their contribution. Georgia Democrats were confident they would provide the spatula necessary to flip the state to the colour blue, by voting for their Senate Candidates, Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The Republican Party did not want any flipping of pancakes. They wanted to hold on to their cake, the two senate seats occupied by Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. It was a gamble for both parties because life has a BEFORE and AFTER.   Before they turned 18, rookie voters lived with parents who fed them, took them to school and also inducted them into politics. No, they did not say, when you turn 18 vote for the Dems or GOP. They either told them that they are part of a bigger whole: Georgia, United States and the world. Or, they schooled them about forces outside the home trying to take away w

America. Who owns the copyright to a country’s name? I’ve always assumed that it was governments, because they fund entities such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation CBC, Canadian Rail, Air Canada, British Broadcasting Corporation BBC, that sort of thing. Then we have Make America Great Again  (MAGA), Donald Trump’s signature cry before and after the 2016 election that made him president. We cannot assume that everybody knows that it’s just one man’s campaign strategy. I t is not American as the U.S. dollar, U.S. Army, the White House, the Statue of Liberty etc. America is supposedly a country of freedom, to do what you want, when you want, vote for whoever you want or storm Washington while Congress is trying to put the official stamp to Joe Biden’s win. That freedom also allows people who run for office to have slogans. A country’s name in a slogan is misleading. It’s like false advertising. For  example, Trump cannot make America great again because it’s an entity beyond his co

Traditional education that takes place in buildings with thousands of kids and semi-kids listening to the same message, is no longer tenable. We cannot blame the pandemic. The internet cast the first stone. Kids used to listen in awe, as teachers unveiled the wonders of Egypt and how the sun is energy. What used to be exclusive to one professor is now open sesame online. The internet dethroned teachers. What should also come down from the throne are subjects like Anthropology, because they are not education. They are part of imperialism, where men who did not speak Zulu, Hindi or Putonghua, wrote books about how amaZulu behaved, how indigenous people in India behaved and how indigenous people in China behaved. Social Anthropology and Racism Anthropologists from England, France and Spain ‘observed’ them, like observing animals. They re-lit their pipes and noted down behavior. When that was not enough, they turned to interpreters. Interpreters were men they had ‘civilised’ to eat with a

Prince Harry's parents, before the divorce. Depression. There is no doubt that COVID-19 was the culprit in 2020. Unfortunately, it carried over to 2021. Being restricted to four walls - or 80 if you live in a California mansion - has side effects. We cannot go to work obviously and that increases depression. Money is not the only motivation for having a job or owning a business. It is also about taking a break from home, which is not a warm, fuzzy place as Hollywood and Christmas ads have made us to believe. We are now depressed because we miss work, and co-workers we could not stand, before the pandemic. What is not well-documented though, is depression caused by the inability to demonstrate love. Hollywood has two kinds of love: the interior and exterior. The exterior is more important because it has witnesses. We go out to dinner not because we don’t have food at home. We dine out to show that we are loved. We go out to sports stadiums or public parks to be seen holding hands as