Mouse at Play

The beach clean-up on Saturday turned into a really fun way to start the morning and we collected eight black bags of rubbish off Zimbali beach in an hour (the scary thing is that I’ll bet we could have doubled that in another hour if we had kept walking further down the beach).
One of the moms said she would love to do this more often with her kids and couldn’t we organise a regular community clean-up? What a great idea! Of course we can all do it on our own but so much more fun together. So watch this space, community beach clean-up days are coming to a beach near you soon. It turns out that September 17 is International Coastal Clean Up Day, a good day to mark in your calendar.
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This past month our editorial team has been doing a short refresher course on the Press Code (the code of ethics and conduct for South African print and online media).
The Press Code: “The media exists to serve society. Their freedom provides for independent scrutiny of the forces that shape society, and is essential to realising the promise of democracy.”
Publishing is what we do, so it pays to consider every key stroke carefully. But did you know that anyone with a social media account is also in the publishing business? Anything you post, tweet, re-tweet or share, you have published and you too can be held liable for defamation (using the tag line ‘retweets are not an endorsement’ will do nothing to protect you in court). A case in point is the woman who accidentally posted a picture of her vajayjay, intended for her husband, on a hockey mothers’ WhatsApp group. One of the group’s members posted it on social media. The image trended nationally, with it being tweeted and reposted multiple times. Is there no limit to our national depravity? Fact is it is not only the original perpetrator who leaked the image who could face criminal charges, but every person who sent it on is also legally liable. Every single one has damaged her right to privacy and infringed her dignity, even though the publication of the content was second-hand.
I once attended a seminar by media law consultant Emma Sadleir, the co-author of “Don’t Film Yourself Having Sex… And Other Legal Advice For The Age of Social Media”. She gave us the best advice on the subject that I have heard to date. Before you publish, imagine your tweet on a huge billboard with your face on it. If you are still happy with it then go ahead. Secondly she urged us to just not take risque photos. Sadleir has clients who have moved countries and changed their names to escape revenge porn (when ex’s publish naked photos on pornography websites). She said the internet doesn’t forget. Ever.
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After digging to a depth of 100 metres last year, Russian scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1000 years, and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network then.
So, not to be outdone, in the weeks that followed, American scientists dug 200 metres and headlines in the US papers read: “US scientists have found traces of 2 000-year-old optical fiber, and have concluded that their ancestors already had advanced high-tech digital telephone 1 000 years earlier than the Russians.”
One week later, the Sowetan newspaper from Johannesburg reported: “After digging as deep as 500 metres, South African  scientists have found absolutely nothing. They concluded that 5 000 years ago, their ancestors were already using wireless technology.”