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Friday, October 02, 2009 |
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Canada celebrated her fifth National Punctuation Day last Thursday The day saw newspapers and scholarly magazines devoting precious news space to articles on grammar and many of the things EB White so eloquently discusses in The Elements of Style Whites treatment of the rules of writing has mostly been judged dictatorial and very uncompromisin ... Read more |
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Sunday, September 27, 2009 |
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Sometimes the best way to deal with the racial divide is to emphasise the dividing lines rather than follow in the tracks of the politicallycorrect hypocrites For race is still a dividing issue despite grand multicultural efforts aimed at bridging the divide President Barack Obama recently told David Letterman a news and analysis Talk show ... Read more |
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Friday, September 18, 2009 |
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Soon many Ghanaian families would need to create extra spaces in their households to welcome their brothers and sisters whose forefathers were shipped away to work as slaves in Europe and America Years ago our black American friends came as visitors to see what Africa looks like They had heard stories about the depravity on the continent and th ... Read more |
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Saturday, September 12, 2009 |
Most probably one of the latest Wikipedia entrants is Brandon Huntley the white South African whose recent refugee application in Canada stirred up controversy around the world The Capetonian had applied for asylum in Canada on the basis of his race claiming that he had been attacked seven times in South Africa given the derogatory labels of ... Read more |
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Saturday, September 05, 2009 |
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The University of Ghana directive that lecturers appointed to teach in the university must have a higher research qualification preferably a doctorate degree made the news last week But it was no news at all Or perhaps it was so much news that it wasnt news after all According to the ProVice Chancellor of the University Prof Kwesi Yankah ... Read more |
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Saturday, August 29, 2009 |
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News usually thrives on controversy so most of us would have no difficulty remembering JA Kufours last gesture as president where he ordered the reinstatement of ACP Nathan Kofi Boakye with all his entitlements and the publics reaction at the time We would probably not remember that the NPP President had also promised billion as seed money ... Read more |
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Saturday, August 22, 2009 |
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Verisimilitude The Blindspot In Our Artistic Consciousness The other day I wrote that our journalism is very adequate for our purposes despite its many shortcomings And that is independent of what happens in Great Britain and America I particularly stressed that we are a standard unto ourselves and that The Wa ... Read more |
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Friday, August 14, 2009 |
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We wouldnt put the advertisement in such a controversial wording unless we want to make a controversy out of an already controversial situation Lets start with the least controversial There are countries on the African continent All of them are poor but some are poorer than others Just about of them have media freedom They all have l ... Read more |
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Sunday, August 09, 2009 |
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I just found out that my wife of only eight months is cheating but I feel too henpecked to question her about anything By Ghanaian standards I am a veritable Okotobonku or a cuckolded Kwaseapanin for looking on while a real beast of a creature makes the beast with two backs with a woman who still bears my fathers surname There is only so much ... Read more |
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Saturday, August 01, 2009 |
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In September students from around the world would begin a new Master of Arts Degree course in Beatles Studies at the Liverpool Hope University in England The full name of the programme is MA in The Beatles Popular Music and Society It is an academic discipline that would investigate the legacy of the Beatles music sensation and study ... Read more |
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Friday, July 24, 2009 |
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On December the long trial of a defiant despot came to end when American soldiers collaborated with Iraqi legal powers to end the life of a ruler whose crimes were so much that the world was not exactly sure which one he was being hanged for The venue of the execution was a Ministry of Justice facility in Northern Baghdad He did not wear a ... Read more |
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Sunday, July 19, 2009 |
By the time Samuel Obour a student of communication studies at the Ghana Institute of Journalism ended his discussion on Pathetic journalistic practices in Ghana a feature that recently appeared on the websites of Joy FM ModernGhana and Ghanaweb he had succeeded in turning what is merely pathetic into a crisis Obour had joined the old c ... Read more |
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Saturday, July 18, 2009 |
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By the time Samuel Obour a student of communication studies at the Ghana Institute of Journalism ended his discussion on Pathetic journalistic practices in Ghana a feature that recently appeared on the websites of Joy FM ModernGhana and Ghanaweb he had succeeded in turning what is merely pathetic into a crisis Obour had joined the old clich ... Read more |
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Saturday, July 11, 2009 |
Perhaps Gabby OtchereDarko captured the paradox of the Rawlings phenomenon better than any other commentator when he said on Joy FMs News File programme that Rawlings is the kind of person you could get into trouble with even when you quote him correctly You would think you would get into even greater trouble if you quote him incorrectly but ... Read more |
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Friday, June 26, 2009 |
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Certainly Rachel Toor an assistant professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane USA has not come across many brilliant medical doctors in her very promising career If any good doctor had read her recent column in The Chronicle of Higher Education he or she or shall we say they would most likely have questioned h ... Read more |
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Saturday, June 20, 2009 |
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There are three types of fear The fear of the known the fear of the unknown and the fear of not knowing what to fear And perhaps that is the most dangerous thing to fear Former United States Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld puts it even more poignantly There are known knowns That is there are things that we know that we know And there ... Read more |
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Saturday, June 13, 2009 |
Over the weekend Dr Clement Apaak an Archaeology professor at Simon Frazer University in British Columbia Canada sent me a special invitation to take part in a campaign aimed at urging the Canadian immigration authorities to grant a visa to the brother of a GhanaianCanadian who is bedridden at the St Pauls Hospital in Vancouver waiting for ... Read more |
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Friday, June 05, 2009 |
Not only did he employ a Ghanaian houseboy Francis Wole Soyinka sometimes makes a caricature of his critics by comparing them with chichidodo a Ghanaian mythical bird that hates shit yet only eats worms At least that is how he ridiculed equally brilliant literary minds Chinweizu Onwuchekwa and Ihechukwu Madubuike in Art Dialogue and Outrage ... Read more |
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Monday, June 01, 2009 |
Last week CBC Radio the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations flagship news analysis radio service discussed the findings of a survey that found that the European visa application systems discriminated against Africans The programme interviewed some Africans who had experienced the nearlethal visa application procedures of some OECD countr ... Read more |
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Saturday, May 30, 2009 |
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Last week CBC Radio the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations flagship news analysis radio service discussed the findings of a survey that found that the European visa application systems discriminated against Africans The programme interviewed some Africans who had experienced the nearlethal visa application procedures of some OECD countries ... Read more |
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Friday, May 22, 2009 |
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The other day a reader wrote to warn that I was becoming too westernised The words seemed to have poured forth from the heart of a wellintentioned man who would rather die than borrow a thiefs kidney to live another day The language wasnt altogether intemperate but there was a generous dose of grateful nonchalance breathing behind the cons ... Read more |
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Friday, May 15, 2009 |
Lets pluck the plot of todays story which is set in far way Britain and plant it in our context if we ever had a Miss Ghana called Ngozi Okechuku what would Ghanaians make of her She had been born in Nigeria to Nigerian parents who brought her to Ghana when she was two Or lets say she was born in Bubuashie to a Ghanaian mother and a Nig ... Read more |
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Saturday, May 09, 2009 |
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I have always had problems with surveys and opinion polls because nobody ever asks me anything Yet I am made to read research outcomes as though I was part of a focus group discussion One such report was on popular words used by Britons Nincompoop I never heard anybody use that word when I lived in that country At least nobody used it for m ... Read more |
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Friday, May 01, 2009 |
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By the way over here in Canada it is no sin for a bornagain Christian to down bottles of high volume liquor and still please his God Not that I have been filling my brain with too much of the devil but I feel some relief from what otherwise would have warranted a ban in my Assemblies of God church in Ghana It is pm the sun so warm some ... Read more |
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Friday, April 24, 2009 |
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By now some million people may have viewed the phenomenal rendition of a popular song by Susan Boyle the year old Briton who has suddenly become the toast of the world She didnt exactly fit the bill when she presented her drabmiddleagecrisis persona before an expectant audience The show was Britains Got Talent the British version ... Read more |
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Tuesday, April 14, 2009 |
Last month there was news that Facebook was going to charge everybody who has a face on the social networking site The amount was going to be or something like that no matter the number of friends you have That news may have excited the parents of a twelve year old girl who is suing them for not allowing her to use the computer A school tri ... Read more |
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Tuesday, April 14, 2009 |
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Last month there was news that Facebook was going to charge everybody who has a face on the social networking site The amount was going to be or something like that no matter the number of friends you have That news may have excited the parents of a twelve year old girl who is suing them for not allowing her to use the computer A school ... Read more |
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Saturday, April 11, 2009 |
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This sequel to our earlier story is decidedly not a sequel it only seeks to introduce the devil Diabolus Ex Machina into our story to make the plot more complicated Well it is also a sequel telling by the sequence of events The Diabolus Ex Machina The devil out of the machine negates the Deus Ex Machina We will not waste time on definiti ... Read more |
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Thursday, April 02, 2009 |
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The Deus Ex Machina god from the machine is not a particularly desirable thing in the development of any plot Even in ancient Greek tragedies where its most notorious user Euripides was alleged to have employed the device in nearly half of his plays it was not seen as the most effective way to resolve the conflict in any dramatic action Ari ... Read more |
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009 |
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Psychiatrists are a bit like philosophers They pretend to look at the broader picture and make statements of facts often passing off their hallucinations as truisms When they dare document these hallucinations they become theories which guide present and future generations They especially philosophers are usually very weird people who see th ... Read more |
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Friday, March 20, 2009 |
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Most professions are conspiracies against the laity Well I dont mean to put it literally because many professionals have expert knowledge of what they profess Probably with the exception of journalists who pretend to know nearly everything most experts give us reason to believe in their recommendations So when an employment counsellor advis ... Read more |
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Saturday, March 14, 2009 |
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Certain things do not change No matter what happens to technology the essence of a newspaper would remain the provision of news It has nothing to do with the paper or the advertisements it is the news in all forms both hard and soft including the kickers that often do not tell much Advertisements sustain the business when newspaper sales co ... Read more |
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Monday, March 02, 2009 |
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The last time I had the pleasure of attempting a response to a wellwritten letter meant for Jomo I abused my honour by needlessly borrowing my neighbours wheelbarrow to cart a large collection of dictionaries and other writing texts I had shopped from bookshops in Ottawa I needed those books to guide me write good English to the man who writes ... Read more |
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Wednesday, February 18, 2009 |
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Matchmaker matchmaker make me a match find me a find catch me a catch Matchmaker matchmaker look through your book and make me a perfect match Sure we are all Fiddlers on the Roof trying to stretch out a pleasant simple tune without breaking our neck We enjoyed the lyrics of the phenomenal Rogers and Hammerstein composition of the song ... Read more |
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Sunday, February 08, 2009 |
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His demeanour was very scholastic as we have always known him and he made it count in the way he went about answering a simple question on tomatoes His appearance was so simple you might think he had underdressed for the main presenter of a documentary on primetime television an inexpensivelooking shortsleeved shirt over a pair of trousers a ... Read more |
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Sunday, February 08, 2009 |
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Surveys have showed that these days we spend more time surfing the net than watching TV With televised information and newspaper stories available on the internet you wonder whether there is ever the need to collapse in the couch and catch the news on TV instead of sitting by the desk to see who is new on Facebook Just as we used to flip chann ... Read more |
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Saturday, November 15, 2008 |
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Mede me nkwan to ho ma Ghana a man in his sixties tells his admirers Immediately one of his aides corrects the statement Sir did you mean to say you sacrificed your life nkwa as in life for Ghana or you meant nkwan as in soup say Abenkwan Oh that was soup right Okay I meant life but we could go with soup too reminiscent of the ep ... Read more |
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Tuesday, October 28, 2008 |
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Suddenly I find myself unlearning everything I have learnt in the past six years in the United Kingdom At the same time I feel a deep compulsion to regurgitate everything I have unlearnt and learn them again because the United Kingdom and Northern America are the same because they are so different It is much like the war that was lost only bec ... Read more |
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Monday, September 29, 2008 |
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In Oldbrook a notsorich suburb in the Buckinghamshire city of Milton Keynes sits a typical brick work that is mostly mistaken for an ordinary residential facility The structure is patterned after the usual architectural designs in cosmopolitan Britain so it is quintessentially British But for the inscription on the apron of the facility man ... Read more |
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Monday, September 22, 2008 |
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When you know how to say what you have to say it often does not matter when you have to say it What matters is saying it as it ought to be said Of course it is always not very easy saying it exactly as it should be Those who are able to string profound ideas together in very good and memorable sentences are usually great men and women who have ... Read more |
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Tuesday, September 02, 2008 |
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Even before she would deliver her famous The Lady is not for Turning speech Margaret Thatcher had said a few important things that had gone into the record books In politics if you want something said ask a man but when you want something done ask a woman Another time she had quoted figures in response to a question during Question Time ... Read more |
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Monday, September 01, 2008 |
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When you sit under somebodys tutelage in formal education you often end up talking like them And sometimes you find yourself thinking like them as well I hate the term Third World a pejorative designation that development scientists have used for poor countries because my lecturer at Ghanas School of Communication studies hated it with a ... Read more |
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Wednesday, August 06, 2008 |
So this weekly crap we waste our brains on does matter to some people Sure they do matter and sometimes they matter even to very important people who have the power to put life into our boring stories In fact when we do it very well they matter even to international organizations I had looked at the prospect from afar cherished it almost ... Read more |
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Sunday, July 27, 2008 |
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A fortnight ago Gene Robinson the openly gay Anglican Bishop was news again About bishops boycotted an important international conference because of him He is seen as a divisive factor in a Christian body that had stood together until he was ordained bishop of New Hampshire in America While his British host must have felt the pressure I ... Read more |
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Friday, July 18, 2008 |
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The digital revolution has been helpful but it has not been particularly liberating YouTube and MySpace offer nearly everything from sons slugging it out with their own mothers to thugs happyslapping their victims for a very strange form gratification that could only be digitally inspired Computer games do the thinking for school children ... Read more |
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Thursday, July 10, 2008 |
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His name was BullsEye named after Bill Sykes obedient beastly companion in the classical movieOliver His owner is a wheelchairbound septuagenarian who depends on the beast for nearly everything He has been trained to pick up the receiver when the telephone rings He runs to hand it over to his owner and takes the handset back when he is do ... Read more |
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Thursday, July 03, 2008 |
When you desire something desperately and you work hard to achieve it the Calabar people of Nigeria call that thing an Irom Iroms are rare commodities because often times people are caught up in the tortuous routines of daily existence and they live as though there are no Iroms at stake So when I met Irom Arekong a communications professio ... Read more |
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Saturday, June 14, 2008 |
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If the producers of Catch Me If You Can a Hollywood blockbuster had auditioned some of us for the lead role they would have found a more fantastic actor to play the Abegnale character than Leonardo Decaprio The dodgy character conned victims as a lawyer flew planes as a pilot and operated on patients as a doctor But at no point in the story ... Read more |
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Friday, June 06, 2008 |
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Denial Anger Bargaining and Despair Experts prescribe that a political organism would usually go through these four stages before it is recognized by the electorate Of course recognition is only the initial step in the long tortuous political journey that actually begins after the victory speech has been delivered Therefore it fits perfectl ... Read more |
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Saturday, May 17, 2008 |
A British readership survey found that Bill Clintons autobiography My Life was the least read among a list of political memoirs over a period Readers had found the size a worry Indeed Clinton himself had admitted in the postlaunching interview that he wished the book had been less beefy I rushed to buy a copy when it went on sale in booksho ... Read more |
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Monday, May 12, 2008 |
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Vera Brittain was unmistakable when she said that Politics is the executive expression of human immaturity Otherwise why should democracy in Zimbabwe be made to look like a puzzle within a paradox If we put the pieces of the Zimbabwean election odyssey together it is perhaps worst than a paradox a conundrum maybe So the recount seems to h ... Read more |
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Wednesday, April 16, 2008 |
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Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten B F Skinner has said So if a person maintains a brain the size of a peanut after going through a process of formal schooling we can in the thinking of Skinner assume that no education has taken place And and who said you cannot start a sentence with And where the ... Read more |
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Sunday, April 13, 2008 |
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The man who defined love as a temporary insanity curable by marriage has made most people mad by those very words Ambrose Bierce might have been insane when he decided to rearrange the wording of that truism To make sense out of that definition it would be appropriate to look at it through the prism of modern Abrokyireinspired marriages And ... Read more |
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Wednesday, April 09, 2008 |
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Once is a long while a good writer gives you reason to lose yourself in the wonder of his scholarship Often such authors succeed in transporting you into a wonderland where their thoughts are weightier than the edicts of a medieval King They are big on research great on content and powerful in delivery When that happens you cant help but ask ... Read more |
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Friday, March 28, 2008 |
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There is a sense in which a documented statement denouncing a fact or an opinion should not be construed as a rejoinder For if anybody should be seen as a problem and indeed if there is a problem for which blame must be apportioned as we are wont to do the problem people that we are then it is this writer who did well to punch beyond his A ... Read more |
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Thursday, March 27, 2008 |
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At a quick glance Charles James John Easmon does not strike a typical Ghanaian chord unless you know a thing or two about the colonial medical service of the Gold Coast where his great great grandfather left indelible footprints of excellence Today a fresher version of those footprints is more than noticeable on Harley Street Londons medica ... Read more |
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Thursday, November 01, 2007 |
The story of Rip Van Winkle the Washington Irving character who slept for twenty years was retold in a little village in the UK when a mentally unstable person demanded to see the manager of a nursing home The manager the only black person in an all white neighbourhood turned up to attend to the needs of the patient an English man in h ... Read more |
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Thursday, October 04, 2007 |
I wasnt that much of a buffoon to have expected that a divine force would have catapulted Ghana onto the realms of comfort in five years I was very much in touch with the realities in a third world country I had heard western politicians describe Africa as a continent that has been going back in development in the last forty years I had also he ... Read more |
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Monday, July 23, 2007 |
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There is no point philosophizing about it you are either religious or you are not Well there is a middle way a little bit of this a little bit of that Even so religion often works like the opium of politics it intoxicates just as it indoctrinates When some freethinkers declare that they are not religious they usually do not have the compu ... Read more |
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