In this life one thing counts: in the bank large amounts. That gnomic insight by Fagin (as played by Ron Moody) in Oliver! underlies the bold argument in a column in the business pages of The Telegraph that the richer you are, the happier.
It's not every day that we think about how we want to be buried. This is partly due to the fact that we still treat death as taboo and we hardly ever think or want to think about it.
Nate Silver, who writes the FiveThirtyEight blog for the New York Times, basked in worldwide adulation after his polling correctly forecast the outcome of the US presidential election in 49 states.
So Sandy arrived right in the last act, smashing and thrashing, killing and ripping. Has this latest tempestuous eruption been the deus ex machina - or the deus ex Atlantic - to settle one of America's most extraordinary and bitterly fought presidential elections?
Like me, you've probably been flipping from the Weather Channel to CNN with one hand and raking the web with the other, searching for scenes of maximum destruction from Superstorm Sandy.
I stared deep into the photograph of a man who refused to be beaten by industry. The face I was looking at was Fred McIntyre, a water driller from northern Pennsylvania. His eyes cut right through me; green, calm and alive with fury. His expression was bland but each one of the thousand wrinkles flowing towards pursed lips told a story of a man who would not be undermined.
Socialism- real, no-private-ownership, state-controlled, egalitarian socialism - has been off the political agenda in most states, including Communist China, for decades. The mixture of gross inefficiency and varying degrees of repressive savagery that most such systems showed seems to have inoculated the world against socialism and confined support for it to the arts and sociology faculties of Western universities.
Mark Antony, in his oration for the murdered Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare's play, observes: "The evil that men do lives after them." Indeed, in our supercharged world, evil lives with its perpetrator, tearing him down while still in his prime.
Elton Jantjies truly does eat, drink and sleep rugby. The mercurial flyhalf is so determined to play for South Africa that he wears his Springbok jersey to bed every night.
This summer I was in a taxi from Cap d'Antibes to Nice, motoring for kilometres along the Côte d'Azur via both the Route du Bord de la Mer and the Promenade de la Plage. I sat on the left in the back, a 15-year-old boy of my acquaintance was on the right, behind the driver.
Lance Armstrong's inspirational journey from cancer survivor to seven-time winner of the revered Tour de France is in ruins after he was accused of massive drug-taking and being the ringleader of the most sophisticated doping conspiracy in sporting history.
At the height of the fury engulfing US embassies across the Middle East, with one ambassador lying dead and his consulate in Libya reduced to ashes, the leaders at the eye of the storm spoke by phone.
Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi goes on trial this week.
Zola Yeye is gatvol. The former Springbok team manager believes the South African Rugby Union has reneged on its development pact by giving the Eastern Province Kings only one guaranteed season in Super rugby. And he warns that South African rugby is in a state of denialism when it comes to transformation.
Bantu Mene, 17, leads the pre-game battle songs for Ithembelihle Comprehensive. Today, on a freezing field near Uitenhage, they double as mourning songs. The team's talented centre and skipper, Thabiso "Bull" Mendu, is dead.
Cheeky Watson is no slouch at escapology. As the White Pimpernel of non-racial rugby in the late 1970s, he was smuggled through police cordons to and from township games, sprawled on the floor of taxis.
The reports of the savage beating of 21-year-old Tina Mbili, allegedly by her former boyfriend, forces us to stop in our tracks.
There are divergent views about the state of South African literature, and probably the strongest of these are expressed in two recent articles.
The courts have found that the state is responsible for the spread of tuberculosis in prisons but created no room to compensate those infected.
Comparisons can be invidious. Yet, in the wake of the deadly protests at Lonmin's Marikana platinum mine, and with accusations flying back and forth, the question of whether South African miners are being absolutely or relatively mistreated is inevitable.
Judith Sephuma meets me at the new Soweto Theatre. I arrive with a photographer. She arrives without make-up, her hair in the cutest of dreads, but clearly not photograph-ready.
Cameron van der Burgh produced a magnificent performance in London on Sunday night to become the first man to win individual swimming gold for South Africa.
As a rule I don't watch the opening ceremonies of any sporting event. I can't see the point of them. I didn't even watch the opening of the 2010, World Cup. Can the mass dancing, I said; bring on the soccer.
As a gay black man growing up in Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green public housing project, Arick Buckles knows first-hand how the stigma of HIV can keep people infected with the virus from seeking treatment.
Amid the Limpopo textbook debacle and the media coverage of "tree schools" and "schools of shame" there are increasing calls for Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga to be removed from her position.
On June 21, Radio 702's Yusuf Abramjee lodged a complaint with me about a leader article published in The Times.
Last month the Judicial Service Commission interviewed four candidates to fill the Constitutional Court vacancy left by the retirement of Judge Sandile Ngcobo.
In just two weeks Banyana Banyana, the women's football team in South Africa, head off to London to compete for Olympic gold. It's a moment of great national pride; only two African women's teams are among the 12 nations competing, all of whom have beaten strong competitors on the long road to qualification. However, so far, the fanfare and support for this outstanding accomplishment has been very quiet.
Sprinter Simon Magakwe ran into great form early this season. Now he's run into a brick wall.
For millions of youngsters around the world, it would have been a dream come true: a scholarship to California in the 1970s: the golden era for Good Vibrations. But for Mohamed Morsi - now President of Egypt - and his teenage bride it was an opportunity to prove their moral worth.
While the ruling party squabbles over terminology, the country's poor are beginning to lose patience, writes Domnic Mahlangu
Even as a fresh-faced BSc graduate, I needed three textbooks to prepare my biology lessons. One was given to me by the school, one was borrowed, and another I bought with the meagre salary of an unqualified (no teacher's certificate at the time) teacher.
If effective intervention strategies are to be developed. it is important to recognise systemic nature of violence in South Africa, says Jane Duncan
It's time we all said 'no' to abuse of our children. 'No form of violence can ever be excused in a society that wishes to call itself decent, but violence against children must surely rank as the most abominable expression of violence." Nelson Mandela, November 2003.
SADLY, as convicted drug mule Nolubabalo Nobanda begins her 15- or 17-year jail term (depending on whether she can raise the R250000 fine which is part of her sentence), more young women and men are being enticed into the murky underworld of drug smuggling.
Dear Jacky, I cannot think of a worse way in which to start a Monday morning. Your Facebook posting saddened me more than anything I have ever experienced. I am so very sorry.
Is President Jacob Zuma headed for the same precipice as his ANC predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, ahead of a crucial ruling party conference?
Meadowlands, my birthplace, sounds like a fine place. Sibongile Khumalo does an infectious rendition of Meadowlands in her Live at the Market Theatre CD. So Meadowlands must be an exciting part of Soweto, right?
If you Google Anton Kannemeyer, the third suggestion offered by the search engine is "Anton Kannemeyer racist".
Demonstrating uncertainty and encouraging students to draw their own conclusions is necessary for a youth that has been socialised into dogmas
One of the founder members of the celebrated music group Stimela, Ray Phiri talks about 'Graceland' and creative expression with Jackie May
There are three questions of global importance, writes Chrystia Freeland
The only way material conditions of South Africans can change is for the tripartite alliance to go back to the Freedom Charter.
Jobless Graduate writes to me often, posing a question filled with emotion and frustration. "I have a degree, but I cannot find a job. How do you explain that, professor?"
