Archive for September, 2008
Stuff that matters (M&G)
Friday, September 19th, 2008 | Mail & Guardian column | No Comments
Give me a pearly white smile! There you go. Now consider this: the calcium in your teeth was cooked up inside a giant red star, billions of years ago. So were the iron in your blood and the carbon in your genes.
In fact much of the stuff that makes up you and me was made in those cosmic laboratories a long, long time ago. That’s how astronomer Carl Sagan put it. We’re made of “star stuff”.
God, on ice
Friday, September 12th, 2008 | politics, rational thought | No Comments
“I demand the right of reply!” a voice booms from outside my study window, setting the pane aquiver in its frame.
I stumble backwards, toppling the chair which prostrates itself, one wheel spinning absently. The cat bloats like of a puffer fish, moaning angrily.
Peering at us from beyond the glass is an eye the size of a Palates ball. God blinks. Eyelashes, stout as thatching reed, thwack against the pane.
“I see you’ve been fraternising with the enemy,” rumbles the disembodied voice.
Sipping tea with the devil (M&G)
Friday, September 5th, 2008 | Mail & Guardian column | No Comments
“How’ve you been?”
“Not too bad, thanks. Bit under the weather today. Things’ve been busy!”
Beelzebub, Lord of Darkness, flops back into the couch, flicks off her mules and curls her feet under her.
“You’ve changed your hair,” I say, “I like the grey. Honest hair. Tea?”
Nods, and reaches for my notepad.
“‘How do we know what we know,’” she reads, and rolls her eyes. “Oh god, you’re not getting existential on us?”
Blue Man Group : “Message to America”
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 | climate change | No Comments
Friendly fire (Extra Virgin)
Monday, September 1st, 2008 | uncategorized | No Comments
There’s something a bit Earth Motherish about this time of year. Leonie Joubert can’t help herself as she watches spring prying the fingers of winter from the tumbling Eastern Cape hills.
The air is so thick with the scent of jasmine, you’d half expect to see droplets of it swelling into expectant bellies on the window panes and trickling down in runlets, finally gathering on the wooden sills like a perfumed moat. It’s almost springtime in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape, and the blooms are drumming up a heady fanfare in anticipation of its arrival. › Continue reading
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