Archive for October, 2008
Bitter memories made sweet (M&G)
Friday, October 31st, 2008 | brain, memory | No Comments
There’s a dove outside the window. Crwoooo… Or is it a pigeon? I never can tell.
Crwoooo… crwoooo… I hate doves. And pigeons. I detest that passive-aggressive swooning from the gutters and telephone poles.
My dislike of these avian critters festered out of an all-too-long stint in boarding school. Nine years of it, in fact. Nine years of Sundays.
To read or not to read (M&G)
Friday, October 17th, 2008 | uncategorized | 4 Comments
I’m writing this in scrawling longhand from 10 km above the Earth, over a place which the in-flight map says is a centimetre to the left of the Congo River mouth. A bead of condensation has just dropped from the bottom of the plastic whisky tumbler, and carved a rivulet of black ink through the first sentence on the page. I shift awkwardly. It’s not that I dislike flying, but I always feel a bit naked, this high in the sky, suspended over a chasm of air. The self-medication comes in handy when that equatorial turbulence jigglings us about like pebbles in a tin can.
No matter how much my rational mind understands the principles of aerodynamics, the animal part of my brain cowers in terror. You shouldn’t be able to lift several tons of metal tube up into the air to a splat-able distance above the planet, what with gravity and all.
My cousin’s a chimpanzee (M&G)
Friday, October 3rd, 2008 | creation, evolution | 1 Comment
I chuckled last week when I stumbled on a news story about the re-chalking of an ancient British monument, the Cerne Abbas giant. Volunteers had cleared overgrown vegetation and re-chalked the white outline of the pagan figure.
The 55m-long caricature again stands boldly against the green Dorset hillside — replete with raised club and engorged penis.
I can just imagine the conversation from across the valley where six-year-old Jimmy’s family is picnicking. “Mummy,” he asks, brow troughed, “why’s the giant’s willy all funny?”
It’s not often that a national monument gets to fast-track that awkward birds-’n-bees conversation. But it raises questions much broader than merely where babies come from. It cuts down to the meaning of life, the universe and everything (as the late, great Douglas Adams put it).
An Alaskan tale (Extra Virgin)
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | uncategorized | No Comments
It’s been described as the most important presidential race on the planet – the race for the oval office. Whether you believe this or not, decisions made there impact all of us, particularly as the climate crisis brings energy issues firmly onto the global agenda. Leonie Joubert looks to the north-west.
There’s a joke doing the rounds in leftist circles in the United States at the moment. Well, it’s not so much a joke, as a statement followed by nervous chuckles: if the 72 year old Republican presidential candidate John McCain, whose health record isn’t as glowing as his war record, is voted in as the next US president, the world is one embolism away from having Sarah Palin in the oval office. › Continue reading
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