Category: Earth (Arts and Literature)

I’ve made my 500th edit to Wikipedia (at least to the English version. I’ve also contributed a few to the Afrikaans version, albeit armed with dictionary – one of the instructions is be bold after all). Rather unexcitingly, it was a vote for deletion of an article I’d prepared for moving from Wikipedia to Wiktionary.… Continue reading 500th Wikipedia edit

Just finished reading Enemy at the Gates, by William Craig. It’s about the World War II battle for Stalingrad (also made into a recent film, loosely-related, film). I seem to be enjoying grim histories at the moment, having recently finished the equally grim The Earth Shall Weep, about Native American history. The battle was one… Continue reading Enemy at the Gates

One of my favourite writers, Walton Pantland, who writes Red Star Coven, has published a superb article on that old favourite of topics, the USA. Do yourselves a favour and read Return of the Texas Chainsaw President. Some choice quotes from his article: The maniac redneck is back in power, and this time he didn’t… Continue reading Texas Chainsaw President

I’ve just finished reading a book on Native American history, The Earth Shall Weep by James Wilson. The US government is not in my good books right now, and books like this don’t help! As one Amazon reviewer points out, the book does focus more on the settlers crimes, the massacres, the betrayals, rather than… Continue reading Native American History, its overlaps with South Africa, and the villainous Ronald Reagan

I’ve been following the Mail and Guardian’s entry into blogdom quite closely, and so far been quite disappointed. The functionality seems limited, anonymous readers can’t post, and, most importantly, there aren’t many contributions. One of the few contributors I enjoy (and one of the few active contributors) is Ian Fraser. A friend of mine is… Continue reading M&G blogs, $1 DVD’s and pushing hands

I’ve been getting a surprising amount of referals looking for Sarah Johnson’s Personae. Of course, being far, far from an A-list blog, my hits are so low it could just be one person (or perhaps the author herself 🙂 ) looking for information. Unfortunately I haven’t read the work yet, but I plan to soon.… Continue reading History is the home address

Found a great quote on Cath’s M&G blog. “Psychosclerosis: the hardening of the attitude which causes a person to cease dreaming, seeing, thinking, and leading.” Ashley Montague In my case it’s caused by interminable meetings about trivialities. Now that I’m working 3-day weeks (Tue-Thu), I find I can see by Saturday and think by Monday.… Continue reading Untitled

I recently bought two poetry books, both written by recent graduates of the UCT Creative Writing MA. I studied creative writing in my second and third years at UCT as part of my BA – a course I enjoyed more and found more valuable than my IT studies. In spite of the intellectual snobbery that… Continue reading Kim McClenaghan – Revisitings

Thanks to a link I discovered at Forest Blog, I’ve created a Visited Countries image. I’ve visited all of 4% of the world’s countries. And that includes a bus drive through France on my way from Holland to the UK. At least I excluded Brazil – Sao Paulo airport is not something I want to… Continue reading Visited Countries

I’ve decided to use a Creative Commons licence for my blog. Coincidentally, Tectonic has just published an article comparing the GNU GPL and the creative commons licenses. So as not to repeat everyone else, read the Creative Commons website on why to use a creative commons licence.