Freedom of speech

I was watching Top Gear on TV last night.
It was reality TV with a vengeance.
Jeremy Clarkson and two colleagues had to each buy a car for $1000 in Florida, and after several trials drive to New Orleans with various tests on the way. One was to camp for the night and eat only what they [...]

What’s in a name?

There seems to be continuing controversy about the renaming of places and buildings in South Africa. But renaming has been part of our traditional way of life for as long as I can remember. Roberts Heights became Voortrekkerhoogte, and is now Thaba Tshwane. Leslie became Leandra (when, why, I don’t know — suddenly Leslie [...]

Athiests and hippocracy

According to Amatomu statistics, the most popular post on this blog in the last 30 days was one with the title I wish athiests would learn to spell atheist. I found that rather strange. I commented on the spelling because it turned up that morning in big bold letters on the Amatomu tag cloud that [...]

Bronze ox waggons at Blood River

Once upon a time I used to work on a newspaper called the Windhoek Advertiser. The chief reporter was J.M. Smith, and it was said that the letters J.M. stood for “Jakkals Mal”. He was always called Jakkals Smith or Mal Smith, or just Smitty and had the reputation of being the craziest journalist on [...]

Mobilising against crime

The Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, met a group of about 30 religious leaders today to talk about mobilising against crime. He brought with him a couple of representatives of Business Against Crime (BAC), Derek Cooper and Siphiwe Nizimande.
We need to expand partnership, Lekota said — it should not just be government and business, but [...]

May synchroblog: Christianity and the scopes

The topic for the May synchroblog is Christianity and film.
A synchroblog is when a number of people write in their blogs on the same broad topic on the same day, and each provides a link to the posts of the others in theirs, making it easy for people to see the topic from various points [...]

Who’s afraid of David Bullard?

For the last few days the tag cloud on Amatomu has been dominated by david bullard in big bold letters.
So out of curiosity I clicked on the first of the recent posts I saw that had David Bullard in the title, and I discovered he was a columnist in the Sunday Times who had written [...]

National day of action against Alcan

The following press release from Earthlife Africa speaks for itself. See also the za.environment newsgroup.
On Wednesday the 9th of May 2007, social and environmental justice activists will demonstrate in Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Richards Bay against Alcan and its secret deal with Eskom. In Johannesburg, Earthlife Africa Jhb (ELA Jhb) will coordinate a protest outside [...]

A generous Orthodoxy — Brian McLaren in Pretoria

A couple of days ago I went to hear Brian McLaren, one of the fundis of the “emerging church” movement, speak in Pretoria. I wrote about my initial reactions here: Notes from underground: Brian McLaren: a generous Orthodoxy. Now here are some further reflections and comments on what he said.
A few months ago, in the [...]

I wish athiests would learn to spell atheist

One of the most popular tags in the “life” section of Amatomu today was “athiest” [sic].
Typos are typos, but when they turn up in the top tags it’s something else.