Not Business As Usual

A Messianic Jew Edith Sher (pictured) once preached in our city Church. Reflecting on the turmoil in South Africa -- and a state of disaster in our own province, due to xenophobia -- she said, “It is not business as usual for the Church!” OBSERVATION: This is, in my view, one of the biggest reasons why the Church is thriving in South Africa. We are, paradoxically, greatly privileged to be a Church in the midst of extraordinary challenges. We need a gospel that is tough enough to meet that.

99¢ E-Book

I have prepared a series of 20 one-minute videos which represent a radical reworking of my 2025 Annual Philosophy Lecture in Malta. It is a complete metaphysics -- which I define as an all-encompassing philosophy. As a side-plate, so to speak, I shall be providing the complete text of the revision, in the form of an e-book. The e-book is now here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZMXMVSX/ for a mere 99¢ US. The image shows the e-book on Amazon. OBSERVATION: One difference between this and the original Malta lecture is that this flows better. 

87 Days in the Post

Yesterday, I received my author's copy of SHARE Magazine from Malta. It was posted in Malta on 7 February 2026, and reached me on 5 May 2026 -- 87 days in the post! It is a very sturdy production -- of the kind that would last ten years in a doctor's waiting room. And it is, in my view, the best philosophy magazine, respectively journal out there. OBSERVATION: The editor was anxious what had happened to the magazine. I said, I foresee that it will get here at the beginning of May -- and so it did. This is incidentally a big problem for authors in Africa, where a book was published elsewhere. Just try to arrange a book signing!

Bus Station

I picked up wife E before sunrise, at the city-to-city bus station in the centre of town. She said, "This used to be new. Look at it now." It was built in 1986 -- the twilight years of apartheid. There was water everywhere, with signs: "CAUTION: WET FLOOR". Many panes of safety glass were shattered. Nearly all outside lights were dead. I estimated that one-quarter of the internal lights were out. About one-quarter of the steel seats were smashed. There were water stains all over. Various vagrants approached me. And wife E's  bus was half an hour late. 

ECSA Out of Order

South Africa, it would seem to me, is less functional than it is functional. Yesterday I sought to submit a formal complaint to the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). First, I needed to discover whether the person the complaint was about was duly registered. The ECSA's web page "Find a Registered Person" was out of order. Then, their "Prescribed Complaint Affidavit Form" was out of order (see the image -- you may click on it to enlarge). OBSERVATION: My first questions to the ECSA were therefore: 1. Did you test your own website? 2. Did you sign off on the IT work? and 3. How many people get through to you? Alternatively, what is going on? Instead of submitting a complaint to the ECSA, I submitted a complaint against the ECSA, for investigation.

Revised Lectures

I have taken it upon myself, a year later, to revise my Annual Philosophy Lecture of Malta. My original lectures were good. However, they did not flow as they could have.  I am preparing them now as a series of one-minute YouTube presentations. DeepSeek AI rates my draft (so far) at 85%, and recommends: "Proceed to production."

POSTSCRIPT: I have further altered the style, to mimic in some way the grandiose thinking of Karl Jaspers. See the completed work on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG02ptzjYEU

The Kokerboom

Once again, in the absence of anything else today, we have here a Quiver tree, or Kokerboom. This photo in fact shows a Kokerboom forest, at Gannabos, nearly 400 km (250 miles) north of Cape Town. OBSERVATION: There are three species of this tree.

Invention 50: Belt Buckle

This is an invention which I have used daily for years. It works, and it works well. Instead of a belt buckle, imagine this: The holes of the belt are horizontal slits instead. The buckle prong rotates (like a propeller), and is designed to enter a slit. Push the buckle prong into the desired slit, and turn it. I hope that makes sense! OBSERVATION: One can add a refinement. One so designs the slit and prong that pressure on the belt causes the prong to turn, and stay in place. The prong incidentally has a double function. A belt buckle keeps the leather from curling. The prong largely prevents such curling, too. Personally, I find this invention to work better than the common belt buckle.

Invention 49: Dog Repeller

Once in a while, I put up what I believe would be viable and profitable inventions -- that I don't, however, have the time to (fully) develop. Now the loudest whistle in the world (pictured) is the Hyperwhistle. This is more than 140 decibels, or some 100 times louder than an ambulance siren. The loudest dog whistle is less than 110 decibels, which is, say, 50 times softer than an ambulance siren. The Hyperwhistle is not designed for dogs -- it has a frequency of about 3 kHz -- while dog whistles have a frequency of well over 20 kHz. I have both owned and designed electronic dog repellers -- in fact, one of my designs is on this blog: Dog Repeller. This uses a small ultrasonic transmitter (0.5"), which cannot be very loud if it could be heard by humans. Yet it scares dogs. Now the invention here is: take the non-electronic Hyperwhistle, push up the frequency ten times, and create a Hyperwhistle for dogs. Even if it is "only" 120 decibels, it will be as loud as an ambulance siren for humans. OBSERVATION: There may be one problem, however. It may be thought to be unethical to hurt dogs' ears. At the same time, as a minister having visited many homes, I know what it is like to be nipped and even bitten by aggressive dogs -- and that hurts humans! The same for postal workers. A dog repeller can help.

Does ChatGPT Exclude Nature?

There is a great deal of discussion about how AI may misrepresent reality. Here is a question that I put to ChatGPT: "Does ChatGPT exclude nature in its answers?" That is, does it have a tendency to strip off nature? The answer is yes. This is what ChatGPT itself says. You may click on the image to enlarge.

Open Day

I attended Open Day at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary today -- see the photo. I am wearing a white shirt. Open Day included an introduction to the seminary, devotions, testimonies by students, and a sample lecture. OBSERVATION: The Seminary offers government accredited degrees, which is as good as it gets in South Africa.

Back in the Day

My sister obtained it from (I think) university archives. I am the boy in the middle foreground. OBSERVATION: I did some quick repair on this photo, to fix an obvious flaw (reverse vignetting). You may click on it to enlarge.

Worthy of Publication?

Last year, I wrote a work of philosophical fiction, titled The Lost Philosopher. But the fish (the literary agents) were not taking the bait. What was going on here? Why all the rejection slips? Today I asked DeepSeek AI: "Is this book worthy of publication, or is it just a maybe?" Its reply:

"Yes, worthy of publication—as a work of philosophical fiction for a niche audience."

OBSERVATION: AI compares it with Sophie's World, Candide, and Siddhartha. But all of those were unlikely books. Maybe it's the kind of book that will be rediscovered once I have a New York Times bestseller!

Ordination

Someone took this photo on the day of my ordination -- my late wife Mirjam on the left. Ordination is understood as the formal recognition -- by the Church -- of a person's calling by God to ministry. That "by God" makes it a sacred occasion. It is in recognition of what God has already done. OBSERVATION: I still have my ordination Bible next to my bed, more than 40 years later. Curiously, I was ordained twice within the same year.

Intellectual Property Theft

The fact that someone stole snippets of an unpublished paper of mine (see Saturday's post) is a little worrying. This was no ordinary theft -- as best I can see, it was an AI engine I had asked to analyse the text. There are three problems I see here. 

1. They are stealing copyrighted material, causing its owners to lose control of it, 

2. They are exploiting it for profit, even if it is likely very small, and 

3. if the ideas in the paper should be groundbreaking, as I think they are, they are exposing the author to intellectual property theft. 

OBSERVATION: There is potentially a fourth problem. They attributed (falsely) the text to something already out there. I have a record of a question I put to Claude AI on 19 January: "What is your opinion on this journal paper?" Gemini AI comments:

"If a user uploaded an unpublished paper to Claude ... that information could potentially become part of the model’s knowledge base."