‘Violent Hierarchies’

This one's a philosophical or theological post. Jacques Derrida, in the first phase of deconstruction, would identify oppositions, or types of opposite in a text. However, he then went on to reduce all these oppositions to power dynamics or "violent hierarchies". OBSERVATION: With this, I consider that he made the mistake of the metaphysicians, which was to reduce it all to the "single thought" as Schopenhauer called it. Derrida covered all his oppositions with a layer of power dynamics. He was no longer dealing with pure oppositions. You read it first on this blog.

Preparing for Festivities

I thought that this photo was lost to time, but I rediscovered it this week. The moment I had successfully negotiated the bride-price -- lobola -- for my bride in 2012, a crowd of women sprang into action to prepare for a celebration. I took this photo by the light of two candles, in the kitchen (there was no electricity supply). You may click on the photo to enlarge.

Imagine

I used to be one of three co-editors of the philosophical weekly Philosophical Investigations (Pi for short). It was very successful. No. 7 in its class in the UK. That collapsed, but I kept it stumbling along in new form. Today I published a new piece, by Allister John Marran, which is here: Imagine. OBSERVATION: I still have promises of new material -- although Pi is no longer a weekly. It now publishes occasional pieces.

Cavernous Church

Here's another photo of my friend Father Kees, of the Immaculate Conception Parish in Cape Town. I took a fisheye shot here, then de-fisheyed it, to capture the cavernous size of the Church. That's him, in the orange Adidas sweater. OBSERVATION: Like the sweater? It's still available on (click here) Amazon* in crimson.

*This is an Amazon affiliate link. I earn a commission, at no cost to the buyer. 

Power Flasher

This is a power flasher which flashes "like a lighthouse". It is possible to see this flasher a mile away from all directions -- depending on the lamp used, which may be up to 36 Watts. The Power Flasher's off period is about 20 seconds, and its on period about 0.1 seconds. OBSERVATION: All the pieces should be available from one's local electronics store -- however the lamp LP1 can be more difficult to source. One can find a 12V 1.5W white LED lamp* or a 12V 1.5W red LED lamp* or a 12V 1.5W blue LED lamp* at Amazon. 1.5W is ample to light up the interior of a car or a room -- matching the brightness of a halogen bulb. One could run the Power Flasher off a 12V car battery or (smaller) gel battery. Change R1 to change the frequency of the flash.

*This is an Amazon affiliate link. I earn a commission, at no cost to the buyer. 

The Book

Referring to my previous post, in 2014 I wrote a book about my experiences. When my wife knew that she was dying, she arranged a marriage for me, with a young African woman I hardly knew. Now that we have AI at our disposal, I ran the book through AI. Its opinion:

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. A deeply moving memoir with some structural weaknesses, but a story that deserves to be read—especially in a time when questions of race, culture, and belonging are as urgent as ever.

POSTSCRIPT: The book is available through (click here) Amazon*. 

*This is an Amazon affiliate link. I earn a commission, at no cost to the buyer. 

‘You Never Recover’

It's been more than 15 years now, but I burst into tears today over the death of my wife Mirjam. I am now very happily married. Yet an old lady said to me once, "You never recover from grief." It's an old passport photo of 1995.

Promotional Video

Perhaps the most absurd moment in this otherwise very nice video is me wearing a Kiribati fisherman's hat. That's at 2:21. It's a promotional video of Cape Town Baptist Seminary, and worth taking a look at I think. OBSERVATION: That's Langa in the background in the aerial shots -- said to be a dangerous area -- or rather, as the police say, "in a high national risk tier". Most of my students on this day were on-line. They checked in remotely.

Killing One's Church

There's an interesting article on CNN today:  A ‘tsunami’ of church closings is poised to remake America. The basic reason that they are closing: 

"The same reason many go to church is the same reason why many churches struggle to survive: the allure of the familiar."

People want what they always knew. Or they want to take back what they once knew. Paradoxically, that is what kills the Church.

POSTSCRIPT: My own comment to someone was: "A healthy Church cannot be static, because it is serving a Person, not a culture."

More Bots than Human Beings

Something big happened this year that most people surely missed. For the first time, more non-humans searched the web than humans. To put it another way, automated web traffic officially overtook human activity for the first time in Internet history. The memorable moment came on 3 June when Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince announced that humans were now in the minority. OBSERVATION: This does matter. This very blog is crawling with bots, where for various reasons one would want to know how many humans there are. There are tools to track the bots -- but, in my experience, not that reliable.