Belief in god(s), organised religion, belief in the hazards of 5G, belief that Covid-19 is a hoax, belief in astrology, belief in “wellness”, belief in new-age woo woo, belief that climate change is a hoax, belief that we have time to act against the destruction of our ecosystem – all […]

Can we give up our cherished irrationality to save our ...

The image below shows the COVID-19 stats for Thailand. This is what it means to have a responsible public, Thailand is a country with 70 million people. Only 58 deaths, and nearly all others have recovered. The results for South Africa are in stark contrast, with 7067 deaths and two […]

We are not helpless, we are just useless (COVID-19)

COVID-19
I have not written anything for this site for a long time, but today I feel I have to. There is too much fear, uncertainty and doubt being expressed about this crisis, and being expressed with a certitude that only ignorance knows well. In South Africa, we have five levels […]

Expressions of fear, uncertainty and doubt in the COVID-19 crisis

Thirty years ago today, we were having a braai at the house of the then Chief Justice of South Africa, watching the release of Nelson Mandela on television. My parents were visiting Cape Town, and we went to the big square in front of the Cape Town City Hall where […]

Thirty years today Mandela was released – a challenge for ...

Everyone is talking about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) these days in South Africa. For sure it is true, we need to up our game in these areas at all educational levels, from primary to tertiary levels. In 2016, South Africa finished last in WEF’s mathematics and science education ranking. […]

The need to add innovation and humanities to STEM

H5P is a really cool HTML 5 content creation platform that allows some really complex things to be done really easily. This is just an experiment with its Twitter feed content type, which took <10 seconds to do. You can learn more about H5P in this video.

Just experimenting with H5P

One of my screens
I love GNU/Linux. I have used GNU/Linux since 1999 and exclusively since 2001. I have used Ubuntu since the first version, and I depend on GNU/Linux for everything I do on a computer, whether work or play. Importantly, I use it for 100% of the work I do, and 100% of […]

We need to improve the user experience of the GNU/Linux ...

Cheetah
This morning I was playing around in DarkTable, improving my skills at using its awesome capability. I used a photo of a Half-collared Kingfisher that was in deep shadow, and accidentally shot at ISO6400 because I had forgotten to change my settings from when i was taking eagles in flight in […]

Photographers – buy equipment not software

Rangiroa
Arthur C. Clarke wrote “How inappropriate to call this planet ‘Earth’ when it is quite clearly ‘Ocean’.” I have been lucky that during my days as a marine biologist I got to travel around and explore this planet called Ocean, and even find and describe some new species from our […]

How inappropriate to call this planet ‘Earth’ when it is ...

Peace flagg
South Africa is slowly starting to emerge from under a purulent pile of corruption. Corrupt practices go way back into the Apartheid era, and certainly corruption associated with the current political system was well established in the Mbeki. But it escalated under Jacob Zuma’s “leadership” to the point where one […]

We are all leaders, responsible for fixing South Africa