Posted inEnvironmentEqualityGeneral

Educational disparities at an international level

For some time now, it has been the case that internationalisation of education cannot be separated from globalisation as a multifaceted phenomenon. This inevitably raises the question of whether such globalisation, especially given its inseparability from advanced (electronic) communicational developments (partly as a means to the sharing of knowledge and, unavoidably, economic prosperity), is judged […]

Posted inGeneralMedia

John Fowles’ beguiling literary art

Undoubtedly one of the great exponents of the novel in English, recently deceased John Fowles, wrote novels that, in addition to gripping narratives, integrated many insights and elements from disciplines such as natural science and psychoanalysis, sometimes in such a manner that these elements functioned as drivers for narrative action. A case in point is […]

Posted inNews/Politics

The weakness of the ANC

The current elective conference of the ANC makes me think, involuntarily, of the decline of this once-proud, 105-year old organisation, to the point where it has been too weak to do the obvious thing, namely to ‘recall’ (their chosen euphemism for discharge, or fire) their current (and soon-to-be-replaced) president, Jacob Zuma. The funny thing, which […]

Posted inGeneral

A challenging archaeological perspective

In the world of archaeology it seems that it takes a long time for what Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm switch” to take place. By this phrase – as is well-known – Kuhn (1962) meant a sudden abandonment of a certain fundamental conception of a science, which has held sway for some time, in favour […]

Posted inGeneralMediaTech

‘Westworld’: The shape of the future?

In a previous post I elaborated on an art exhibition at the Venice Biennale of 2017, which thematised the bio-technologies that are in the process of colonising the biosphere on Earth today, arguably with unpredictably deleterious consequences for humans and other living beings. The 2016/17 HBO bio-science-fiction television series, Westworld, based on a similarly-titled Michael […]

Posted inGeneralMedia

‘A River Runs through It’

The film by the name, ‘A River Runs through It’ (Redford 1992) is based on an autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, similarly titled ‘A River Runs through It and Other Storie’s (Maclean 2017; Kindle edition). He was the older brother in the Maclean family, living in Western Montana – one of the most beautiful states […]

Posted inGeneralMedia

‘In Bruges’: Film-making at its best

Martin McDonagh’s dark crime-comedy In Bruges (Universal Studios 2008) represents film-making at its best. Without excessive reliance on the special effects with which Hollywood is infatuated (and infected), and simply by employing the basics of cinema – successive images and sounds – it manages to draw its audiences into the unlikely world of professional assassins, […]