Metaphors of the future rooted in the past

The problem with Science-fiction writing is that the metaphors in that imagined future world are rooted in the immediate present of this one. In a very short time these metaphors give the story a dated feeling.

Where metaphors are imagined, the passage of time soon makes them feel anachronistic.

Very few writers are able to transcend this: Philip K Dick is one, and probably Neal Stephenson another. What makes them special is not the imagined future, but the reality of today's psychological problems retold in a different way.

Because these authors apply themselves to the universal problems of the meaning of our lives, like Goethe and Shakespeare they transcend their time and will endure: despite the fact that these futures will always be antediluvian.

There is no escape from mortality: all things drift towards the ends of time. The vastness of the universe ensures that the short life, biodegradable wrapper that we call our bodies, located on the equivalently short-life time capsule we call our solar system will utterly disappear.

Our only hope is that God exists, and is aware of us.
Well, of me in particular :-)

Airports: here's what I hate about them, and especially Cape Town Airport.

The time
If ever there was a place where time is important, it's at an airport. So naturally there are no big clocks at airports. Instead, there are zillions of screens stuck in high places. The time? It's somewhere at the top right in the smallest letters possible.

So to see the time you get off your seat, walk up to the screen and peer. Leaving all your valuables behind. Ah, I see you thinking: "You've got a watch haven't you? You've got a cell phone haven't you?".

Blah blah blah. Getting at that stuff isn't always that easy at an airport. Sometimes it's downright impossible. And sometimes your battery is running low, so you switch the thing off. And sometimes the battery life is completely gone - and that's that.

The walk: Cape Town Airport.
Now, if there's one thing that you do a lot of at an airport, its walk. And boy oh boy, hasn't Cape Town Airport raised walking to a new art!

Especially if you have just dropped off a hire car.
Never mind that you drive through the middle of all the cars dropping off passengers, or taking on passengers, and of course the cars coming out of the parking garages:  nor the fact that the rental agencies are put as far as possible from the departure lounges (so you have to walk the full length of the airport with all of your luggage through the departing passengers, and through the parking garages). Forget about all of those for the moment, and go upstairs to the departure lounge.

Once you have collected your ticket, you walk to the center of the departure area, where they have thoughtfully put both the international and local queues right bang next to each other. Think about that for a moment. Everyone saying goodbye, everyone leaving, ALL packed into a tiny area not more than 20 m long.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

The coffee
And what do you see when you get to the other side? Well now: the refreshment area is placed at the furthest distance from where you enter the final departure lounge. Want a cup of coffee? Walk the full length of the departure area, and then all the way back to your departure exit.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

But wait, there's more.

The laptops.
The rule is, the laptop must go through the scanner separately.
That's fine, except you have to get the damn thing out of your luggage, and put into a tray along with all of the stuff in your pockets: cellphones, wallets, coins, anything that is made of metal.
There is no easy way to do this.
Getting it into the trays is easy compared to putting it all back together again.
After you've been through the scanner the tray arrives with all your stuff in it, and all the passengers behind you with their stuff piling up too. And the tiniest of tiny little areas where this lot piles up.
So you stand there stuffing your laptop back, desperately putting all the bits and pieces back into your pockets, while the queue keeps spewing more and more people and the machine spews more and more luggage.

Great planning there, airport authorities.

The elderly, the disabled, the pregnant ladies, and those with kids ...
who, of course have to walk the walk.
Cape Town International had done their level best to make their lives as difficult as they possibly can. Because all of that stuff up there, it's 1000 times worse for them

Yes, congratulations. Airport of the year?
Not in my book, they ain't

Lazy Sunday Afternoons in the Shadow of Table Mountain

It was one of those Lazy Sunday afternoons.
Put the feet up and slope off in the house?
Hang out on the settee with the remote?
Nah.
Not on a beautiful early summers day like today,
with hardly a tourist in sight,
and Cape Town tanning herself under a warm Summers sun ...
and the table cloth spreading out over the Table top.

Chilled white wine, warm espresso coffee, carrot cake and a long Summer's day.
Eat your hearts out :)

oh my aching head when did the sun come up?

saturday? sunday? monday? going to bed or going to work?

oh my aching head ...

the relationship between life, people, and intelligence

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that educated people have had more facts stuffed into them
but that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or clever
we could say that the difference between stupid and intelligent people is that the intelligent people cope better with subtlety.
Education here does not play a role.
So
Intelligent people are not confused by ambiguous or contradictory situations
in fact, they become suspicious when things are too straightforward: here be demons.

Intelligence requires thought.
Intelligence is honed by life,
but life does not necessarily confer intelligence on the liver:
merely growing old does not lead to intelligence
and it is the application of thought that hints at the intelligence that lies beneath
...

The journey from virtue to happiness: The Great Learning

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom,

first ordered well their own states.

Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families.
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge.
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed.
Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

~Confucius