Repair (Heal) Your World

Pinchas: Numbers 25:10 - 30:1 I believe in studying all the sacred texts as I believe that there is value in all of them. At the moment, I am studying: Jewish (Torah), Christian (Bible), Buddhist (Dharma), Muslim (Qur'an) and Tao Te Ching (Dao) (The Way of Life by Lao Tzu) texts. I believe that everything else is commentary ... The Parasha (portion of the week) that the Progressive Jewish congregation is reading in the Torah (The Five Books of Moses) this week is Pinchas. The Progressive Community are currently a week ahead of the Orthodox Community, in the annual reading cycle of the Torah, and we can discuss why this is, if anyone wants to know. And it says that "God is a jealous God." But this goes against all my learning. How can God be Jealous? Isn't God above jealousy, above hatred, above coveting, above anger? My Jewish and Christian translations on this portion translate the Hebrew word Kina (קנא) as Jealousy. This word קנא is also used in the Ten Commandmen...

A post I just made on Facebook: Dear friends. Over the past few weeks, I've been realising that I've been spending way too long on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Part of the reason for this is because of all the time I put into "friendships". I thought I could reduce my number of Facebook friends from over 1,000 to 150 in one go, but after 3 go's last night I am at 473 friends. The 150 comes from one of Malcolm Gladwell's books where he says that it is impossible to have a true relationship with more than 150 people. For example a "company" in the army is usually 150 people for this reason. Well maybe 150 was the optimal number when the book was written or when personal relationships required physical presence and time. This is the 21st Century and who knows, maybe things have changed? Maybe 500 is workable now. And especially bearing in mind the approximately 8,000 contacts I still have in total on all my networks. But on Face...

South Africa: an interesting place: Pilots stole planes and no one noticed: http://m.news24.com/news24/SouthAfrica/News/exiting-pilots-stole-air-force-planes-minister-20160223 SAAF South African Airforce Gripen Fighter Jets in Long Term Storage http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29831%3Aa-dozen-saaf-gripens-in-long-term-storage&catid=35%3AAerospace&Itemid=107#.Vsy7JNa18rY.facebook And if you wanted to know what Submarines are for? They are for chasing away sharks: http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/08/12/not-one-of-the-r8-billion-arms-deal-submarines-is-operational

Letter in the Cape Times on Thursday 18th February 2016 after the students burnt paintings, art and other objects at the University of Cape Town: Protect The Past One of the reasons we know so little about the past is because it has been destroyed and burnt so often. And then we have people who spend huge amounts of time trying to find out about their past or the world's past or the universe's past. We should be past destroying the past, so that we can fully understand the present, and always remember the good and bad of the past. And one person's "good" past might be another person's "bad" past. If we are to grow and eliminate racism and other challenges in our society, we must protect the past, perhaps move it to a special museum, but never destroy it. It will always be there!

Letter in today's Cape Times "Ratepayers Ignored in City's Grand Centralisation Scheme" I live in the City of Cape Town, so I will use the City of Cape Town as my example, but I believe this example to be applicable to Johannesburg and other parts of South Africa. The City, which works for its corporate citizens, providing them with a "red tape to red carpet" special service that us mere mortals can only dream of, is implementing a massive growth strategy to increase square meters of office, conference, hotel and private living space in the Central Business District (CBD) and close to it. This makes the land in the CBD much more valuable, making billions for the property developers and hundreds of millions in additional rates annually for the city. People are forced to travel into the city where in the rest of the word, cities are moving to decentralised "pod" offices as Shelley Childs wrote about in your newspaper recently. At the same t...