‘Fings ain’t wot they used to be

May Day, mayday, mayday, the international radio distress signal for ships and planes but no-one has heard ours. Zimbabwe is going down fast and furious and there’s no rescue on the way. For workers, things aren’t what they used to be. It’s not surprising that Workers’ Day is celebrated by not going to work. Once…

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Don’t pick at old bones …

THE HOME FOR THE BEWILDERED In the clinic, the Home for the Bewildered, they asked me if I had smuggled anything in.  How do you find your way to a place like this in Africa? Picking at the old bones of a life can hurt.  Perhaps there was a history of compulsion and addiction, topped…

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Death in the family

My dear, intelligent Border Collie went to doggies’ heaven. Heaven because I can’t see how she could ever have sinned. Gabby, originally named after the angel Gabriel, succumbed to kidney failure. Her ever present loyal, gentle, adorable, playful and often boisterous nature was an enormous loss. Her little friend and companion, Jessie the Jack Russell,…

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Algorithm mystery solved, or is it?

An algorithm is a formula that solves problems: x+y = z. Got it?  No, the formula goes so much further than that. Heaven forbid, it can now be called “a deep, many layered neural network.” So that’s why Facebook algorithms puzzle us and choose what posts we see. to psychologist and behavioral scientist Gerd Gigerenzer,…

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To be woke or not to be woke, that is the question

Thinking about things “woke.” It certainly has nothing to do with rising from a good night’s sleep. Definitions of the word are, at best, unclear. Wikipedia says it derives from African-American English meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.”  More loosely, it means someone who is open-minded and goes with the flow of political correctness.…

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