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Defilement or corruption?
There is a hymn that we sing quite frequently: More honourable than the Cherubim And more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim Without defilement you gave birth to God the Word True Theotokos we...
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Vampire community?
In a recent blog post John Morehead wrote: Morehead’s Musings: Media Stereotypes of Vampires and Other Alternative Subcultures Continue with Alleged Abduction of Teen: “One article I read recently even...
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Childhood memories: apartheid biscuits
Apartheid biscuits When I was at school they used to give us what we called “apartheid biscuits” for afternoon tea. They were about 3 inches in diameter, two biscuits with jam in between, and one of...
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More on biscuits and cookies
At one point in a discussion of the different understanding of “biscuit” and “cookie” between Americans and other speakers of English an American asked me what I’d call an Oreo. I’d never seen an Oreo,...
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Language and culture
Some years ago I read somewhere that different cultures had different styles of writing, and that this could contribute to cultural misunderstandings. English speakers favoured a direct stryle, getting...
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What’s that you were saying?
I’m posting this for the first Orthodox synchroblog, on the words we use, and what we mean when we utter them. One of the things about the growth of electronic communications in the last 25 years or so...
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A discursive journey into the highways and byways of English
By Hook Or By Crook: A Journey In Search Of English by David Crystal My rating: 4 of 5 stars A discursive linguistic and geographical ramble through Wales, and bits of England bordering on Wales, with...
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Facilitating conflict
A few years ago, when I was working in the Editorial Department at the University of South Africa, the university administration arranged for all the staff in the department to attend a workshop on...
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The Apocalypse is coming!
The Apocalpyse is coming! The Apocalypse is coming! Web sites like this one have been proclaiming it, with “Apocalypse” spelt with a capital letter, of course. The 2012 Apocalypse is predicted by an...
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Afrikaans cultural award for two Orthodox priests
Yesterday we went to the Voortrekker Monument for a ceremony in which two Orthodox priests, Fr Zacharias van Wyk and Fr Kobus van der Riet, were given special awards for their contribution to Afrikaans...
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Can we only understand racism in terms of postmodern litcrit academic jargon?
There seems to be a growing tendency among academics to define racism in terms so abstract and obscure that it is difficult to know what they are talking about. The most recent example I have...
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Something bad is happening in Burundi
Something bad is happening in Burundi. I learnt this from Tweets on Twitter, and from things friends post on Facebook. Yesterday I bought a Sunday newspaper, City Press, in the hope of learning...
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How anti-racism became racist: All lives matter
I keep seeing more and more articles and links to articles like the following: Why you should stop saying “all lives matter,” explained in 9 different ways – Vox It’s Time You Realize #AllLivesMatter...
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New secular religions and original sin
Yesterday morning at TGIF Johan Erasmus spoke about new secular religions and original sin. There were secular ideologies that used religious language, and were rejected by some people as being “too...
View ArticleRacism and Prejudice
The other day I came across a question on Quora: What is the difference between a black man and a white man? How would you answer that question? I thought about it for a while, and looked at the other...
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Witchcraft, witches and wizards FAQ
On Question-and-Answer web sites like Quora I see so many questions about witches, wizards and witchcraft that I think one could classify them as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), and to save a lot of...
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