What defines you?

Does your work define you as a person?! Just like your parents, your upbringing, your country and local community. They are influences and tell a story about you as a person. Work is not an insignificant influence, am I right? You put down at least 1/3 of your day doing whatever you do, striving to get good at it, going from junior to senior, up the hierarchy and get sculpted more and more!

The worrying thing is that people take the choice of work a bit too lightly. I am wondering if I have fallen into this trap myself actually. This job you choose is going to change people’s perception of you forever. You should actually do a thorough analysis of each company. What would you be involved in and what core values does this company represent… history maybe, and the name that defines this company and will no doubt rub off on you! This is a “growing” concern for me these days… Browsing through some Egyptian mythology the other day I was intrigued to find a god by the same name as the company I work for – Osiris!Osiris is also called Orion the Hunter in Greek mythology and Herne the Hunter in Norse mythology and he was a great warrior! The gods walked among humans at this stage, and the reign of Osiris was a “golden age”! So far so good and I’m overjoyed and no worries at all! The name though is also connected with insemination. Orion, derived from “ourien” meaning semen, and the belt of Orion is a euphemism. In ancient times this was a penis that became erect as the year progressed. That’s a shame and a serious dysfunction. A whole year to get it up?! Seriously, you don’t want this kind of stuff to rub off on you, whether you live in the times of Viagra or not!! Must I hand in my resignation now, or should I stick it out and resort to Viagra if worst comes to worst?

Seth, the envoy of Satan, made a cedar chest (coffin) inlaid with gold, silver, ivory and lapis lazuli. Whoever fitted the chest best, could take it away! Like Cinderella, Osiris won the prize! As soon as Osiris had lied down, Seth slammed the lid on and sealed the chest. It was thrown into the Nile and washed ashore in Syria. A tree grew up and wrapped and enclosed the chest completely. Famous for its splendor it was chopped down and made into a pillar in the Syrian King’s palace. Osiris’s wife, Isis managed to locate and free him, but Seth attacked again!

This time Seth wanted to make sure that he did the job properly. He hacked Osiris to pieces, 14 in total, and spread them far apart geographically so that he could not be made whole again! Isis though as the devoted wife retrieved the pieces, puzzled him together and wrapped him up with bandages so that he could heal. This was the “first mummy”! There was just one small catch! She had found all the pieces except one – the penis! Isis, who no doubt wanted a fully functioning husband back made a golden penis and attached it to his body. I imagine this to be history’s first dildo! Dealing with clients and business associates now… do they see Jonny or do they see a mummy with a golden dildo shining through??

Isis was unable to bring Osiris fully back to life… other than sexually! With a lot of TLC she managed to work him up and make him ejaculate. So Horus was born, the new Master of the Universe! Horus killed Seth to avenge his father, whilst Osiris lived in the Underworld as its King of the Dead. No doubt there are many facets to Osiris, some desirable and some not so desirable! Can you choose or in any way influence what rubs off on you? This is crucial to me given Osiris’s history. I need advice on this… so I will keep my resignation unsigned in the drawer for now!

BTW! My gmail is getting spammed recently with “increase your size” e-mails despite the fact that I have not surfed anything remotely associated?! Is it Osiris?

Self Justice

I was burgled in November. A guy walked into my house and stole laptops and a cell phone! On his way out he greeted my domestic helper. With the domestic helper screaming, I was running outside, but could see nobody. Then I drove around for an hour, but nothing of course! Never mind the stolen goods, but the violation of my private home made me mad with anger! What if any of us surprised him and accidentally cut him off from his escape route? After two days I phoned repeatedly to get the investigating officer to the scene, so that he could have a look at video clips. He could not come because he had no vehicle to get there! Short time later I read in the newspaper that the police guys have a R100 (US$13) allowance airtime to do their necessary phone calls to investigate. No wonder I had to follow up myself!

This morning I heard a motorist had lost a cell phone in a smash’n’grab! He followed the thief and shot him dead! The police says he will be charged with murder (if they find him), but I say WELL DONE! I SALUTE YOU!! That November morning I was HIM! No gun or anything. With bare hands and blunt claws it would have been much uglier! I hope this creates a domino effect across the country with self justice incidents. Only THEN will it be a wakeup call loud enough!

The townships already have their kangaroo courts, and the police are too afraid to interfere! Now civil society has come down to a basic rawness because there is no functioning justice system. Let this be a lesson for the politicians. 2010 is coming up, and I want to see an Olympic effort to do something with the crime, police and justice system. Maybe some time in the future we won’t need kangaroo courts and self justice anymore! When I think about it, I would have been shocked and not saluted the guy, had it been in Norway.

History of brainiacs, creation and God

Easter time is a religious high season. About 30 years ago a young boy in Norway was watching TV about a certain crucifixion, ascension and return to earth. The main character of the story could have been any super hero, but happened to be Jesus. “Do you believe this mom?” Mom hesitated for a moment but eventually answered; “Naah”! “Me neither!”; said the boy, and turned the TV off! He never really looked back. During his studies though, he learnt that you have to keep an open and unbiased mind to prove something wrong in order to get any wiser... and it would of course be awesome to prove the GOD-hypothesis wrong, at least within a 95% confidence interval. In marketing terms that’s “good enough” and case closed! It seems like the forces of the universe are pulling together in order to really find out now... could it in fact be a “message”, I wonder?


Michael Heller is busy calculating GOD’s existence on the Roman Catholic Church’s behalf, and hopefully his/her whereabouts on my behalf. I choose to see Mr Heller’s impressive formula as a test of the GOD hypothesis. Meanwhile, a European CSI team at the European particle-physics lab (CERN) in Geneva are preparing their new super-toy! The Large Hadron Collider’s first task later this year will be to look for GOD, or the “Higgs boson particle” in CSI terms. The mathematicians, also behind this project, say that their toy could theoretically make wormlike holes into time. Should my space shuttle plans fall apart, then I’ve already got my contingency plan. Grissom and his colleagues just lost a viewer now, as I will rather follow this show closely!!

Bishop James Ussher (Irish) devised in the early 17th century that the world was created at 6pm on Saturday, October 22nd, 4004BC (flat of course)! H.G. Wells referred to it as “this fantastically precise misconception” in 1922 (and I must agree!), but he was still unable to give a better prediction. The Old Testament provided a scattered puzzle of people’s life, age and historical events that made it possible to backtrack the day of God’s creation. Never mind the fact that Adam then lived to be 930 years old and descendants and record holder (so far) Methuselah lived to be 969 years old! A healthy climate, abundance of food and absence of diseases helped to explain this! Augustine (“Give me chastity – but not yet”) deducted amongst other things from this that they reached puberty late back in the days...


Backtracking the 6 days of creation became imperative in this work. Great minds like Thomas Burnet and Isaac Newton concluded that since earth itself was created on the 3rd day, the two first days could have been as long as it suited their theories (!). Newton explained further that God created earth stationary and only gradually started to spin! How wrinkled mustn’t Adam have been after 930 slow moving years only covered by a leaf under the burning sun?!

George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon based his work on solid scientific principles and evidence of nature. This was a new approach! Edmund Halley (Halley’s comet) had tried to measure the increasing saltiness of the sea and based on this backtrack the age of earth. Other than this, all attempts had been strictly biblical. Any “scientific” methods were used to back up biblical accounts!

Buffons theory however scrapped all biblical accounts! Earth was created by a comet that hit the sun. Glowing minerals was thrown into space (I assume!) and formed earth. In a stroke he reduced the world’s creation, the glorious masterpiece from the Supreme Architect God to nothing but a catastrophic accident! Your parents romp that accidentally made you is nothing compared to this!!

Newton estimated that the earth’s age was 50.000 years based on a comet-sun impact and the time it would take for earth to cool down, but there was never any doubt in his mind that the bible was correct. In 1765 when Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan (mathematician) revealed that earth contained an inner source of heat. Buffon was re-inspired by the fact that this backed his Newtonian cooling earth theory. He declared Siberia the “cradle of life” as it had once been hot and humid like Africa. My second home country currently holds the “cradle of human kind” so I’m not entirely happy about the challenge that this theory represent. However I trust that this theory will ridicule itself! Catherine II of Russia however was very pleased that all living creatures seemed to have popped out of her beloved Russia! Weighing the different materials that earth consists of, Buffon calculated that earth would have taken a total of 74.047 years to reach its current temperature. Adding the suns influence he landed on 74.832 years as published in his Epoch of Nature.

It took according to Buffon 35.000 years for water to condense out of the atmosphere to form oceans (of what was left between the continents). As a “could have been farmer” I strongly object to this as I have more than once boiled the potatoes dry twice before ready. Clearly with the heat in question caused by the sun or comets or whatever... we would have had deserts left and only occasional ponds, salty like the Dead Sea! So out of a limited 75.000 years I would have theoretically granted the species a larger portion of that time to develop.

Only after 60.000 years according to Buffon had the temperature dropped enough for the first land animals like elephants and rhinos to appear in the jungles of Siberia. Mankind showed up after 70.000 years so that the early gurus’ estimations of 4-6000 years at least for man could be accepted. It was thus independently proved to conveniently match the biblical tales. Buffon never questioned Adams 930 slow years, but since the world had now spun for 70.000 years already it was pretty much up to speed with our years nowadays I would guess. A comparatively much shorter 930 years in other words, but still a long life!

Lucky for Buffon at the time, there were no talking about humanoids and Neanderthals that could prove his theories wrong! Man was created last to take the sceptre of the earth only when it was found worthy of “his empire”! Buffon could therefore enjoy the fame, although it didn’t go exactly as he would’ve hoped! People admired his writing style, but doubted his arguments and rather took to his theories as enjoyable philosophy and early science fiction. Very much like that small boy in Norway with the biblical stories presented to him!

Nina Azari, a neuroscientist with a doctorate in theology, has looked at the brains of religious compared to non religious people. She has measured the brain activity whilst citing the 23rd psalm, a “happy” story and a neutral text. The religious guys in her test-panel all agreed that citing the 23rd psalm helped them enter a religious state of mind, so it would be interesting to compare this with the non religious guys. Previous research on the field has suggested that the limbic system (which regulates emotions) is an important centre of religious activity. Therefore it was expected that the religious people had quite high activity in the limbic system. However, the 23rd psalm caused activity other places than expected... and only for the religious guys. The only thing that triggered limbic activity among all, was the happy story! Religion affects many areas of the brain apparently. A so called God-spot however is derived from work conducted on epileptics. The reports suggest that religious visions are the result of epileptic seizures that affect this part of the brain (!!).I am amazed by the fact that all the brainiacs in time, that still have a name in history, went out of their way to confirm and entangle visions caused by epileptic seizures into their theories??!! I’m starting to question gravity here now!!