Author Archives: bruss.young@gmail.com

Madikwe Mooifontein Camp Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 85 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 91 days Last week there was no blog. I was in the beautiful game reserve Madikwe from Thursday to Sunday with a group of friends. It was a fantastic trip. The weather wasContinue reading “Ruminations on Load Shedding and the Existential Crisis Facing South Africa”

Maritaba Explorers Camp Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 71 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 77 days For more than 20 years I have been organising an annual trip to the bush for my cisgender male friends. This was only interrupted in 2020 by Covid 19. I haveContinue reading “Ruminations on Worrying, Anxiety, Depression and Extinction”

Typical day-long queue at dilapidated home affairs office Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 64 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 70 days A good blog or essay is written with a combination of head and heart. A fact and analysis-based essay needs some heart and perhaps some humourContinue reading “Ruminations on Neo Apartheid and the Lump of Labour Fallacy”

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 57 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 64 days If we agree that tackling climate change is one of the most important challenges facing humanity it is appropriate to ruminate on how satisfying some of the dominant narratives are regarding how we willContinue reading “Ruminations on the Deus ex Machina Approach to Climate Change”

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 50 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 57 days Today my blog is short and late because I have been involved in scholarly activities. One of my (many) groupies forwarded me an opinion paper recently published by Julian Kircherr in the peer-reviewed academicContinue reading “Ruminations on scholarly bullshit and being provocative”

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 43 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 50 days Long ago I accepted that I am a monumental nerd and that I’m epically uncool. It is in this context that I confess that one of my favourite authors is the energy scholar VaclavContinue reading “Ruminations on Boring Stuff Like Ammonia and How the World Really Works”

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 37 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 43 days I am a self-confessed grumpy old man. Grumpiness is not necessarily always compatible with having a positive attitude. There is an entire industry out there regarding how one can transform one’s life by beingContinue reading “Ruminations of a grumpy old git and putting your positive pants on”

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 30 of no lock down. Period as an ivory tower academic 36 days According to Nerine, my wife, I am very lazy, and she should know. Bertrand Russel wrote a famous essay, “In praise of idleness”.  https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/. Russel suggests that a great deal of harm isContinue reading “Ruminations on idleness and insatiability”

Covid Waves in Gauteng which includes Johannesburg Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies in day 23 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 29 days One of my groupies (correction friend) and I have been having a feisty debate about risk and mortality. This friend is sufficiently feisty that I could notContinue reading “Ruminations on the 5th Covid wave, personal risk, and your demise”

The crater left after the bridge at Nthulungwane was washed away Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 9 of no lockdown. Period as an ivory tower academic 15 days  The last 18 months have not been kind to KZN.  Covid 19 was rampant in KZN during the Beta strain-led second wave inContinue reading “Ruminations on Kwazulu Natal’s Annus Horribulus of plague, anarchy, and floods”