If a stealth bomber crashes in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

THE world, some of you may have noticed, has gotten to be expensive. I remember when a billion used to be a lot of money. These days, it just isn't enough to get by.

It was the French that put me onto this train of thought. While craftily diverting this continent's attention to the World Cup draw in Paris, they proceeded to sneak into Cape Town.

That's right -- "sneak". They rocked up on a stealth frigate.

'In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty,' Phil Ochs once said ...

DAWN was breaking over the magnificent desolation of the Karoo landscape as cats eyes flung themselves towards me along the road pointing toward an infinite horizon.

This is the 9th month of the year 1999. There are 99 days to go to the last year of this century. Do you feel a sense of destiny?

A BUTTERFLY flapped his wings in East Timor, setting up gentle spirals of air currents that grew as they intersected harmoniously with others nearby. He lived gloriously for a few short hours, mated, and died. Night fell and the remnants of his wings tossed and turned, no longer with life of their own, in the now strong breeze.

The stars looked down silently upon the scene. They had seen it before.

How we deal with death is as important as how we deal with life...

If you knew that a rose would scream, would you still pluck it?