This past Sunday was one of those magnificent perfect Durban days when the sky is bluer than a Disney animation. I was walking along the Esplanade on the harbour side of the railway tracks from Wilson’s Wharf to the yacht mole.

I turned 50 last week, which in turn has led to a larger-than-usual period of reminiscing.

An interesting email dropped into my mailbox last week. This email, which has clearly been doing the rounds since last year, was headed Naming of very large numbers. I quote: “The Indians of the Sub-continent gave the Zero to the World.

There’s a concept that well known to those of us who have a passing interest in chaos theory. It’s called the butterfly effect. It was coined around the time I was born by American mathematician and meteorologist, Edward Norton Lorenz.

An email last week from a reader, Radha Naidoo, raised the query: “When South Africa became a peoples government in 1994, why did it not negotiate for the incorporation of the "bantustans" of Lesotho and Swaziland as provinces of South Africa?

The American jazz poet, Langston Hughes, famously wrote: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Under South African law, the rules under which a person accused of a crime can be named are very clear: the person has to be charged, appear in court, and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.

There are some jobs reserved for political deployees and there are some jobs reserved for those that are competent.

Did you know that about 75 000 people got married in the USA last Friday? Did you know that 3 400 of those got married in Las Vegas? Did you know that the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel, which specializes in Elvis Presley ministers, did more than 300 of those weddings?

We all break laws on occasion. Anyone who buys a newspaper from a street seller is breaking the law by aiding and abetting a jaywalker and conducting commerce in a street without a licence.