Economists may need a crash rethink of the basic tenets of economic orthodoxy, writes Larry Elliot Another normal week for the global economy. Russia’s on the point of financial meltdown, the Chinese government is battling to stave off devaluation, bankruptcies are up 35% in Japan, stock markets are down almost everywhere, the biggest industrial merger […]
off air Ferial Haffajee Just as viewers were starting to get used to presenter S’bu Khumalo doing his cool and chatty thing on Sunday nights, the long-awaited television arts programme, aRt, has been taken off air. aRt played out for the last time on Sunday night and will be replaced in October by a new […]
I was at cocktail party last week when I heard the terrifying news. A notice in Scientific American reported that video games change brain chemistry. In a study conducted at the Cyclotron Unit of Hammersmith Hospital in London, Dr Paul Grasby and his fellow researchers determined that playing video games triggers the release of dopamine […]
Bryan Rostron Returning home after many years, I have discovered a rudimentary litmus test for gauging how the political land lies. Mention the name Robert McBride. A litmus test, you will recall, produces simple either/or results. In this case: a hero or villain. The reaction seldom has anything to do with McBride. It’s like holding […]
superior? Carolize Jansen In research done by the Sports Information and Science Agency (Sisa) in South Africa, the following interesting statistics came to light: when asking women about obstacles they faced in sport: 10% of women between 18 and 24 years mentioned men’s physical strength advantage, compared to the average of 5% of older women. […]
gets the chop Anton Marshall An old, decayed building in Wynberg is all that stands as a reminder of an entire era in film culture on the Cape Flats. From as far back as the Seventies and up until the late Eighties, features at cinemas like the Luxurama and Studio 1 donned a fairly uniform […]
Charlotte Raven First Person Another day, another report confirming men’s supposed oppression. This time, the global crisis as men across four continents confess to being annoyed that they’re not getting enough attention. According to a study by Research International, men are feeling unappreciated. Women hardly acknowledge them, except to laugh and point. On the odd […]
Ferial Haffajee Tensions in the Midi TV consortium have come to a head because major shareholders vetoed an attempt by the board’s chair to secure a highly paid job at the station. Nomazizi Mtshotshisa has lobbied hard to become full-time executive chair, with an annual salary of over R400 000. Her efforts were shot down […]
Andrew Worsdale The first movie I ever saw was Swiss Family Robinson at the Greenway cinema in Greenside and I vividly remember sleeping most of the way through it, waking up for an instant to see a giant python slithering down a tree, and then I burst into tears. Thirty-something years later I feel like […]
The massacre of species at present rates has baleful consequences for Earth, writes Tim Radford A big fish is about to swim away, forever. The barndoor skate, Raja levis, seems close to extinction. In 1951 research ships found it in 10% of all trawls of the St Pierre Bank in the Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland. […]