Leonie Joubert
Leonie Joubert works from Cape Town. Science writer: political-economy of climate change, the hunger-obesity poverty-paradox in cities, mental health Leonie Joubert has over 1355 followers on Twitter.
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/ 22 April 2008

Sex up science

A projectile the size of a child’s fist shot across the lawn and buried itself in a crouching rhododendron bush. It was summer in the early 1980s and we kids were home from school. My brother, his head crammed with potions learned in the science class, had cobbled together a handful of innocuous kitchen ingredients and turned them into something entirely more volatile.

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/ 1 October 2007

The whoo-whoo club

The Oprah Winfrey Show is about as compelling and gruesome as road kill: no matter how much it grosses you out, you just can’t help looking. A particularly bloody lump of matter recently made it on to our small screens, courtesy of the queen of talk shows, in the shape of a posse of smug self-help gurus whose brand of snake oil has seduced millions the world over. Yes, it’s The Secret.

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/ 15 August 2007

Stormy weather pushes up oil prices

World oil prices swirled higher on Wednesday as traders looked to stormy weather that could threaten energy facilities in the United States Gulf of Mexico. Market participants were also awaiting the latest update on crude reserves in the US. New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in September, rose to $72,56 per barrel.