When Federico Andahazi wrote a novel about the clitoris, Argentines were scandalised – and women rushed to buy it for their husbands. Maya Jaggi reports Every discovery is arrogant, says Federico Andahazi, and possibly none more so than that charted in his remarkable novel The Anatomist. At its heart is a real Renaissance scientist from […]

A lot more goes on after bedtime than we know about, writes Gill Moodie The next time you are tossing and turning in bed, it might ease the night to think of scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand who are holding vigil over electro-encephalogram (EEG) machines to try to understand that mysterious activity that […]

RobertKirby : Loosecannon I would like to express my gratitude to Kader Asmal for his good-natured response (“Kirby should look before he leaps”, September 11 to 17) to a column of mine in which I suggested he needed a wake-up call on the matter of the Dukuduku forest – or what is left of the […]

Ferial Haffajee Emigration lawyer Hilliard Kassel is laughing all the way to the bank. He jokes that the only reason he stays in South Africa is because his skill in helping people to leave is in such demand. Based in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the bespectacled lawyer is at the cutting edge of the migratory wave […]

After hundreds of years of research, the molecular spark that triggered life still puzzles scientists, writes Paul Davies In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster is brought to life by a bolt of electricity. This procedure fitted in with the 19th-century view that living matter is somehow distinct from non-living matter, and that an organism […]

Gouglas Rushkoff : Online Is the Internet a source of psychological problems, or does it provide a cure? For every book or article I read about the detrimental effects of spending time online, I see another listing sites where people can turn for psychological counselling. I receive many letters from psychologists asking about the effect […]

David Conn : English Soccer English football has been transformed so rapidly in the last few years, from a game millions paid cheaply to watch on ramshackle terracing, to an activity which can make 100-million for one man like Martin Edwards, that it is difficult at times to make articulate sense of isolated developments. So […]

Julienne du Toit There are few things that strike fear into the heart of an environmentalist faster than high-speed industrialisation in remote, beautiful areas. Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs) have been planned on and near some of the finest beauty spots. So the response of many environmentalists and environmental organisations has ranged between outrage and mistrust, […]

He’s known for his long, soft notes, but it’s the wild brushstrokes of Miles Davis that are about to get Jo’burg talking. Matthew Krouse and Alex Dodd check it out When Miles Davis was hit by a stroke in the late Seventies, his hand went into paralysis and he was terrified that he would never […]

Demutualisation hopes have lost their shine in the wake of turmoil in the financial markets, writes Belinda Beresford You could be forgiven for confusing the huff and puff over demutualisation with the sound of the gravy train pulling in for a lucky few. Since last year, the financial world has been talking up the conversion […]