Brett Hilton-Barber `I’m an expert in dating early man,” said an American woman. She looked around the conference room where hundreds of scientists were mingling amid fake rocks and designer bushman paintings, and caught the eye of her palaeontologist husband. “That’s my early man,” she smiled. “You could say we’re still dating.” The couple were […]

Mungo Soggot Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna has hit back after his embarrassing concession that the auditor general was not party to the theft of R170-million worth of oil by releasing documents to help explain his attack on the finance watchdog. Maduna’s office handed out the documents at the inquiry into the Strategic […]

Kirby DJ Klatzow: RIGHT TO REPLY I read with some dismay the article, “Helderberg:The search for invisible blame”, by Robert Kirby (June 26 to July 2). The article, despite its length, carries a very small intellectual component, it is factually incorrect and, unfortunately, displays the prejudices of the author rather spectacularly. It is sad to […]

Newfangled appliances don’t only make our lives easier, they create thousands of jobs, writes Ian Wylie According to Garfield, the cartoon world’s laziest cat, the greatest inventions ever are labour-saving devices such as the microwave pizza and the remote control. But it could be argued that the best inventions are those which need labour and […]

Donna Block European markets jumped ahead. Asia hit an 11-year low. The Athens exchange has a positive outlook ahead of privatisation, while the Heng Seng has lost 2% of its value. Welcome to the stock markets of the world. What does it all mean and what is the Heng Seng anyway? The Heng Seng is […]

FRIDAY, 8.30AM: DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday added his voice to Wednesday’s criticism by President Nelson Mandela of the South African Communist Party. Addressing the SACP’s 10th annual congress, Mbeki berated the party for the ease with which it has levelled “charges of treachery” against the African National Congress, adding that the ANC does […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD Me, jump out of a plane at 3 000m? You must be joking. No way! Not this side of life. I could not have emphasised the point more strongly when my editor suggested, with an evil grin, that I try skydiving for this column. I gave him one of […]

Andrew Worsdale Marleen Gorris has become a soft feminist. Or at least, softer than before. Her first two movies A Question of Silence and Broken Mirrors were savage indictments of male- dominated society. Born in Holland in 1948, Gorris studied theatre and literature before her stunning film debut with A Question of Silence. It tells […]

Oxford University Press (OUP)has relaunched its paperback World’s Classics series, a handsome and sturdy set of the best of Europe’s voluminous literature (with some American and Asian works thrown in, too). The titles reach back to Mesopotamia thousands of years ago and forward to James Joyce’s Ulysses. The series features sacred texts such as the […]

Neil Manthorp Cricket The stomach churns, the vision blurs periodically, the fear of a failure so instant, and finite, paralyses the instincts and movements that have been second nature for years. Very few men, at any senior level, have opened the batting without experiencing these emotions. Many have suffered worse. It is quite possible to […]