The fag-end of a Cape Town summer is a bad-tempered swelter. The heat is frayed, its December esprit evaporated with the ice-cream and tourists. What remains is an exhausted, impatient shimmer of cracking tar and acres of council-planted kindling. On Sunday I took a slow boat through the choked backwaters of that sluggish, steaming, backward city.

If you are too young to have learnt to spell the word “science”, don’t worry – Sasol SciFest has a special programme for children aged four to eight. Called the Playfair, participants can expect a different science experience each morning, from chocolate-making workshops to building radios.

Putting women at the forefront of scientific research has been one of the greatest challenges of the National Research Foundation (NRF). The object of the NRF is to support and promote research through funding, human resource development and the provision of research facilities, in order to facilitate the creation of knowledge, innovation and development in all fields of science and technology.

By far the most popular attractions each year at Sasol SciFest, the exhibitions are set to outdo themselves this year with the return of old favourites, some fresh young blood and the winners of last year’s best exhibit awards. Running each day of the festival, the exhibitions are open from 9am to 5pm. Entrance is free.

"The audience was now openly hostile, its mute boredom transformed into a continuous murmur of discontent, like angry bees massing in the heat of summer. He thought he saw the glint of a dagger under a toga. It was time for the pontification to end. Just two more minutes, he thought, and plunged on -" Tom Eaton presents the final instalment of the Dictionary of Received Ideas.

In 1911, Gustave Flaubert launched a valiant but vain broadside at the hypocrisy, doublespeak, platitudes and banality of the bourgeois chattering classes. Three years after the publication of <i>A Dictionary of Received Ideas</i>, World War I broke out. In 2005, Tom Eaton presents, in three parts over the next three weeks, a new dictionary of ideas.

Those who attack American interests around the globe, who incite peaceful native populations to fanaticism and violence, and who undermine democracy must expect swift and decisive action by the United States and its military. This was the word from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday as she outlined her country’s plans to invade Manchester.

Revelations that South Africa attempted to stop a Southern African Development Community (SADC) judicial delegation, declaring the mission “unnecessary”, have resulted in confusion about the country’s approach to the upcoming election in Zimbabwe. The legal team was meant to precede and inform a broader SADC observer mission.