”Professor Greg Retallack has spent much of the past few years taking soil samples from the sites of the temples of ancient Greece. He has stumbled on a remarkable phenomenon. There is a strong link between the identity of the god worshipped at a particular temple and the temple’s location.” George Monbiot examines a theory that the type of soil humans worked determined their religious beliefs.
”Sports journalism is an oxymoron. I’m not being unkind by saying so. Find a sports journalist, perhaps sleeping under a pool table on the East Rand, the widening moat of drool spreading under his unshaven cheek reflecting the pole-dancer’s neon panties. Peel the Lucky Strike from behind his ear and light it for him. Then ask him what he does for a living.” Tom Eaton bids farewell from his last Pitch & Mutter column.
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Zimbabwe’s ageing President Robert Mugabe presented a startling sight as he launched his party’s election campaign with a woman’s scarf tied around his head. The campaign for a parliamentary election has seen a flurry of measures aimed at uplifting women in Zimbabwe’s fiercely patriarchal society.
<b>CD OF THE WEEK:</b> The Game’s verbal delivery combines New York rap’s creative wordplay with Los Angeles’s gang mentality. Brian Letlhabane lends an ear to <i>The Documentary</i>.
The world looks beautiful for Bafana Bafana as national coach Stuart Baxter’s side look down from the top of World Cup and African Cup of Nations qualifying group B. A lot has changed since Baxter was appointed on April 1 last year. At the time, the Englishman’s appointment was met with disapproval in certain soccer circles.
White farmers who lost their land in Zimbabwe are helping neighbouring Zambia shore up its tobacco and maize production while steering clear of political controversy. ”Tobacco production has increased in the last three years because of the white Zimbabwean farmers,” says Finance Minister Ngandu Magande.
Scientists have raised the spectre of a Jurassic Park resurrection of dinosaurs after extracting what looks like blood vessels and intact cells from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Tests on the 70-million-year-old samples continue, but the United States scientists have not ruled out the possibility of extracting DNA.
The guardians of the ancient Japanese sport of sumo on Thursday rebuffed attempts to allow shy pubescent boys to wear pants instead of the traditional loincloths. The behemoths who grace the ring wear nothing but a belt that makes no attempt to hide the buttocks and, during a strenuous bout, can reveal much more.
A prominent Aids dissident has attempted to use President Thabo Mbeki’s perceived ambivalence around HIV/Aids treatment to further the aims of the Rath Foundation, which promotes vitamins as an alternative to anti-retroviral drugs. But the presidency dismisses the out-of-hand claims that Mbeki instigated the creation of organisations which attack anti-retroviral drugs.
Naturally occurring hallucinogenic and narcotic plants have played an important role in religious and cultural practices throughout history — and many young South Africans are experimenting with these ”organic highs”. Unlike marijuana and most laboratory-synthesised narcotics, these mind-altering plants are not ”proscribed” in terms of the Drugs and Drugs Trafficking Act of 1992.