Mutter Author
latest news & developmentsThe truth about Cats and dogs
What is sport, and who decides what counts as a sport? High school coaches will tell you that sport is fun, as they nick the heels of weeping 13-year-olds with a well-oiled…
Wanted: Comical Ali
Thirty days ago nobody had heard of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. Today everybody has a favourite “Comical Ali” one-liner. The Iraqi minister of information has spawned a T-shirt…
Back in the good old RSA
For those who continue to bleat about unfair domination in sport, I have four letters: USSR.
Park of darkness
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,…
Exhibitionists, one and all
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…
Flat dogs, preppies and muti
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,…
Viva Thuthuka
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…
A new dictionary of received ideas (III)
"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…
A new dictionary of received ideas (Part II)
The story so far: her hull holed by an iceberg, the ferry begins to sink. Todd and Janet declare their true feelings. DeShawn commits a faux pas when talk turns to prosthetic…
A new dictionary of received ideas (Part 1)
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…
You’ll never walk again
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…
‘Don’t chase Zim invite’
Revelations that South Africa attempted to stop a Southern African Development Community (SADC) judicial delegation, declaring the mission “unnecessary”, have resulted in…
Let’s kill all the lawyers
A few years ago a student of mine handed in a final-year essay containing the words “correlative”, “oeuvre” and “mandate”. Since I knew the author to be an intellectual pimple…
Bid farewell to the games we knew
Sport is elitist. Anyone who wants to argue that toss needs to go two rounds with a pro fighter, and then we’ll see if fuzzy notions of universal brotherhood persist. Sport…
Homecoming Devolution
Tom Eaton has met the brain drain. "He’s ghastly. He doesn’t challenge his world-view by reading newspapers (or reading anything, for that matter), so I could name him with…