Scorched

Sex up science (M&G)

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 | Mail & Guardian column | No Comments

fffzzzzzzz…zzzz…zzz… THUP!

A projectile the size of a child’s fist shot across the lawn and buried itself in a crouching rhododendron bush. It was summer in the early 1980s and we kids were home from school. My brother, his head crammed with potions learned in the science class, had cobbled together a handful of innocuous kitchen ingredients and turned them into something entirely more volatile.

The receptacle for this weapon of minimal destruction was our mum’s lovely ceramic vinegar jar, the projectile was its cork stopper. › Continue reading

Tags: popular science, science

Sparks fly (Extra Virgin)

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 | uncategorized | No Comments

Water, food, shelter – in the hierarchy of human needs, it starts and ends right there. Without such necessities, conflict is not only likely but inevitable, writes Leonie Joubert.

The man’s name has become faded with lack of use, his face replaced by more recent, indeed more useful memories. But the maroon waistcoat, gold trim, still flash boldly through the mind’s recesses. A school teacher and poet, he’d say of his credentials to passing customers. That was before he left home.

Six years after Rwanda imploded, the man was still peddling a living on the economic fringe of a Cape Town parking lot. He didn’t know whether he would ever return home or even whether his family was alive. › Continue reading