Thirty thousand people—I was tempted to write harridans and harpies, but there must have been some emasculated men among them—have petitioned the Oxford University Press to remove words such as bitch, in the meaning of unpleasant female, from the Oxford English Dictionary as being derogatory ...

There are certain public figures upon whose face I cannot bear to look. They are not necessarily the very worst of such figures. For example, I don’t mind looking at, indeed I even derive a certain amusement from, the face of Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. And in my kitchen I have had ...

Just as you were thinking that human folly could go no further, an academic somewhere steps forward to propose something even more outré. Not long ago, for example, a professor in Cambridge proposed that the voting age be lowered to 6. This was not intended as a joke or as a satire on the ...

A friend who is a doctor told me—and therefore it must be true—that a well-known social media site has decided that from now on it will not publish how many people “liked” what people had posted on it because some posts attracted many more “likes” than others, thereby wounding the ...

An Irish friend who pays much closer attention to the media than do I often passes on to me items that he thinks might interest me. He is of my view that things of no importance in themselves might nevertheless point to phenomena of greater significance. This is why he passed on to me a tweet by a ...

“The Machine Stops” is a story by E.M. Forster published in 1909, the year of my father’s birth. Forster is not usually considered a writer of science fiction, any more than is Jane Austen, but his one attempt at the genre was truly remarkable. In the story, humans lead completely isolated ...

Discussing the case of Jeffrey Epstein recently, my interlocutor asked me whether the indulgence in orgy by the rich and powerful was more frequent nowadays than ever before. I had to admit that I had no special historical insight into this question, but having witnessed a couple of orgies in my ...

Is attention to the correct use of words mere pedantry or, as Confucius thought, the necessary foundation of a healthy state? I am with Confucius on this, which is why I was disturbed by President Trump’s words after the recent mass shooting in El Paso. They were exactly wrong. The president ...

It is a humbling tribute to my complete unimportance that, having written perhaps 5,000 articles in my lifetime, I have only once been the object of concerted attack or criticism. This is especially humbling in the era of the social media, when it is so easy to insult people publicly. The one ...

It was the late Marshal Mobutu’s great economic insight that bribery was a transaction involving two parties. Whether it is more blessed to give than to receive I cannot say, because it depends on the circumstances. In over-regulated states it certainly cuts through a lot of red tape and thereby ...