For a while, I’ve been pondering over writing a post on the subject of rape humour and when it can and cannot be justified. I got as far as digging out a rather good paper on humour during the Holocaust, which goes some way to illustrating some of […]

It’s not often that a paper in a medical ethics journal manages to generate a major shitstorm but a new paper by Alberto Giubilini (Monash University) and Francesca Minerva (University of Melbourne) has managed to do precisely that and the clue to understanding why is probably obvious from […]

What’s the difference between a blogger and newspaper columnist? The answer, more often than not, is that a blogger actually takes the time to investigate a story before committing their thoughts to teh Interwebs, unlike newspaper columnists, many of whom seem to think that the fact that they […]

Yesterday’s Telegraph was, as most people will already have seen, awash with stories relating to a sting operation by the newspaper in which a couple of doctors were apparently caught turning a blind-eye to requests for sex-selective abortions. Before we go any further, we should get the facts […]

Over at the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the great man himself has posted a fascinating and, to say the least, illuminating account of a telephone conversation with a reporter from the Telegraph which speaks volumes for the rather desperate state into which the newspaper has fallen in recent times. […]

It not that often that I come across an article in the Guardian that leave me grinding my teeth in sheer frustration, save for those rare occasions on which the newspaper has given Nadine Dorries an undeserved platform. However, this truly dreadful piece of naked churnalism by the […]

Oooh – via the ever vigilant Google Alerts system and the Daily Mail it would appear that old ‘friend’ has resurfaced wearing a new, and rather cheap-looking, suit… Could voice analysis software give away lying CEOS? Ah yes, we’re in questions to which the answer is ‘No’ country […]

I think its time for Andrew Brown to move on from The Guardian to a publisher like Elsevier where his regular opinion column can be given a more appropriate title. Something along the lines of ‘The Journal of Not Even Wrong’ would do very nicely, if only because […]

Apropos of my last article on tokenism and gender balance in the composition of BBC Question Time panels, I’ve now pulled together a complete list of the people who have made at least one appearance on a Question Time panel since January 2009 and am looking for a […]

Via Cath Elliott I find that BBC Question Time has been criticised by a BBC ‘diversity report’ for allegedly featuring ‘token women’ on its panels: BBC1’s Question Time and Mock the Week have been criticised in a report about television diversity for featuring “token women” on their panels. […]