Claire Sweeney's big fat... What exactly was Claire Sweeney's motivation to put on as much weight as possible in a short time?
Abigail Blackburn and the truth about pregorexia Celebrity culture eats its own children, and nobody profits more than editors like Abigail Blackburn.
Altruistic octopi and going the extra mile Maybe Richard Dawkins has been meditating on the life and death of arthropods for too long in his, to him, fruitless search for altruism. A meditation on the BBC/Open University documentary The Challenges of Life.
G20 - all fools' day for protestors? When radical anthropologist Chris Knight and former Playboy centrefold Marina Pepper united to urge protestors to burn the banks at the G20 meeting in London on April 1, 2009, there could be only one result: short-lived self-promotion.
Don't go down the road to hell, it's jammed with bendy-buses How an amusing article by comedienne Ariane Sherine was subverted by radical militant atheists with sinister agendas.
Pictures from my mother I've still got the case my mother was given for her first day of school in the 1930s, and recently unpacked its treasures.
Norman Tebbit and the art of Risk Former Conservative Party chairman Norman Tebbit showed a magisterial understanding of the concept of risk when he suggested voters could elect smaller parties as a reaction to the MPs' expenses crisis. Councils, schools and insurance companies take note.
Desecration and Hope The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs was recently targeted by a self-styled "Magus" who claims to have raised an "elemental" in it.
Top ten songs about water In the ancient Church, catechumenates used to meditate on water during Lent prior to their Easter baptism. I can't promise a meditation, but here's some songs and some thoughts.
Underage smoking is more stupid than criminal An unorthodox but time-honoured way to discourage an underage smoker.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows From Harry Potter through such stopping points as Odysseus and back - but contains spoilers: big ones!
Golliwog-gate:the racism of anti-racists When Carol Thatcher, daughter of the former prime-minister, was accused of racism, were there sinister undercurrents at play?
Crocs, giraffes and the vagrant nerve: inside nature's giants Richard Dawkins attends the dissection of a giraffe's recurent laryngeal nerve by,among others, Joy Reidenberg, but fails to forward his agenda with the innervation of unborn vertebrates.
In memory of Kerry Wooltorton When Kerry Wooltorton handed paramedics a letter instructing that she not be resuscitated after swallowing poison, was she conforming to climate change fanatics' fevered desire that the population be reduced by any means?
Swine flu - is it time to panic yet? The stampede of people who sought to have themselves diagnosed (or otherwise) with swine flu on the government website/helpline smacked of panic.
The ichneumon delusion Review of the first of three programmes in which Richard Dawkins ostensibly celebrates the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birh, but in reality announces his self-apotheosis.
Mother Earth: sometimes the eyes don't have it The collector I met in Cambridge, who was trying to source funds for Friends of the Earth, wasn't taken with James Lovelock's idea that we protect Amazonia by burying nuclear waste there.
Children in need of morally competent adults Children in Need is unusual in the modern BBC, in that it not only presumes but demands moral givens.
How diverse is diversity? On a diversity course, a left-leaning friend of mine pointed out that diversity isn't a good in itself, and pointed to Adolf Hitler as the most diversity-aware leader of modern times. I'm working on putting him in touch with his inner conservative.
The rhythms of lives Paul Johnstone of the Spectator once published his ten favourite short poems - herer's my ten!
"I need to say my say" Mary Pickford proved that success in Hollywood didn't guarantee happiness, as failing to break in the States is the straw that broke Katie Price's marriage to Peter André.
Propaganda in words and pictures An actual GCSE Science paper, showing the sort of propaganda our children are confronted with daily as regards issues related to the beginning of life.
Underage smoking is more stupid than criminal An unorthodox but time-honoured way to discourage an underage smoker.
Bullies breaking society's bonds - so bin the box A post marking the beginning of Anti-Bullying Week. Anthropogenic climate change pioneer Roger Revelle, who turned Al Gore onto the idea, was accused of being mentally ill when he excercised his right to change his mind.
Where are they now? Where are the people who should have picked up a death-rate at Staffordshire General Hospital approaching that of Harold Shipman's patients. Cynthia Bower, who was in charge of auditing standards in the region, is now Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission.
Why does the BBC hate intelligent women? The BBC's shameful persecution of Oxford's Corpus Christi College University Challenge team, fronted by the "human google" Gail Trimble, revealed the corporation's underlying misogyny.
Maunday Thursday - beyond the comfort zone When I admitted at Morning Prayer that not going to Church was becoming as normal as going had once been, our Curate replied with one of Christianity's greatest weapons - hilarity; one of the suggestions was to chain me to a pew.
Travails of the Jabberwock Tracking the mythical beast's decline through its various incarnations from Through the Looking Glass to The Last Mimsy.
Top ten songs about ghost stories We are a narrative species. Storytelling is as fundamental an activity for human beings as eating or sleeping, and ghost stories are an integral part of this.
Stqate marriage? It never worked the first time Recently the government announced a plan to declare couples who had a child together as married by default. In Just Sex, Guy Brandon relates what happened when the Soviets under Lenin adopted a similar measure.
