I’ll keep this brief, as I hope you will be more interested in reading the Guardian today than Heretic TOC. The long-awaited article by Jon Henley (see “Taking the hex off a media word in edgeways”, 23 Dec 2012) has finally appeared. Do tell me what you think of it, but first, in the next few hours, you might want to focus on sharing your views with the Guardian, in their comment space. Don’t dither: latecomers (tomorrow, say) are likely to find the comment thread closed.

Heretic TOC is pleased to have attracted on average around eight comments for every blog posted so far. A number have been rejected as unsuitable but the general standard has been gratifyingly high. Some commentators have expressed frustration over the 200-word limit. On the whole I feel it is a useful restriction which encourages everyone to focus on a particular point and stick to it. There will be times, though, when what is needed is not just a “point”, but a developed argument, much as you would expect to see in a good blog piece or an op-ed column in a

Heretic TOC has been on the move this week, on a hectic festive tour of duty almost as demanding as Santa’s, manoeuvring steadily southwards from the blog’s bleak northern fastness to greet old friends, and make merry and in ye fine olde taverns and ale houses of London. It’s proving a tough slog for the blog, which is totally unfamiliar with life on the road or, rather, railroad. Wi-fi was very welcome on Chiltern Trains, but proved to be heavily policed. I was refused access to the IPCE site (see Blogroll), which I needed for reference purposes in connection with the

Will America follow Obama’s bid to tackle the country’s insane gun laws? The signs are slightly more encouraging than in the wake of previous school massacres. Even the stone-hearts of the “right to bear arms” cannot face-down the butchery of so many little kids, right there in the face of the nation. We’d do well not to hold our breath though: any change is likely to be minimal, and long haggled over in ways that need not detain Heretic TOC. Here the focus will instead be on how we look upon such events, whether as individual pathology or cultural malaise. It

Time to resolve that cliffhanger I left you with yesterday – since when, incidentally, Heretic TOC’s hit rate has jumped significantly: seems a bit of controversy is good for business! So, where was I? Ah, yes, I said a neuroscientist had agreed with Susie Orbach and myself that there was good reason for skepticism over a theory that paedophilia is caused by “crossed wiring” in the brain. An MRI scanning study by James Cantor and his team into the brains of paedophiles and others had shown that paedophiles have less “white matter”, this being interpreted as a dysfunctional deficiency. Before going

When academics disagree with each other there’s only one way to settle who is right. As TV comedian Harry Hill would say: “Fight! Fight!” Shouting around the playground that battle is underway, with fisticuffs and blood in prospect, has always been an exciting scenario for kids. And it’s really not much different among the profs. Try as they might to affect an air of gentlemanly courtesy and “collegiate” spirit, there is sometimes no disguising the ferocity and malevolence that pervades the world of academic disputes. Unlike the kids’ world, where aggression is often spontaneous and quickly resolved, in the seemingly calm

Why do girls lose their virginity? What, exactly, is lost? In her recent radio talk on the age of consent, Mary Beard mentioned what she called “quaint talk” about girls “losing their virginity”, as though the phrase really belongs to another age. And so it does, in a sense. These days, in many societies of the economically developed world, there is no strong expectation or requirement that a female must be a virgin when she marries, if she does. An attractive and personable young woman – and a good many without such attributes – will not fail to land “a good