On March 4, 2010, The Economist ran one of its most memorable covers: a completely black page, except for a pair of tiny pink shoes with frilly bows the bottom. The headline was “Gendercide: what happened to 100 million baby girls?” Good question. The answer is that they were aborted or killed, mainly in China and India, […]
A law student in a Scottish university is facing disciplinary action after saying in an online seminar about transgender issues that women were born with female genitals and that the difference in physical strength between men and women is a fact. Lisa Keogh, a 29-year-old mother of two boys, is in her final year at […]
Tim wrote yesterday about the wider media hypocrisy around the lab-leak story (the idea that the Coronavirus was accidentally released from a science laboratory in Wuhan, China, rather than occurring naturally in a wet market) but this particular element of the global about-face on the idea is worth some dedicated discussion: “Facebook will no longer […]
Brian O’Nolan, otherwise known as Flann O Brien, was at his absolute best when his parody was closest to the bone. In a satirical scene in his best novel (in my opinon), An Béal Bocht (the Poor Mouth), he brings “na Daoine Uasaile” –the educated elite- down from Dublin, to poverty stricken west Kerry, to […]
I’m not proud of a feeling of schadenfreude upon hearing wealthy actor Paul Hogan whine about the homeless drug addicts that have descended on his Los Angeles elite Venice Beach neighbourhood. Mr Hogan feels blockaded into his $3.5m mansion and wishes the homeless just stayed somewhere else where property prices were more suited to their […]
A young writer explains on Mother’s Day in the US why she became a mother at 25. Harmless enough you might think? On the contrary, it aroused feminist fury on social media. A nerve had been touched. It’s worth asking, why? In her opinion piece for The New York Times, titled, ‘I Became a Mother at 25 and I’m Not […]
About three weeks ago, we reported on a lengthy report and investigation by US Science writer Nicholas Wade, which suggested that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Covid 19 did not, as scientists have suggested for nearly two years, transmit naturally from bat to human being. Instead, his work suggested, the evidence seems stronger […]
US-Chinese team of scientists have produced embryos that include human cells and cells of a nonhuman primate, the long-tailed macaque. What are we to make of such experiments? How are we to assess their ethical implications? Historical precedent The first thing to note is that this is by no means the first attempt to produce creatures that […]
On Friday, May 7, hackers attacked the computer systems of Colonial Pipeline, which operates a major gasoline pipeline that brings gasoline and jet fuel from Houston refineries up through the southeastern United States as far as New Jersey. Out of concern that the hackers might have obtained data enabling them to do physical damage to […]
The rule of thumb in politics in the European continent is that domestic failure politically bodes well for promotion to the upper echelons of power in Brussels. After the last election for example, the government very seriously considered spiriting (since left) Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy to Europe to remove him as a political liability at […]
Before the 1965 Immigration Act, the US was approaching zero population growth. The “land of the free and home of the brave,” as we call ourselves, has had below-replacement fertility since the early 1970s. We now see that fifty years of importing a new people merely delayed the inevitable. Immigration, which has slackened of late, […]
Can you really be transgender at four years old? Matthew Stubbings, and wife Klara Jeynes, both 44, from the English city of Doncaster, believe so. Their “son” Stormy was born as a girl named Emerald. However, from 18 months Emerald identified as a boy like her twin brother Arlo, so they are raising him as a […]