You can read all my Guardian articles here.

And here are a few highlights:

On computer games:

On Tuesday the Advertising Standards Agency banned adverts for a new computer game, Kane & Lynch, because it deemed them too violent. It is interesting that adverts for last year's "torture porn" film Captivity were not banned, even though they were heavily criticised in the US. And no one even raises the possibility of banning such films outright. But then, computer games are our society's straw man for panic about moral decay, thought to have some special power to harm and corrupt.

Dr Tanya Byron's eminently sensible report last month on children and new technology emphasised the many opportunities for fun and learning that games provide. But the media coverage focused on the usual fears and worries. Byron said that we need to move away from talking about computer games "causing harm"; in response, TV and newspapers showed stills from games with titles like Manhunt and God of War. Byron said children need to be "empowered to keep themselves safe"; newspapers said computers and televisions should be kept in communal spaces in the home...

On Shalom Auslander:

A couple of years ago, Richard Dawkins unleashed a storm of protest when he likened the religious education of children to "mental child abuse". Whatever one's feelings about the application of the term "abuse" to raise the temperature of any debate, Shalom Auslander's memoir, Foreskin's Lament, by turns hilarious and devastating on what he calls "theological abuse", will delight the Dawkins camp.

Auslander was raised, "like veal" he says, in the Orthodox Jewish community of Monsey, New York. His mother was unable to move past the death of her first child, while his father (a carpenter in a community that valued education but not creativity) was an abusive alcoholic. But it's God, or rather the belief in a particularly vindictive, vengeful God, that really blighted Auslander's life. Remembering the moment when he heard that God could be addressed as "our Father in heaven", he says: "I shuddered. There's another one? In heaven? That's God? Did He stumble around in His underwear? How big was His fist? As big as a car? As big as a house? What was it like to get punched by a house?" ...

On e-books:

Imagine this: it's 2018, and you're gripped by the latest political thriller by JK Rowling. (Didn't she start out writing children's books? Who can remember now?) You scarcely want to break off to do the washing-up or have a shower. So you don't. You just tell your e-book reader to read it to you for a while, then, when you've finished, you go back to it yourself. Later, you wonder if this part wasn't a little different in the movie. At a click of a button, you're watching the film. Or there's a dramatic scene - a whispered conversation at a concert. You're given the option to hear the concert music as you read. For attentive fans, the novelist has decided this piece should be one referenced earlier. Novels are changing, and Amazon's Kindle e-reader is just the start...

On PE in schools:

At the end of the Olympic games last month, Gordon Brown declared that it was time to "encourage competitive sports" in schools, to end the "medals for all" culture that prevailed in the 70s and 80s. He said that he wanted to see pupils recapture the "all or nothing" attitude in relation to sporting achievement. Barely two weeks later, a study was released demonstrating what any obese child could have told him: competitive sports put pupils off exercise. The study, conducted by Loughborough University, showed that a heavy emphasis on competitive sport in Britain's schools is preventing pupils from developing healthy exercise habits, and doing little or nothing to improve teenage obesity.

As someone who went to school in the 70s and 80s, I can't say that I noticed much of a "medals for all" culture myself. Physical education was taught in much the same way it's always been taught: team games, captains picking their sides, and the inevitable segregation between those who are good at games and are picked first and those rejects left shuffling uncomfortably while the captains try to decide between the fat child, the child in glasses or the child puffing on an inhaler. In other words, physical education was taught in a way guaranteed to give at least some of the children lasting exercise-phobia. Competitive sports may be where exercise becomes "fun" for children who are good at it, but for those who are less talented, it is where exercise becomes not only physically demanding but also emotionally painful and socially humiliating.

To get some sense of the damage this can cause, imagine if we taught maths using the same method...

On hijabs at the Olympics:

The Greeks, as we all know, used to compete in the original Olympic games stark naked and smothered in olive oil. That's no longer the fashion - because we have different cultural ideas about what parts of the body are suitable for public display - and, in fact, some women have taken the trend for Olympic modesty one stage further. This year, several women, including Egyptian fencer Shaimaa El Gammal and Bahraini sprinter Rakia Al Gassra, will be competing wearing the hijab.

I suppose that as a good liberal feminist I ought to be appalled by this, seeing it as a symbol of patriarchal oppression. In fact, I find I rather admire these women.

I am appalled by the fact that some countries, including Saudi Arabia, have sent male-only teams to the games. But for these women, combining their religious beliefs with their athletic ambitions, I have nothing but respect...