“... The teacher refuses. Later Sasaki decides that Nao (Katsuki Mori), the woman he is sleeping with, may be able to seduce the teacher into compromising behaviour. (Sasaki uses the phrase ‘honey trap’, an idiom I didn’t know existed in Japan, but then we do live in a globalised world.) Nao lures the teacher at least into compromising speech, which she ...”

“... to what might be thought the most odd, hermetic, esoteric and in-your-face new work. Some visitors may reckon they are visiting a freak show, a playroom or a chamber of horrors, but their refusal to accept that they are in the presence of art minimises the debilitating self-importance a gallery exhibition tends to force on even the most subversive work. The ...”

“... where it came from and then try to adumbrate Khamenei’s statement. It’s important because it may be the key to the outcome of the present nuclear negotiations with Iran. Let WSWU be the number of SWUs needed to separate a feed with a percentage of uranium-235 xf – the rest being uranium-238 – into a product with a U-235 percentage xp and a remainder ...”

“... has to do not with whether there is a solution but with what to do about whatever solution one may find. This is a thriller after all, but a slow and easily distracted one. When we arrive, towards the end of the movie, at the provincial town which is the home of all these people, posse, victim, killer, we are surprised at its extent, the houses spilling ...”

“... an actual dig. Their friend explains that where the archaeologists suspect there are bodies, or may once have been bodies, they pour liquid plaster into the ground through small holes, and allow it to solidify across the empty space into the shape of the bodies. They then brush away the soil to reveal not corpses but casts of corpses. As Alex and Katherine ...”

“... north Kent resort today – its decayed seafront and sad amusements – Duchamp’s presence there may seem absurd, his reassurance not entirely convincing. But the postcard he sent Bergmann shows the town in its prime: a place lately promoted from a staging post en route to Margate, with its radial streets confected as a genteel alternative to more garish ...”

“... A ping-pong table in the Ron Arad: Restless exhibition (at the Barbican until 16 May) shows that you don’t need to change the rules just because you’ve changed the equipment. The stainless steel playing surface curves gently down from each end to meet at the steel net. Sneaky top-spin drives would, I guess, bounce high, but I didn’t experiment (bats and balls can be borrowed ...”

“... must read it too. Paintings and illustrated books usually have an optimum viewing distance; you may peer at details but most of the time you choose a position that takes in the whole. With maps it is different. Walking round the British Library galleries you are forever moving in and out, scanning the whole and reading the detail. When you are reading the ...”

“... checked the buddha out, and came back to enlarge his version. At Alton Towers in the 1980s (I may be misremembering) there were miniatures of the seven wonders of the world, alongside the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty and Saarinen’s arch in St Louis – and very fascinating they were, intricately modelled and quite embarrassingly enticing in their ...”

“... doing so. Secrecy jurisdictions raise revenue by collecting fees from registering companies. They may also charge fees for regulating the financial services industry located in their domain, and collect tax on the personal earnings of anyone working in that industry. In some locations, such as Jersey, taxes on the profits of banks comprise a significant part ...”

“... states and citizens than they already enjoy. Valls is smart to signal his disapproval, even if he may not mean it. Unlike other Europeans, Michel Sapin, France’s finance minister, seems to think that Britain could discuss curbs on human movement as well as access to the single market, as it disengages from the EU. For member states this isn’t on the ...”

“... given what most of us talk about most of the time what we actually say when we’re on the phone may be the least interesting thing about the call. Certainly this is the view of the growing Intelligence Support Systems industry (ISS), which sells analysis tools to government agencies, police forces and – increasingly – the phone companies ...”

“... has conducted a survey of the nation’s reading habits. After questioning 291 people (you may not think that’s very many out of 60 million, but the interviews were ‘in-depth’ and ‘face-to-face’), they have reached various intriguing conclusions. Having decided that excitement is the best measure, they found that 77.3 per cent of those ...”

“... proclamation of reforms), is the one picture in the exhibition that connects clearly with what may be the most famous of all Russian pictures: Repin’s own Barge Haulers on the Volga of 1870-73, reproduced in the catalogue but perhaps not allowed to leave Russia. The belief some Russian artists had in the possibility of a Modernism that was popular – an ...”

“... protests like those that make up much of Radical Light tend to fall out of the frame? One answer may be that rhetorical subjects have short lifespans. No one likes the sense of being told what to feel. Longoni’s Alone! shows a young woman, her face buried in her arms beside a lily-covered coffin. Longoni has made grief weakly pretty. Morbelli’s old ...”