Back in college, a good friend of mine had a name for people who were interminably stupid, annoying, arrogant, or otherwise insufferable. He called them "oxygen thieves." The name always struck me as a wicked blend of humor and contempt, carrying with it the harsh implication that a person's very existence was not only wasting, but in fact robbing the rest of us of a valuable (though infinitely abundant) resource. Needless to say, my friend didn't use the term often. It was always reserved for the worst of the worst, the sort of habitual offenders that made life unbearable. The...