For the first time since Christmas I find myself Matless and alone. He's off to That London for a web optimisation seminar, and will be stopping two nights with Millennium and his daddies. It's an odd feeling. Tonight won't be so bad, because Shrubby and I will be able to have a girly night and watch lots of Star Trek and eat cookies together, but tomorrow will be a bit of a trial, I think.

* pokes alexwilcock *

You look after him. I don't want him coming home with no tales of drunken debauchery! ;) Also, if you guys need a crash space for Yorkshire regional, we're only half an hour or so away from Sheffield by car. Although knowing how organised you two are you've probably already booked a hotel...

Anyway, although the house feels oddly empty, I'm sure I will survive. If all else fails, there's always gin.

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There are rumours going around that Vince may be called to number 11. Obviously I think this would be a sterling plan (note to James Graham: you're not the only one who can do terrible puns :P) - good for Vince, good for the country, and probably good for the party too, with some caveats about doing this for the country and not for Labour, since ordinary folks would see what talent we Lib Dems have in our ranks in a concrete way. It's a win-win situation. And that's why, despite the fact that (to use Duncan's marvellous phrase) we are what the experts call 'IN DEEP SHIT' and quite clearly the only person with a paddle is Vince, Gordon Brown is never going to go for it. Sadly.

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Go Dave Grohl!

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Anton Vowl picks holes in Gordon's strategy for dealing with the economic crisis.

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Zombie Darwin wants to see Lord Drayson holding his cock, but he's not prepared to pay much money for the privilege. What? It says so in the title!

... such as when a blog post that has been up for over an hour suddenly disappears without trace (YAY Wordpress! ... not.) Or when people approach you in the pub and say "hey, aren't you the Yorksher Gob?". Or, as has been happening today, when you find yourself happily flirting with someone who has been dead for 126 years (see comments on this blog post).

Oh well. Undead, yes; Unperson, no! And it's not like I ever objected to Reg Shoe or Zombie Mr. Grimsdyke; why should I treat Zombie Charles Darwin any different? And it does seem fitting for a day on which I also listed myself as a fan of John Stuart Mill on facebook...

(PS: if you want to read Darwin's posts, you can syndicate him to your f-lists by friending darwinblog_fd)

Most important thing first: congrats to everyone who got their A-level results today. They won't have anything like the effect on the rest of your life that you have hitherto believed, but for now, bask in the relief that they are over. Special congrats to muffin_nuffin for getting in to York, and Jaiesh for getting Four As. You did good, guys. You did good.

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Obligatory skience video of the day:



The dude in the video? Is this dude. I like him already.

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Y'all probably saw this already, but I don't think I ever got around to posting it here, and it's worth a read... Reasons why Gay Marriage Should Never Be Allowed:

1. Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behaviour. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

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Lovely lovely alex_wilcock (or rather alexwilcock) is being a very lazy judge-monkey asking us to do all his work for him trying to get shy and retiring Lib Dems to pick out their own best posts to make things a bit easier on the judges for the Lib Dem Voice Bloggotheyear Awards. I'm going to do mine later (although you can feel free to suggest what YOU think my best posts were if you like), but for now, here's my favourites out of the ones a couple of other Lib Dem Bloggers picked for themselves:

Jo Christie-Smith (jo_cs_fd)
Jonathan Calder (lib_eng_fd)

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Speaking of blog awards (stop groaning at the back there) there are still a couple of nomination days left for SB's Very Prestigious Blog of the Year Awards! You can nominate anyone you like by commenting on the post here. Don't forget that you can do it anonymously if you like ;) Deadline is Saturday.

First things first, happy birthday briargate!

Secondly, we just got in from a nice pub lunch and a long dog walk with our two dogs and our friends and their two dogs. And this inspires a poll.

Poll #1159124 Dog walking Etiquette
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

You have a large, aggressive German Shepherd dog, and you wish to stand and chat to a friend for half an hour or so. Where is the best place to stand with your dog?

View Answers

?In your house, with all the doors and windows barred
2 (15.4%)

In a deserted field, where it can run and play while you chat without upsetting other dogs.
10 (76.9%)

in the middle of the narrow footbridge over the beck that pretty much everyone entering or leaving the park with a dog has to cross
1 (7.7%)

If you chose option three, was this because you are...?

View Answers

stupid
7 (53.8%)

ignorant
5 (38.5%)

aggressive yourself, and think that having a big dog that causes trouble makes you look hard
6 (46.2%)

a complete twat
11 (84.6%)

a special snowflake to whom all the normal etiquettes of dog ownership do not apply
5 (38.5%)

Between the guy on the bridge and the other guy who just would not let his poor spaniel off the lead to play when it desperately wanted to in case its pedigreeness was sullied by our dogs' mongrelosity...

* headdesk *

Thirdly, the first of a bunch of things I want to link to today, here's an American data set about abortion. Yes, it's an American data set, but our stats are closer to the American ones that the rest of Europe, so it's worth looking at. Some of it I find quite worrying - like the number of women going for an abortion who hadn't used contraception at all (46%) as opposed to those who had had contraceptive failure - but some of the reasons given to the why have you come for an abortion question are quite interesting. I think it possibly gives ammunition for both sides, but the main thing that comes out of it for me is the woeful amount of properly used contraception. Education, education, education, you guys.

Fourthly, and on the same subject, Why I Am An Abortion Doctor. The tone of it is distinctly North-American-continent but, again, it's worth reading from a UK perspective too. I can understand why people are disquieted about abortion. I am disquieted about it. I am unlikely to ever have an abortion, because of my disquiet. But that's my choice. I would never force that choice on somebody else. Abortion is a difficult enough decision to make, without adding Slippery Elm Bark complications and back street abortionists to muddy the waters further.

Fifthly, Ten Things Every Adult Should Know. Definitely not for the easily offended (the title of the website should be a clue to that one), although it would probably do the easily offended good to read and inwardly digest...

Sixthly, PeeZee and Richard Dawkins have a good laugh about some silly creationists who tried to misrepresent them on film and then ban them from attending the film afterwards:



Seventhly, a step by step guide on How to Pack Up and Leave LJ without losing anything you don't want to lose, should you ever actually want to.

Eighthly, lastly, and shamelessly copied from innerbrat, Mitch Benn on Grammar:

I know there's a rule about starting sentences with "but", but screw it, it just means you end up starting them with "however", and since "however" at the beginning of a sentence just means "I really wanted to start this sentence with 'but' but I'm not allowed" , and everybody knows this, then frankly you may as well just start with "but", so I just did

&hearts Gotta love the big geeky fella.

You know my post on Darwin Day? If I was eloquent, and gorgeous, and a paleobiologist, I might have written a post as good as this one by innerbrat:

You may believe the world is 6,000 years old and was created in a week. You might believe that all the terrestrial vertebrate tetrapod* populations were subjected to a massively crippling bottle neck some 4,000 years ago. You can believe in fairies and spaghetti monsters and Harry Potter. You can believe in things as far out as the fundamental goodness of humanity for all the fossil record cares, because the fossil record doesn't care. What the majority of religious/spiritual beliefs have in common - be they Christian, Muslim or Pagan - is that they invoke supernatural forces. It doesn't matter if this force is divine, magical, karmic or whatever. If it's supernatural, it has no place in natural science.

That post there? That is the best deconstruction of the Intelligent Design "Theory" I have ever seen.

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I reckon there's a few on the f-list who might be interested in signing up to this:


I am fully of the opinion that what we are doing in Iraq, what we have /always/ been doing in Iraq, is more harm than good. More on this when I join in the blogswarm.

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And I couldn't NOT link to this. Are you sick of having (the prospect of) an enlightened fella? Heterosexual ladies, there is a solution! We can continue to listen to those who insist that we are in "Post Feminist" times, go back to doing things not for ourselves, but for our menfolk, and Take Back The Loser! Because sometimes, all you want is a life on unfullfilling, unloved drudgery ;)

As innerbrat so rightly points out, today is the 199th birthday of the man on the back of the ten pound note. He's one of that long line of men and women from Hippocrates to Tim Berners-Lee who have made such seismic changes in the way we look at the world that it would be difficult to imagine what life would be like if he hadn't existed.

So lets all raise a glass to Chucky D and his Theory^# on the origin of species, and read cabalamat2's entirely non-controversial post about why science is better than religion in celebration.

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Tremble before me, oh mortals, for I have tasted Root Beer, and can now exclusively reveal why it hasn't caught on in the UK when coca cola and such have. It tastes exactly, and I mean exactly, like the smell of Germolene. And there's few people enjoy the taste of antiseptic ointment, myself included. The only way they could make it more off-putting would be to make it that weird pink colour...

Note to self: avoid BPAL with Sassafras notes.

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^# Lets not go into the difference between Theory and theory again, shall we?

The winners of 2007's Darwin Awards have been announced. *sporfle* I love the guy on his laptop.

Anyone still undecided on the ID Card database thing? You're happy to give your biometric data to the secret police of a foreign power, then? (with apple-ogies to Uhmericin readers for inflammatory language)

Jesus and Mo dissect circular argument. I adore Jesus and Mo, heretical as they may be, for their clever demonstrations of the silliness of various aspects of organised religion. And not because the provider of wisdom is the barmaid in their local pub. Not at all.

Also, for those of you who have been following the organ donation row and wish to get one over on Gordon Brown before he nationalises your body, and stop the NHS from using your organs to save people's lives, click here. You register for that, and even if you don't trust the opt-out the state will still not be able to "steal" your empty husk body and use it to give other people a chance.

Heavy sarcasm aside, it's something I'm seriously considering. As I said on innerbrat's journal the other day, it gives me amusement to think of a bunch of medical students using my intestines for necklaces and playing catch with my kidneys. I might have to specify that they refer to my corpse as Doris, though.