Mat Bowles

First, a serious one. If you live in the UK, follow this link and do what the nice people say? I'v efootnoted some reasons at the bottom^[1] but here's a summary. Abolish Blasphemy Laws Now:

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has long campaigned for the blasphemy laws to be abolished, and an opportunity for this to happen has now come with an amendment to be tabled this week by Evan Harris MP.

We need as many people as possible to get in touch with their MP to show the support there is for abolishing this antiquated law.

That's Dr Evan Harris MP, not met him yet, think I might like to. Cross party support would be good on this one *cough*bagrec, it's not really political, more a general interest story, right?*cough* Even if you're a believer, I've yet to see any coherent defense of the blasphem laws, wouldn't it be better to let people make their case so you can try to rebut them or persuade people otherwise?

OK, on to fun stuff. A bunch of researchers in San Diego attended 66 different student parties and breathalysed a representative sample of attendees. They found that while men drink more at normal parties, women drink more at fancy dress parties, and drink much more at sexually themed parties. Quoth the guy in charge:

Dr Clapp admitted that "as his team was unable to explain the surprise finding it would be necessary to carry out further field work", concluding: "Given that some theme parties can be highly sexualised, future investigation of the mechanisms that may explain this effect is warranted." ®

Yes, that's right, you want to go to a bunch of student sex themed parties in the name of research. Gotta admire his commitment to science, right?

Now, more sillyness. The guy who runs asciimation, home of The death of Jar Jar is also a bit of a loon when not on his computer, and a Futurama fan.  Hence The Bender Brewer Project, in which he makes a life size Bender and puts a brewing barrel in its chest.  If you just want to see the complted work, half way down page three you can find him pictured playing on a TARDIS arcade console (via slashdot). How cool is that? Cue Jennie saying I want one to the TARDIS thing in 5, 4, 3...

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( Reasons to abolish the blasphemy laws courtesy of the BHA )

Tonight, Radio 4, 23.00 GMT. Small Gods. That would be all. Except...

Linda Smith, comedian, performer, campaigner and President of the British Humanist Association, died today. Tributes going to be on Radio 4 a lot this week. This one from Jeremy Hardy is especially good. She'd kept the illness quiet; I was laughing at her jokes so recently.

Someone remind me to join the BHA when my finances are sorted? (approx May I think).