Some short silly links

* The man whose “idea of fun”:http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2006/04/mmmworms.html is picking through slug shit to find what they’ve been eating. With his son.
* The Peter McKay column in the _Mail_ claims — I can’t find this anywhere online — that the in-house beauticians at a Miami hotel where Gianni Versace was shot %(sane) “will dye the pubic hair of female guests ‘the exact blue shade of a Tiffany box’. A member of the hotel staff says: ‘We thought this might remind their wealthy husbands of where to shop fr their jewellery’.” % This has the ring of untruth to me, and should perhaps be reported to Snopes, But it’s funny.
* A man named Michael Hampson has written an excellent short book on how the Church of England is fucked. I was asked to blurb it, which is unusual. I did so happily. The thing that really struck me was that it was written in English: the clear and unforced language of a skilled and intelligent person trying to communicate. This may not seem remarkable. But it makes you realise what a very high priority is placed in most language about the Church, on _not_ saying anything about some pretty obvious and important things. It’s called _Last Rites,_ due out in October from Granta.
* Fantastic “comment thread”:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/04/memories_of_execution.php on _Pharyngula_ about the best ways to kill small animals in laboratories.
* If ever there is a _Campaign for Real Patriarchy,_ it has a new “president for life,”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1756268,00.html though he will have to receive the other officers in jail. This story reads like something out of PZ’s book of horrors: %(sane) The defendant pleaded guilty to nine of the charges under a plea bargain. His lawyer, Harold Seet, told the Guardian that his client acted as he did “because he was troubled by financial matters and his daughters’ interest in the opposite sex”. Mr Seet added: “He said he would prefer to do the act with his daughters so they would not do it with any third parties.” %
* I have double booked myself and must pay a full single air far from Munich to London if I want to attend the Darwinian Religion conference on Friday next week. I blame the software. It’s the first bad thing that Ecco has done to me in ages — it won’t show multi-day appointments in a list view, so I could see, when I checked, that I had no meetings that do; I couldn’t see that I was not having these appointments in Germany.