I’ve finally added an RSS feed for SBBS, so those of you who can’t face the appalling colour scheme any more no longer need to. It’s on the far right, like Peter Cuthbertson.

For people who want to dwell and extend their visits, I’ve also added a highly exciting “referrers” page. You too can find out that most people who visit the site find it by googling for porn and/or decapitation, and that nearly all of them use MSIE.

And for people who are *really* impressed or annoyed by this site, I’ve finally (sort of) added an email address. You too can join my ex-partners, co-workers, friends and family in sending me abuse and death threats.

Update: I’ve also added proper archiving, and fixed a few other things that needed fixing. Finally the site has approximately the functionality I wanted in the first place…

Colorado-based Marvin Heemeyer provides yet more evidence for the theory that Americans take innovations pioneered elsewhere, and just take them that little bit further.

AL Kennedy says “it’s as if my whole country has woken up tattooed and married to Derren Brown – there was this guy, he came up to us, seemed a bit dodgy but harmless, gave us a whole load of patter and the next thing we knew, we’re all sharing responsibility for amputations and rapes and epidemic terror and blowing up a wedding singer and riding on a 70-year-old lady as if she were a horse”.

I missed that show – seriously, let me know if they repeat it; it sounds exceedingly cool. Although I do now understand the 700 complaints.

One day, assuming I acquire a week or so to do so, I’m planning on answering Patrick Crozier’s list of 100 state failures.

Should anyone else want to have a go, the fish-barrel-shooting-ly easy ones should be 18, 19, 21, 25, 26, 27, 32, 41, 42, 44, 47, 49, 51, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 70, 77, 85, 88, 89 and 90. Although if you’re feeling particularly brave, I’d recommend 22, 23, 33-36, 40 and 48.

I’ll concede 72 right away, however.

Since it’s Friday:

1) Derren Brown describes himself as a master mentalist. Indeed, you’d have to be a bit of a mentalist to shoot yourself in the head on national telly.

2) Is “fuck from both sides” a commonly used synonym for (I’m guessing) double penetration? If not, why do I get several visits a week courtesy of Googling onanists hunting for FFBS pictures? Or is it all the same Googling onanist, who gets off on the extreme sexiness of my writing (and occasional exciting pictures)?

3) Is it possible to be a serious political commentator, given the fundamental unseriousness of the current political landscape?

4) Here is a picture my girlfriend made:

Just as well Joe Strummer’s dead, otherwise I’m sure they’d be coming for him too.

Unlike most of the nonsense I talk on SBBS, I actually know a bit about stem cell research, have spent several months a few years ago reading up on it and interviewing people involved.

As a result, I can’t even be bothered to deal with the lunacy of the latest “stem cell research debate”. There is no fucking debate. It’s not even the clash of a scientific-rational worldview and a mystic-superstitious one, since the mystic-superstitious types who shrill-y protest against stem cell research in the US are far too hypocritical to also protest against IVF…

The only interesting debating point I’ve ever seen raised “against”(-ish) stem cell research is that people suffering from degenerative neural disease don’t actually suffer, so we shouldn’t necessarily view their apparent distress as a serious criterion in our medical priorities (thanks to Tom Stoneham, who sadly now only blogs about smartphones rather than interesting things, for that one).

I was apparently wrong about which Islamic fundamentalist regime controls the US presidency.

Matthew Yglesias sets me, and everyone else to rights.

I’ve just voted (hooray for postal voting!)

In a display of my maturity and fitness to vote, I voted for my neighbour and the two candidates with the silliest names.

Boringly, but fortunately, they were also the ones who came closest to my ideological views (not very, but never mind).

Update: disappointingly, my neighbour didn’t kindly offer to look after my ballot paper.

Go here (link may not work because Blogger is rubbish, in which case scroll down to “Saddam and 9/11”) for an impressively creative definition of “growing body of evidence”.

(if you can’t face the wingnuttery, “growing body of evidence” here means “the Chalabi lies we all knew about, the AQ leader we didn’t shoot or arrest in Kurdistan, and another recital of the Chalabi lies we all knew about”).