Underblog.co.uk

There’s been several stories recently about the dubious nature of the legal advice produced by the UK’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, in the run-up to war. Much of this has been sparked by Philippe Sands QC’s recent book, Lawless World. I’ve tried to put together a timeline to summarise what’s emerged so far. It’s by no means comprehensive, but shows how Goldsmith was leaned on, and how his advice changed as a result of that pressure. (more…)

When scientists discover a new species, they are entitled to name it. When Robert Wallace and his colleagues Humberto Gomez, Adam Felton and Annika Felton discovered a new species of titi monkey, they chose to auction off that right to the highest bidder, to raise money for conservation of the the monkey’s habitat in Medidi National Park in Bolivia. Little is known about the monkey except that it is about a foot tall, weighs two pounds and likes fruit. In the morning pairs of them get together and “duet”, calling back and forth whilst clutching each other in “what resembles a human embrace”. Awww. Titi monkeys are monogamous, and the males do most of the child-rearing, bringing them to the mother only for nursing. They can live for up to twelve years.

Bidding opened yesterday, and currently stands at $12,000. Alas, a little out of my price range. The winner will have to adhere to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, so the monkey is unlikely to be named “Spankthe”. Bidding closes on the 3rd of March, at 7pm EST. Anyone got any name suggestions?

In other monkeynews: Koko, the famous signing Gorilla, has been accused of sexual harrassment by two former handlers, who allege that they were fired for refusing to show her their breasts, and are suing the Gorilla foundation. In light of recent discoveries, we should be all that surprised? The foundation denies the charges.

Trust Underblog to bring you the latest* on these and other stories.

*latest means second-hand stories culled from google news as and when I remember to perform my patented MonkeySearch^TM.

Spam is a pain in the arse for everyone, but weblog owners are doubly cursed, since they have to deal with comment spam (spaminomyces conluquii) trackback spam (spaminomyces vestigii) and referrer spam (spaminomyces commendaticius) as well as the common email or “garden” spam, (spaminomyces odiosus) that most people have to put up with.

Thanks to the wonderful Spam Karma plugin for Wordpress, comment and trackback spam haven’t been a problem for me for a couple of weeks, even with it set to “very lenient”. Now I’ve got Referrer Karma installed, with a couple of tiny tweaks to prevent irritating spam links showing up in my StatTraq referral logs. If you get asked to do slightly strange things like copy and submit a code after commenting, or click through an extra link to get here, that’s why. Sorry for any inconvenience.

The tweaks I’ve made to guard StatTraq from referral spam are detailed below, in case they’re useful to anyone:
(more…)

Are you a gansta? Is you too street ta understand whiznat bor’n people is tripp’n? Then Gizoogle be tha too’ fo’ you! Here’s what it does to a bit of my previous post:

Ratha than clockin’ ta change it, Labour is actually saggin’ tha undemizzle nature of tha system ta they advantage, wit they “vote Lib D-to-tha-izzem, wakes up wit a Tory” message ridin’ in mah double R. If Labour is going ta encourage tactical vot’n, I should vizzy tactically in poser ta combat thizzay . Bounce wit me.

Try a search, or type in an URL to pimp up a website:

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about my disbelief at Tim Ireland’s plans for bloggerheads to back blair. It later became apparent that this was a wind-up, and a few days ago we found out what it was really all about with the launch of Backing Blair. This is a campaign aiming to inflict upon Blair the comeuppance that he has hitherto avoided for his deceptions over Iraq and his right-wing leanings, in the form of a large anti-labour protest vote at the general election. And it seems to have the labour campaign worried.

But it’s not as simple as all that. In order to really make all those Blair appeasing Labour MPs quake in their boots, they want people to vote for whichever candidate is most likely to beat the Labour candidate, regardless of petty considerations such as, well, anything else. This might mean voting for a bigoted, pro-war tory, rather than an anti-war, anti-Blair labour MP. Here’s the justification:

Labour candidates need to know what Blair’s ongoing leadership has/will/may cost them. We want survivors of the protest vote to come away determined to unseat Blair.

And we couldn’t give a toss about the performance of an MP regarding their service to the local community. The invasion of a country that presents no threat to us on the basis of thin and politically-influenced intelligence sets a dangerous precedent that threatens us all. The same goes for detaining people without trial. Domestic issues pale into insignificance next to such things, I’m afraid.

So, “do I agree?”, I ask myself (because nobody else knows or cares what I think). Well, here’s the way I see it:

1. The prime minister has lied to the electorate in order to go to war against a country that wasn’t a threat, without UN approval, leading to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Legally speaking, Tony Blair has commited the war-crime of aggression. Morally speaking, he is a dangerous, delusional, self-righteous, manipulative git. (When I look at that old New Labour, New Danger ad now it seems eerily prescient). I cannot vote for a Labour party headed by Blair under any circumstances.
2. The possibility of the Tories winning this election is negligible
3. The first past the post electoral system is undemocratic. A vote for a left-wing anti-war party in my constituency will increase the chance of a party even more pro-war and even more right-wing than labour (the conservatives) representing me in the commons.
4. Rather than trying to change it, Labour are actually exploiting the undemocratic nature of the system to their advantage, with their “vote Lib Dem, wake up with a Tory” message. If Labour are going to encourage tactical voting, I should vote tactically in order to combat them.
5. A reduced Labour majority, even at the expense of more tory MPs, will make any politician think twice about abusing the trust of the british people in the future. It will also actually hand more power to the liberal democrats, and in the best case scenario could result in a hung parliament with the liberals (the largest anti-war party) holding the balance of power.

So it seems that I think people should be prepared to vote lib dem, green, respect, or whatever in labour/conservative marginals, and accept the possibility of a tories winning some of those seats in exchange for a more powerful Liberal Democrat party (who, incidentally, are also committed to democratic reforms that will make this sort of decision unnecessary in the future) and the chance to give the labour party a good kicking for its support/appeasement of Blair.

But then why not take that argument to its logical conclusion? The simple mathematics of the system means that voting conservative in these constituencies has double the effect of voting for an anti-war party, if the aim is to punish labour and reward the lib dems.

I’ll have to think a bit more about anti-war, anti-blair labour MPs, and tory constituencies in which the lib dems or other non-labour parties are challenging, but I think I might just have talked myself into backing Backing Blair.

Sheesh, this democracy lark isn’t easy.

The Guardian reports that Male Rhesus monkeys will “pay” to look at pictures of female monkey booty. The monkeys will accept a cut in their juice rations in order to ogle the backside of a female. They will also pay to look at pictures of high-status individuals, but had to be paid extra juice to look at pictures of socially inferior monkeys.

As you are probably aware, we humans also have a tendancy to look at both pornography and magazines stuffed full of desperately dull celebrity photos.

The study was sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Cure Autism Now Foundation. What do the viewing habits of monkeys have to do with autism, you ask? Michael Platt, of Duke University where the research was conducted, explains:

One of the main problems in people with autism is that they don’t find it very motivating to look at other individuals, and even when they do, they can’t seem to assess information about that individual’s importance, intentions or expression

They plan to study female viewing preferences next.

—UPDATE: Monkeys with laser guns. Ape-ageddon approaches!