Polydactyl kitty.

I just sent in a complaint about their wording. [In the story as I read it] They described him throughout as "a Polydactyl"/"a pure Polydactyl" - correct but oddly worded, and capitalised, as though it was a breed of cat. (Polydactyly's the condition of having more than the usual number of digits. Polydactyl, noun or adjective, is not the same as pterodactyl.)

Edit: They fixed it. Coolberries.

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A row has broken out over a £1.4m contract to supply 5,000 sporrans to the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

At GB£1.4 million, which works out as £280 per unit (413 euros, US$552), they should scrap the useless things altogether. They're presumably only ceremonial anyway.

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Another browser to test for...

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Best contextless image ever. "Bear checklist. (1) You can smell bear breath (2) You notice discarded hunny pots (3) Your legs are being mauled"

Okay, okay, context. It's for the weak, you know! The bear abuse trade does boil my blood.

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The police failed to protect this girl from the shits she's related to.

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Wealth gap in learning, by age 3

It's not wealth so much as being bothered to spend some time on your kid. Reading to it, playing with it and so on. Stereotypically a social class thing.

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Smart clothes to monitor health

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Bright Bush Idea of the Day: Let's tool up one set of factions so they'll kill the others for us!

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Artist feasts on roadkill remains

Meh, whatever, mate. I do consider it ethically acceptable to eat roadkill, but not cool.

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Diagnosis by computer statistics

One of your usual "humans have Something Special that makes them better than computers" stories. A more sophisticated pattern-recognition and guessing capability, in this case.

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"We've got to move away from the anti-knowledge, anti-intellectual approach of many education reformers who have been far too influential in the development of the curriculum over the last 20 years," [Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb] said.
--BBC: Politics 'corrupting' curriculum

You're a Tory, so I highly suspect your motivations, but I still agree with that soundbite.

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Otter numbers 'continue to grow' (awwwww photo!)

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Boy, this story's dumb. One of the few times I'll take Sony's side.

The Christians' objections, when you listen to them (I've read a few different coverages of the story), are ludicrous. Most of them boil down to criticisms of the whole shoot-'em-up genre. Guns in games cause kids to shoot people, etc. (PROOF PLEASE! Why is this sort of statement always allowed through unchallenged?) Anyway, general whingeing is irrelevant to this particular row - if you want to attack FPS games, attack the whole lot.

The connection between Manchester and gun crime is a more interesting line of attack. The game might have a connection to reality because of recent gun crime in the city, and could upset families of victims. Well, there are lots of gangsta games set in places that are either meant to be real cities or clearly 'based on'. Notably, a lot of games based on real historical happenings, such as wars, which I would find much more uncomfortable than fictional aliens in a future Manchester. (Future? Alternative present? One or the other. Can't remember.)

The religious objection (guns in a sacred space) is not one on which I'd spend more than a second's consideration. Do you know how many games involve clearing out zombies, vampires et al from graveyards and churches? My brothers were playing one (Hunter: the Reckoning, the PS2 title) last night.

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Heaven apparently is a half-pipe.

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This morning I'm listening to German pop, rock and dance courtesy of a webcast (fairly cool, if only it wouldn't play all this rap trash; my misogyny membranes are very inflamed already this morning after shit like this, so this is not cool).