"Don't commit crime."

I have a sneaking suspicion that if people weren't allowed to get away with suing someone every time they slipped over, organisations wouldn't put up intelligence-insulting notices...

Eeeeeeeeeee!

More on the bleedin' obvious news front: chimps embark on fruit raids to lure mates.

Also bleedin' obvious: a scientific ethics code. A bit worrying that people need telling all these things. (But I can't believe scientists that act unethically don't know they're behaving unethically, which makes this just another "don't commit crime" sign.)

Israel prepares for 'fallow' new year

Letter rather than spirit, yet again. This sort of legal wrangling I find utterly compelling, though it sure as goats doesn't make me want to join the religion. I know it's perhaps more a different approach to the whole idea of religion than trying to cheat, but I can't help wondering why you'd sign up to a belief system only to exploit the loopholes.

Woman's Hour discussion of virginity (in women). I could rant about this whole subject, but won't appear to have without meaning to.

Surely the reason people are more bothered about it in women than men is fairly simple: it's demonstrable in females, and maternity is far easier to prove than paternity. And a man can spread it around without diminishing the product, whereas a woman can only carry one child at a time.

I can't believe they're alluding to the renewed fascination with virginity in the States as though it could ever be viewed as a healthy trend. I think I've got pretty prudish values when it comes to sex, but the filthy-minded authoritarian puritans over there scare me. Sexuality and the body are simultaneously disgusting and a source of endless fascination for that section of society that can fly into a frenzy when a woman's breast is accidentally exposed on live telly.

Breasts, bear in mind, are only 'dirty' because people like that fetishise them. Even I know this. Though I refuse to conform to the new sex-positive "there is no empowerment without bonking" ortho-doxies by learning to say "yay breasts" instead. There's such a thing as overcorrection. I'll stay prudish, thanks.

Mum's back in the country, having been on a dental holiday. She's raving about the service in Poland. I'm tempted to cancel my root fill appointment on the 20th and go over there. I'm unlikely to get a 'scope over here, and the service there in general sounds years, possibly decades, ahead of ours.

Enough about bloody teeth already, or everyone will think I'm enamoured of enamel. Let's talk, instead, about cute dogs.

My character class has a 75% weakness to just about anything Spitzy. I routinely get stick from my brother and mother for liking many toy breeds, which I think is a bit of a cheek coming from two people who are known to call Piper "my darling".

Does that look pansy to you?

I don't think it's unmanly, girly or unneuterish to like small dogs - yes, even Papillons. Maybe I do prefer substantial things like Rotties and anyone developed to assist in shooting things, but there is nothing inherently wrong with toys and lapdogs. Though I make no defence of individual Shih Tzus and those that coddle them.

Last night I was trying to recall a breed whose name always escapes me. Remember Duchess from the Beatrix Potter's The Pie and the Patty-Pan? (My family didn't. Weirdos with no priorities.) She's small, black and Spitzy, and anyway, I looked around Wikipedia and I think Duchess has to be a Schipperke (which, I also learned, I've been mentally pronouncing wrong all these years). She resembles a Volpino Italiano too - the two look much of a muchness to me - but Volpinos are white only. I plug them anyway because of the wonderful name ("little fox", obviously).