To the Spallanzani Hospital this morning, for some tests, and my brain is awash with "facts". Wasn't he the guy who put trousers on frogs, thereby proving that the male's contribution to reproduction was important? (But then again, didn't the Greeks think that females provided only a fertile environment?) Or was he the guy who fed dogs meat in a cage and then hoicked up the cage again to prove something about digestion? These facts have been stored invisibly somewhere in my brain for more than 30 years now, and suddenly up they bob. Except that I'm not actually sure whether I know them or not. Well, I know them, but are they true?

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James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University, has an entertaining and useful comment on intellectual property rights (a subject really close to my heart) in the Financial Times.

The closed-mindedness is remarkable. “That man eats only a little salad and looks slim. Clearly to look as good...

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It's every man's dream to have a penis so large that he must hire a small boy to carry it.

Not mine, I have to say. And idiotic, of course. But this did make laugh.

Went for a traipse round town this morning with a few errands to run; shoes, DAT tapes and compressed air all bought and paid for. Then popped into a big bookshop with a good record section, and was astounded by a neat piece of technology. Headphones with bar code scanners. So you slide the CD you want to hear under the scanner, and it plays you 30" snatches of each track. Very neat. We are now almost back to the good old days when a single cost 6/8 and an LP 32/6 and I cut my retail teeth at Hampstead Record Centre with the wonderful Dave Brodie. The hours I spent in the booth there, lined with holey hardboard and reeking of Embassies and No. 6. ¹

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Luigi -- who is presumably thinking a lot about career changes -- is taking pointers from a most unusual source. No. 99 is particularly sweet, and will doubtless form the basis for a PhD thesis in the not too distant future.

And then there’s this spooky cartoon from chez Pim, who blogs about f...

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