Author: Mick Hartley

Europa rising over Jupiter, from Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft.

y you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.”

The lower oviduct (the equivalent of the vagina in birds) is typically a simple tube. But when Dr. Brennan dissected some female ducks, she discovered they had a radically different anatomy. “There were all these weird structures, these pockets and spirals,” she said.

Somehow, generations of biologists had never noticed this anatomy before. Pondering it, Dr. Brennan came to doubt the conventional explanation for how duck phalluses evolved.

In some species of ducks, a female bonds for a season with a male. But she is also harassed by other males that force her to mate. “It’s nasty business. Females are often killed or injured,” Dr. Brennan said…

Dr. Brennan argues that elaborate female duck anatomy evolves as a countermeasure against aggressive males. “Once they choose a male, they’re making the best possible choice, and that’s the male they want siring their offspring,” she said. “They don’t want the guy flying in from who knows where. It makes sense that they would develop a defense.”

Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it. “It only makes sense as a barrier,” she said.

I’m a little perplexed by this corkscrew business. Does the male need to, you know, spin around? I’m not the keenest birdwatcher, but I think I’d have noticed – in the park, maybe. “Mummy, what’s that duck doing, spinning round on top of that other duck?”

And those orientation problems: “Don’t you just hate it when you’ve lined up a cute dowdy little brown feather, pecked her into submission, then, uh-oh, wouldn’t you know, the bitch is anti-clockwise.”

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Kim Jong Il The Great Traveller
Kim Jong Il The Great Architect
Kim Jong Il Fashion Designer

Are you beginning to notice a pattern?

It’s a tough choice, but I think Dear Leader Kim Jong Il Is The People’s Inspiration is my favourite:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dC2aDHtEqk&w=425&h=350]

Yesterday I went to a glazier to order a double-glazed panel for a door. The shop was staffed by two men, a younger and an older. I was served by the younger man, who persuaded me to go for the best in terms of insulation, which meant a thickness of 20mms, but then I started wondering if that was going to be too thick. OK, said the man, I’ll hold your order till closing time. You go back and measure your door, and if there’s a problem you can give me a ring and make it thinner. Here, I’ll write my name on the invoice. Otherwise I’ll just put the order through as it is.

I go home, do the measurements, and yes, it needs to be thinner. I ring up. “Can I speak to Ray please?”

“Which Ray? The younger one?”

“Um, yes, the younger one.”

I’m still thinking about that.

Here’s another mysterious new syndrome for our times:

A Chinese judge charged with corruption died in his cell from “adult sudden death syndrome”, the country’s main news agency reported yesterday.

Cuts on his face and other injuries “were caused by a fall during an escape attempt”.

Li Chaoyang, 38, had been arrested on 23 March, in Guangxi Zhuang, south-western China, accused of taking bribes.

Investigators said that he had been unco-operative while in detention. But Shi Shaosen, the chief investigator in the case, said the prisoner had not been maltreated.

“Li Chaoyang’s sudden death conforms with adult sudden death syndrome,” said Mr Shi.

Li’s relatives, who have questioned the cause of his death, claimed there were wounds on his body, a gash across his lip and that one of his front teeth was missing.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a dramatic rise in ASDS – a result of the increased stress felt by the Chinese in the run up to the 2008 Olympics.

A positive report from the NYT (via):

Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas, shops and schools are reopening, police forces are growing and the insurgency appears to be in retreat.

“Many people are challenging the insurgents,” said the governor of Anbar, Maamoon S. Rahid, though he quickly added, “We know we haven’t eliminated the threat 100 percent.”

Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, the police force here in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500, American military officials say.

At the same time, American and Iraqi forces have been conducting sweeps of insurgent strongholds, particularly in and around Ramadi, leaving behind a network of police stations and military garrisons, a strategy that is also being used in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, as part of its new security plan.

The other side of Kurdistan:

Amnesty International is appalled by the killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad, aged about 17, who was stoned to death on or around 7 April 2007 for a so-called honour crime. A member of Iraq’s Yezidi religious minority from the village of Bahzan in northern Iraq, she was killed by a group of eight or nine men and in the presence of a large crowd in the town of Bashika, near the city of Mosul. Some of her relatives are said to have participated in the killing.

Du’a Khalil Aswad’s murder is said to have been committed by relatives and other Yezidi men because she had engaged in a relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy and had been absent from her home for one night. Some reports suggested that she had converted to Islam, but others deny this. Initially, she was reportedly given shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, but her killers stormed the house, took her outside and stoned her to death. Her death by stoning, which lasted for some 30 minutes, was recorded on video film which was then widely distributed and is available on the internet. The film reportedly shows that members of local security forces were present but failed to intervene to prevent the stoning or arrest those responsible.

In an apparent act of retaliation, some 23 Yezidi workers were attacked and killed on 22 April, apparently by members of a Sunni armed group. The Yezidis, reportedly all men, were travelling on a bus between Mosul and Bashika when the vehicle was stopped by gunmen, who made the Yezidis disembark and then summarily killed them.

Today in Arbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, there was a demonstration against the stoning (via b&w).

The recent crackdown on “immoral” clothing seems to be part of a wider repression of women’s rights in Iran (via Secular Blasphemy):

Iranian police shoved and kicked them, loaded them into a curtained minibus and drove them away. Hours later, at the gates of Evin prison, they were blindfolded and forced to wear all-enveloping chadors, and then were interrogated through the night.

All 31 were women — activists accused of receiving foreign funds to stir up dissent in Iran. But their real crime, says Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, was gathering peacefully outside Tehran’s Revolutionary Court in support of five fellow activists on trial for demanding changes in laws that discriminate against women.

During her 15 days in prison, “I tried to convince them that asking for our rights had nothing to do with the enemy,” Abbasgholizadeh told The Associated Press by telephone from Tehran. “But they insisted that foreign governments were exploiting our cause.”

The March 4 arrests highlight how women’s rights, which were making some advances under the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, are being rolled back by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who succeeded him in August 2005.

Activists say that while world attention has focused on the West’s standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, the abuses of women’s rights have intensified, using fear of a U.S. attack as a pretext…

Under Ahmadinejad, Web access has been curbed, almost all liberal newspapers have been shut, and activists say they are under closer surveillance and often summoned for questioning.

The women say they have borne the brunt of the onslaught.

Abbasgholizadeh and other reformists have waged a lengthy battle against laws that permit death by stoning for women accused of adultery, the practice of polygamy, employment laws that favor men, and family laws that deny divorcees full custody of their children and entitle them to only half the inheritance a man can receive.

Far from backing down, Ahmadinejad’s government has turned its crackdown to colleges.

It is drafting a law to limit women students to half the places in college, instead of the 65 percent they now occupy. It is also restricting women’s entry to medical schools, arguing that they put a strain on limited — and sexually segregated — dormitory and transportation facilities.

Women working for the government must leave work by 6 p.m. to get home and tend to their families.

scribing the Jews as the killers of Christ…

Patriarch Shinoda III: The New Testament says that they are. Is the Vatican against the teachings of the New Testament? […]

I have prevented the Copts from visiting Jerusalem because of my faith and for [various] reasons, and I don’t care about the consequences. First of all, many Copts want to visit Jerusalem. If I permitted this, dozens of thousands would go.

Interviewer: They yearn to go to Jerusalem.

Patriarch Shinoda III: If dozens of thousands go to Israel, they will be influenced by the Israeli media, and we will not be able to prevent this. Who knows what ideas they will return with? That’s one thing. In addition, this will revive Israel in terms of economy and propaganda. Israel will be the one to benefit from this, not them.

ed up for “promoting moderation”.

Complaints about the issue came to light after Islamist MPs raised the issue in parliament on Thursday. They complained that the play was against “Koranic injunctions on the veil”.

“The veil has long been part of local culture and nobody is allowed to make fun of these values,” Minister for Culture Ghazi Gulab Jamal said.

The satirical play Burqavaganza was staged this month by Ajoka Theatre group in the eastern city of Lahore, known as the country’s cultural capital.

The government announced an immediate ban, and stopped it from being staged in other cities following the end of its run in Lahore.