Status-Q

Traditional hospital gowns are being phased out in NHS wards across Britain after patients complained that the garments left their bottoms exposed, says this article.

A pleased patient is quoted as saying:

I for one will be glad to see the back of them.

Note, though, that this is another (like this) somewhat over-enthusiastic Telegraph headline: it says the gowns are being 'axed' and 'phased out in wards across Britain'. Well, yes, Southampton is getting rid of them, and the manufacturer of the alternative gowns says that another couple of hospitals have bought some as well. I'm not sure that this really represents a dramatic trend sweeping across the nation...

The Monty Python channel on YouTube. Wonderful stuff, from Bicycle Repairman to the Ministry of Silly Walks. And I've always loved Every Sperm is Sacred.

Anyway, it's all official and above-board and released by the Pythons themselves.

Bonnie Tyler as you've never seen her before.

From Jeannie Harrell.

Many people think of Richard Dawkins as a strident, aggressive figure. I think this comes mostly from passages in The God Delusion where he's deliberately mischievous, in a way that is decidedly uncomfortable to those of a religious persuasion.

I read The God Delusion and then moved on to several of his other books, like The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene - all brilliant books, by the way, which transformed my understanding of many aspects of science - but the thing that got me started was really YouTube. Hearing and seeing him speak made me realise he was a very smart, very thoughtful guy, who wasn't just out to poke fun at religion. He doesn't always give that impression in his writing, especially to those who have only read small excerpts.

Here's a little four-minute example of the man who has been christened "Darwin's Rottweiler":

Above Cotignac, Provence.

If there’s a convenient cave in the cliff next to your house, where better to park your Renault 4?

The U.S. edition of Rose's second novel in the Mary Finch series, The Counterfeit Guest, hits American bookshelves today.

Jeremy Reimer writes a nice Ars Technica piece on why, after more than 20 years of using Microsoft Word, he now almost never uses it.

Is the age of the word-processor drawing to a close?

(Click to find out what's going on...)

This is nice:

Search Google for 'recursion' (and check the 'Did you mean...' option)