First of all, thank you all for your kind wishes and sympathy last week. I was a bit of a mess for a while, and C and friends poured alcohol into me on Tuesday night.

Dad's already talking about getting another dog. (Yet) another tricolour bitch, so, whatever her name ends up being I suspect her real name will be Luce-Pop-Whatever... I know even when I was home a couple of weeks ago I managed to call Poppy "Lucy" by mistake.

(If you're not familiar with "Shelties", I would have a quick gander here - they are utterly adorable, incredibly affectionate and quite intelligent.)

I'll try and get hold of some photos of both Lucy and Poppy at some point and PICSPAM y'all!

Work's been manic this week, so in lieu of any other content, have some newscientist content instead.

Thanks to newscientist, a successor to the Oncology Ontology Project has been found. Kill or Cure?. For the uninitiated, the website categorises those things that the Daily Mail have proclaimed (loudly and clearly) either causing or curing cancer.

A few selections:

Cause: Aspirin, Babies, Bread, Calcium, Cheese, The Pill, Dieting, Eggs, Fibre, Fish, Gas, HRT, Mammograms, Milk, Mouthwash, Pizza, Pregnancy, Rice, Sex, Spices, Statins, Stress, Sun, Sunscreen, Tea, Vitamins, Wine.
Prevent: Aspirin, Babies, Bread, Calcium, Cheese, The Pill, Dieting, Eggs, Fibre, Fish, Gas, HRT, Mammograms, Milk, Mouthwash, Pizza, Pregnancy, Rice, Sex, Spices, Statins, Stress, Sun, Sunscreen, Tea, Vitamins, Wine.

(And yes, I am quite aware that a lot of those are valid. But, trust me, you don't want to put yourself on the Daily Mail's side in that debate.)

Also from newscientist (you can tell I've been going through back issues, can't you?), excuses for failing at sport with scientific accuracy

And finally (as Feedback would say) if you're of an apolcalyptic bent, Fifty ideas to change the Earth is rather quite interesting. Unfortunately you do need to be a subscriber to see all fifty. (And NS seems to have removed the Institution Subscription, more bad luck.)