What can I say? Screaming agony does tend to bring out the jolly old blitz spirit. :p

I’ve cocked up my back something fierce (picking up my rucksack, would you believe?); currently laid up in bed with a hot water bottle and the strongest NSAIDs the NHS can offer. Can anyone recommend some good anime series? I’ve tended to like slice of life stuff like Silver Spoon and Barakamon.

Milly - Minature labradoodle c. 9mths, two days before the groomer. She’s giving me that ‘where’s my supper’ look.

There’s a lot of double sided tape going into those outfits...

Half the problems with boobs in art seem to stem from the use of porn as a reference.

That appears to be My Little Pony by way of 40k; where did you find it?

I’m Aspergic, so never, really. Hell, getting me to make eye contact is a major achievement.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Americans are so cheerful as to be divorced from reality.

If it helps, hun, odds are your father choked that nurse because he was scared, not due to any fundamental character issues.

I’m:

I seem to remember the weather in London being pretty shite that day, and the English East Coast often shares weather systems with Northern France and the Low Countries.

The British, if there isn't a local chippie or donner shop (or if you prefer not to take your own life in your hands; donner shops have a certain...reputation)

In regards to firearms safety around children, I suspect that the golden rule is ‘ don’t leave weapons, loaded or otherwise, in places where your offspring or animals can reach them.’ Much the same common sense approach applies to household chemicals, gardening equipment, kitchen knives, and firelighters. Why a gun…

Need to retrieve a sample from a trap without damaging or loosing it? Forceps.

This before you stop considering the vanishingly small proportion of living things that have spines.

Entomology: what is the root cause of colony collapse disorder in honeybees? (It is arguably a perfect storm involving multiple factors related to modern farming, horticultural, and beekeeping practice).

There's another as yet unforeseen mechanism maintaining cell integrity? The breakdown product of the lipid is the trigger for apoptosis? I don't really know the details (entomologist, natch) so I'm probably wrong, but prima facie, those seem the most likely explanations.

More to the point, the massively complex system biologists study is riddled with exceptions (species follow rule x, unless they're taxon y or inhabit niche z, in which case...). I've often argued that biology has breadth where physics has depth.

Right, time to go and buy a better graphics card.

Well, that rules out coppicing as the cause of its distinctly odd morphology. Disease perhaps?