BTW, it appears that the British *are*, in a sense, indirectly responsible for the recent plague of badgers in the Basra area which the locals are loudly denouncing them for. The badgers are fleeing the once-drained salt marshes north and east of the city, which the coalition has been re-flooding as part of a restoration project for the Midian saltmarshes. Sounds as if the badgers originally came from the north, and thus are unusual critters in the Basra region.

Not that I give two figs for the destroyed habitat of a species which has only been in residence for a dozen years, but it's amusing that a pious ecological restoration project (which, note you, I fully support) is causing politically significant ecological disruption of its very own.

Hey-ho. Yes, I'm still with the living. It's just the busy season here at work, and somehow I ended up volunteering for two different cons this month, which means I ended up taking a lot of vacation time during the busy season. Ooops.

I'm mostly using this post to clear out some of the old links on the right hand side.