I've been eating meat again for about three months now, and these are the things that I've noticed.

Meat is just incredibly greasy. I mean, I guess some vegetables must have oil in them or where does vegetable oil come from, but you must have to squeeze a lot of carrots to fill a bottle. Whereas one chicken would probably get your car to work for a week. I'm having to keep kitchen towel permanently out, just to clean my fingers.

It's also full of extra water. As soon as you start to fry bacon, or grill a pork sausage, the liquid comes dripping out. Apparently they fill it up with water so it weighs more when you buy it. It comes out in a sort of oily, watery slick. Lovely.

Meat is not part of a calorie controlled diet. Meat is calorie rampant. On the other hand, because it still feels like a treat, it can replace other treats. My chocolate consumption is more than halved.

The best thing about meat is that when you go into a cafe or restaurant, suddenly you can choose from the whole menu, rather than between zero and thirty percent of it, depending on where you are eating. This is probably the most important reason why I've decided to eat it.

In general, and despite the oily, watery slicks, the quality of my life has risen. I remember when I was a teetotal vegan anarchist, and it was rubbish. Life is much better now.

I've rather gone for it so far. Someone asked me the other day if I'd eaten a whole chicken. A better question would be whether or not I've eaten a whole chicken farm.

Free range meat is much nicer. Unfortunately, it is hideously expensive. I think that once I've got over the initial thrill I shall settle down to a habit of eating a mainly vegetarian diet, enlivened by free range, tasty meat a couple of times a day week.

And two more sacred cows bites the dust. You may have heard the theories that humans hunted mammoths to extinction, then died out in North America, and that shifting sea currents led to a thousand year freeze at about the same time, just as the Ice Age was coming to an end.

Well now James Kennett of the University of California thinks a comet did the whole thing. According to the Economist in this piece, it hit North America 13,000 years ago.

Bloody space rocks. Killed the dinosaurs, killed the mammoths, killed Bruce Willis. It's like it's personal or something. People lose family pets all the time - I bet it's comets taking them.

This whole theory is undermining vital ecological myths. The Clovis people are supposed to have killed all the mammoths and then died out because of their failure to conserve vital resources, and shifting sea currents freezing things up is meant to remind us of the perils of global warming.

So perhaps it should be our little secret. I know I can tell you, but don't tell anybody else.

And still the Godsquad keep coming. I really thought it would be all over by now - I've been at it for months.

But no. Here is Jean-Claude Koven, who asks Will the World Really End December 21, 2012? Um, no Jean-Claude. Thanks for asking though, and thanks to Jeff for the link, as well as for his urbane turn of phrase.

And welcome to the Rediscovery Institute. Not content with evolution, they're now debunking the Periodic Table and the theory of gravity. So, are they morons, or are they just fuckwits? Teach that controversy, if you like.

(PS yes I know the last one is a joke)

The thing about the evolution argument is, it is so over. The whole theory has been endlessly fought over, dissected, subjected to so many tests. Honestly, there's been oodles and oodles of them. Half the surplus wealth of Georgia and Alabama has been channelled into nutjob Foundations hunting through the mass of confirmatory data for any single exception which would refute it, without success. The people who still don't get it remind you more than anything of those anachronistic Japanese soldiers holed up on remote islands years after the end of the war, still refusing to believe it was over.

Except.. what if it turned out there were more of them out there than anyone had thought possible. Imagine if one old samurai staggered out of the hills on Saipan, then two more on Guam, a platoon in the Philippines, a division in the wilds of Burma. Suppose they started talking to each other on their crackly old valve radios, making plans. At a certain point, the war would stop being over.

With mounting incredulity, we'd show them film of the surrender, to no avail. Radio broadcasts from Tokyo would be shrugged off as enemy propaganda, made to undermine their faith in their cause. All evidence would be dismissed, and our hopeful gifts of Hello Kitty merchandise would just enrage them.

Finally, unbelieving, we'd have to put on our helmets and get in the landing craft. Still plaintively appealing to the world's common sense, we would hit the beaches and dive for cover under the palm trees. "But the war's over", we'd plead, not wanting to face the terrible truth, that all the evidence in the world isn't enough to end a war. Wars only end when everyone is smart enough to notice.

I wrote this for the discussion forum on the Richard Dawkins website, and so far a stunning two people thought it was a good idea. I've edited it here for a less geeky audience, for some reason.

It's just a passing thought (as opposed to one of those everpresent thoughts), but might this be a good campaign title? It would make a great T-shirt.

In general, acting like they're historical while they still think they're current carries some of the flavour of a situationist stunt, and makes a point in a humorous way. It would also annoy them, and their pique turns us on [I didn't put that on the website). If we're looking to find ways of translating intellectual ideas into political statements, we might do worse. Any thoughts?

I said I'd have a think about this and write something, so here it is.

First off, some people are fair game. Not as many as you'd think, though. Jerry Falwell definitely is, not because he was religious but because he was a nasty piece of work.

Some people are just a bit too good. I would never say anything mean about Christopher Hitchens, for the same reason that I would never try and punch Lennox Lewis. You just know the counter-punch would be a cut above anything I could handle. Not that the star of TV, press and YouTube would lower himself, but the thought that he might would unman me.

I quite like him, anyway. He does have an odd choice of friends, but I was cheered by the knockabout fairground insults he hurled at Falwell's departing shade, and the ability to throw grandiose baroque phrases together on the rhetorical wheel like some mad Rabelaisian potter counts for a lot in my world. Of course, being English, he has been blessed with a very rich clay to sculpt from.

Obscenity is just another rhetorical device, like chiasmus or adverbs, and like these should be used sparingly. When it's called for, though, it's called for.

Offence is another rhetorical device. If I've offended you, that just means I've decided to deploy that device, not that you have some kind of claim against me. Again, though, there's the law of diminishing returns to consider.

In general, you find your own voice, you don't invent it, and when you write with that voice, as it were, the details fall into place without difficulty.

But enough about me. I want to have a moan about other people. In particular, people who post comments. Oh, not you, you're all charming. I'm talking about places like the BBC football chatrooms, or (surprisingly) the Guardian.

It's just too easy, is the thing. You can breeze through, leave a few insulting banalities and move on. It only takes 30 seconds, and your username protects you. The aggregate result makes Question Time look like indepth analysis - soundbites with no bite, all fury and signifying nothing.

Do what I do (not in life generally, obviously). Before posting comments, make yourself re-read them slowly. Ask yourself, is what you've just said worth saying? Is it better than silence? Does it justify thousands of people spending another 0.2 seconds with their finger on the scrolling wheel? If you're not sure, don't say it.

None of this applies here, though. Unlike the Guardian, my blog isn't cursed by a plethora of comments. Remarks that would reduce Jon Ronson to tears just reassure me I'm not talking to myself. Believe me, I'd love to be able to be that sensitive, I just can't afford the luxury.

UPDATE: Like a cyber Candide, I want my blog to be the best of all possible blogs, so I'm taking the 31 day build-a-better-blog challenge. For all posts on the theme, click here.

At least we don't live in Kansas.

Pity the poor sods who do if they want an education. As reported by science blogger Pharyngula in this post, apparently the nutjob Intelligent Design think tank the Discovery Institute have some inspiring plans for America's biologists. Here is the sane and rational Bill Dembski.

If I ever became the president of a university (per impossibile), I would dissolve the biology department and divide the faculty with tenure that I couldn't get rid of into two new departments: those who know engineering and how it applies to biological systems would be assigned to the new "Department of Biological Engineering"; the rest, and that includes the evolutionists, would be consigned to the new "Department of Nature Appreciation" (didn't Darwin think of himself as a naturalist?).

How strange to think the only thing that stops these people taking control of education over there is the American Constitution.

In my last post, I drew flak about my rude language from nearly my entire readership, so I'm going to see if I can complete this one without swearing once.

It was a dreary game, to be honest. Both teams looked like they'd been through one wringer too many. There were bright patches, notably the middle bit of the second half, but Drogba's winner three minutes from the end of extra time was the only standout moment. Apart from that Chelsea produced miserably little, and United should have won.

They've just been too successful for their own good, and for ours. Chelsea in particular, after winning the League Cup, had played as many games as they could possibly fit into one season, minus one - the Champions League final. From the Charity Shield to today's game, they've had 68 games. Meanwhile, United have managed a perfectly adequate 64.

They all looked done in. The only player with any real zip about him was Rooney. Perhaps he was buoyed up by the prospect of getting away from the dreary round of high-profile fixtures and spending the week with his intellectual peers at the Hay Festival next week, but he ran round the Chelsea defenders at will. The rest of the team seemed unable to keep up with him though.

Talking about over-exposure, what's gone wrong with Doctor Who? The first two new series were fine, but this time they seem to have run out of ideas. I think they're missing Billie myself. And some decent aliens.

There you go, 300 words without any swearing. A bit boring though, wasn't it? I shall probably be a bit more colourful next time.

I've always taken the view that we shouldn't abuse the religious just for being religious. Yes I have. Well do as I say, not as I do. In any case, Falwell mocks himself without any help from me.

Here's a sample of his spiritual wisdom.

Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America!...If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way...and our nation will pay a terrible price!

People for the American Way, "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.15.

It's the brilliant use of literally that makes it. All aboard the great homosexual steamroller, I say. What with that and the gay train, they've virtually got their own transport infrastructure.

More mockery here, from the eloquently reactionary Christopher Hitchens, courtesy of the excellent Pharyngula website. And this will now be his swansong.

So farewell, Jerry Falwell. Like I said, we shouldn't abuse a man just for being religious. Although it does seem entirely reasonable to abuse him for being a mean-spirited, bigoted, narrow-minded, credulous homophobic ugly fat cunt.

You may or may not be familiar with Roy Zimmerman. He's a singer and songwriter like the other, more famous Zimmerman, but chooses to use his own name.

Lots of his songs have found their way onto YouTube. My favourite is this one, Jerry Falwell's God. It begins, "Jerry Falwell's God was standing by the elevator while we were talking about the party, so we had to invite him". We've all been there.

He's a speccy nerd, but aren't we all? And don't think I'm not talking about you just because you don't actually wear spectacles. I know my readership (I suspect this may be literally true), and in your heart of hearts you're all speccy nerds.

The downside is that there's only about ten songs available. They're all good though, so go to YouTube now for nearly an hour of endless fun. Or, buy his CDs here.

STOP PRESS: Falwell dies at 73 - almost exactly at the time I was writing this. Spooky or what?

I expect you've all stopped checking me on an hourly basis, and mournfully returned to your otherwise tedious lives. Still, I know Sean will see this, because I've seen me on his RSS feed, so at least I've got an audience of one.

I'm going to be back in Barton Hill again most of the time, while I try to sell my house. Those of you who have seen it are probably wincing at the thought, but worry not, it's changed a bit just recently. Thanks to my brother and his stalwart acolytes it's become a place you might even live, just in time for me to sell it and move on. I suppose that's how these things work.

It feels like it's time to start stringing phrases together again. I was also impelled by this link from Jeff.

It seems that missionaries in Venezuela were stumped when they came up against the Panare people. The Panare are in the hugely fortunate position of having no words for sin, guilt, punishment or redemption, and are similarly innocent of plague, famine or war, so the Bible was a little confusing to them. Undaunted, the missionaries wrote an entirely fictitious Bible for them instead. In this Bible, Jesus was crucified by the Panare themselves, but God forgives them. To earn his forgiveness, though, they have to give him (and therefore the preachers) their unquestioning devotion.

How appalling, of course, but would we think different if we’d been there at the founding of any of the world’s great religions?