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.