An experimental spacecraft designed to test the viability of a hotel in space has been successfully sent into orbit, say the BBC here.

"Genesis II is an inflatable module designed and launched by Bigelow Aerospace, a private company founded by an American hotel tycoon." Is that Deuce Bigelow, I wonder? I wondered what he was up to these days.

Inflatables, though, that's the way to go. I'm sure Phineas Fogg would have approved.

Terrifying news from the health and safety people meanwhile, this time about whiteboards. Apparently if you stare into the projector beam for more than a few seconds, the light can hurt your eyes.

I don't wish to seem cavalier on these matters, but can I suggest not doing? Apart from anything else, you should be getting out of the fucking way. Anyone too stupid to do that is probably less of a social menace if they get blinded anyway.

From July 27, the BBC are going to be making their top shows free to download, a week after broadcast. We'll be able to view them but not save them, they say, and I'm sure that's just how it'll work out. You'll need a 2Mb broadband connection to download a half hour program in half an hour, so you can watch as you download.

The bad news is it's just for Windows. They say they're working on an Apple Mac version, but don't mention Linux in the article.

If you should find yourself browsing their offerings you could do worse than the new BBC series called Paris, in which charming, elegant art historian Sandrine Voillet wanders round that city being about as French as anyone could possibly be. I can't get enough of that kind of thing myself, and my daydreaming mind has clasped onto her and held fast, as she leads me gently through the boulevards and whispers sweet nothings about crepes Suzettes and chatelaines, before taking me up the Champs Elysees with a Pere Lachaise she's acquired for the purpose. Sacre Coeur!

On an altogether more edifying note, here's OEDILF. Oh come on, surely you've heard of the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form?

Well, they've got 41,000 limericks. You can browse them by topic, by author or alphabetically by tag word. Unfortunately, they've only done the alphabetical catalogue from Aa to Ck. Still, here's a limerick about aardvarks.

The aardvark is shaped like a pillow
And 'round it the dirt will oft billow,
As it digs in your shrubs
For its favorite grubs—
Oh, wait, I've defined armadillo.

So you have. They don't just have limericks with early alphabet themes, though. Here's one about zymurgy.

My zymurgy class is reviewing
How yeast is fermenting and stewing,
And one thing is clear:
Be it mead, wine, or beer,
This chemistry's all about brewing!

Not especially innovative or outrageous, perhaps, but after "God hates the world" a little contrived wackiness is almost a relief.

Now I know we all feel like that when we can't find the remote, but some people really mean it. For instance, there's the Westboro Baptist Church. Go here, and click on the link.

Yes, they're the nutters that Louis Theroux stayed with, and I understand Keith Allen recently had a go as well. All the attention must have gone to their heads, because now they've set up a choir and started doing anthems.

Perhaps you recall We are the World, the American Band Aid fundraiser written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson (what a charming young man he was then, I wonder what happened to him)? Well, God hates the world has the same tune.

It's a catchy lyric.

God hates the world
And all the people
You every one face a fiery day
For your proud sinning

Oh dear, you may be thinking, if the universe really is run by someone that petulant I guess we'd better humour him. Unfortunately, though, it's

too late to change his mind
You lived out your vain lives
Storing up God’s wrath for all eternity!

Wait, there's more.

You’ll eat your kids (yeah you'll eat them, they harmonise)
You hateful people

No one is quite sure where the child eating thing comes from. It's probably Jeremiah chapter 293 or something. The one where Jehovah punishes the Israelites for wearing slacks on the Sabbath.

Serving all your idols
Fag beasts and bloody flags
Fires of hell are waiting there for you

This is a reference to their belief that God has cursed America for legalising gay sex, and that every time an American soldier dies in battle that's a punishment from God. They like to picket soldiers' funerals to point this out, which is a brilliant way of making sure everyone in America hates you.

See your soldiers dying
Oh, you claim God’s blessing you
That lie, the greatest lie of all

they explain.

It's all quite jolly, and they look like they're having as much fun as they're giving us, but then just before the end the mocking laughter turns to horror and a boiling rage. For the last thirty seconds, the final chorus is sung solo - by a very young girl. She looks about two, and lisps through the words quite heartbreakingly. Right at the end, she smiles sweetly into the camera, apparently unaware of the content of the message she has just delivered. I suppose for now this is a blessing, but you just have to look at the rest of them to know how she's going to turn out.

I know this is dangerous territory I'm going into, and I may regret this, but I dare you to watch this video and then tell me no part of you wants that little girl taken into care. Hell, I'd look after her. I'd teach her nice songs, songs with some humanity. "Please allow me to introduce myself", she could lisp into the webcam, "I'm a girl of wealth, and taste". Or maybe she might enjoy encouraging people to sing if they're glad to be gay. We'd have to put it online, of course, otherwise how could her parents know of their daughter's progress?

They'd be heartbroken, of course, and with any luck they might make some public showing of their distress. Then we could all go and shove our placards into their weeping faces.

Not that we'd ever do any of those things. We wouldn't lower ourselves.

And just for the record, this is why they're wrong.

Following on the survey which found that 24% of Americans think evolution and creationism are both probably or definitely true, here's a survey from Fox News. Not that we believe a word they say, but still.

So, apparently 91% of Americans believe in God. 87% believe in heaven, 84% in miracles and 79% in angels. 74% of them believe in Hell, and 67% believe in the devil. Presumably at least 7% believe that Hell runs itself. They've obviously never seen Big Brother, or they'd know Hell was micromanaged.

On another slice of the American fruit pie, we find the 37% that believe in astrology. 27% believe in reincarnation, 34% in ghosts, and 27% in witches.

Given that 9% of Americans don't believe at all, presumably at least 10% believe in hell and reincarnation at the same time. Similarly, given that "only" 85% of those who believe in God also believe in angels, at least 2% must believe in angels, but not God. How does that work, exactly? Are the heavens run by committee? Is Peter Falk on it?

And how many believe in all of it? How many believe that God does miracles, makes angels, and created the world in seven days whilst also slowly nurturing it over millions of years, and that after you die, you go to heaven and hell, plus you get to come back again and hang around with your own ghost, but only when the moon is in Pisces?

Disappointingly, only 4% believe in vampires. Come on guys, you can do better than that. I'm sure you can squeeze them in somewhere.

There is one nugget of good news. Apparently Americans over the age of 65 are 7% more likely to believe in God than those under the age of 30. If those young 'uns hold up, then on current trends a majority of Americans will be godless from about the middle of the 24th century. Maybe Gene Roddenberry was right.

More polls here, here and here.

There's an people in the southern Philippines called the Moro. Like many supposedly ethnic groups in the world they aren't genetically any different from their neighbours, and are separated from them purely by religion. Specifically, the Moro are Muslim while most Filipinos are Catholics. The name derives from the word Moor, which was what the Spanish called them when they were in charge.

As often happens in these cases, the Moro want their own homeland, so they can follow the words of Mohammed the paedophile warmonger instead of Jesus the tyrant of hellfire, and since 1981 they've had their own guerilla army to help them get there.

So here's a big shout out to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and let's all hope there aren't too many prospective jihadists who Google their initials.

The Council of Europe have passed a resolution. This is how it goes:

The advance of scientific knowledge through the process of rational enquiry is thousands of years old. Ancient civilisations around the World made valuable contributions. Modern science started in Europe with the scientific revolution of the 15th and 16th centuries. This was followed by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th and has continued to the present.

So far, so erudite. They then go on to say:

However, in recent years we have witnessed attempts to reconcile the biblical account of creation with modern science and outlaw the theory of evolution. "Creationists" pretend that "intelligent design" by a supreme entity is the scientific explanation for the universe.

Such an approach has no credibility among the scientific community but has succeeded in raising doubts in less informed minds, including persons with high political responsibilities, mainly in the USA but also in Europe. Some schools are now forced to teach creationism. The middle path of providing equal time for both merely offers a middle way between truth and falsehood.

And they round off with a rousing chorus of:

... the Assembly is concerned at the possible negative consequences of the promotion of creationism through education and recommends that the Committee of Ministers assess the situation in the Council of Europe member countries and propose adequate counter-measures.

So, learning is good, troglodytes are bad, and if you don't like it you can now officially fuck off. I'm really proud to be a European. We're so - educated.

Poor old PZ Myers, though, is stuck in Minnesota and surrounded by hundreds of millions of troglodytes in all their (lack of) variety. I got all this from his site - can you imagine his mental anguish? Stuck with people who think like this? And who say things like this? And as for Britain, do we go with America or Europe? Ooh, I just can't decide.

Just to stop us getting too smug though, there's always people like this.

Sometimes it seems like American intellectuals just can't help themselves. Like post-op dogs that won't stop scratching their stitches, they just have to keep asking their own public what they actually think. So, in a spirit of condolence, here is a Gallup poll on their nation's attitudes to evolution.

The piece is headlined Majority of Republicans Doubt Theory of Evolution, but I'm not sure who finds that news. The nation as a whole seems to be roughly equally divided, with 49% for evolution and 48% against.

The most baffling result for me is that 24% of Americans believe that both the theory of evolution and the theory of creationism are probably or definitely true. That's one in four who believe both that God created the Earth 10,000 years ago and that life evolved slowly but surely over countless aeons. Now I'm sure some Americans just like to annoy pollsters, or change their minds in the middle of interviews, but given that other polls don't show anything like this level of illogicality you have to conclude that some people are just weird.

The genuinely sad result is that 41% believe that creationism is true, and that evolution is false, while only 28% believe that evolution is true, but that creationism is false. This means the overall picture is actually worse than it looked in the first place.

An intriguing 3% either believe that both are false or have no opinion about at least one of the theories. So what do they think? I think we should be told. Actually, no I don't. I think they should keep it a secret. So don't add comments explaining, because we don't want to know.

Things are looking up in Europe though, and this is why. Also, I have more polls here, here and here.

Me and some of the people who go to the Richard Dawkins website have started our own website, Ask the Atheists. The idea is to allow people to post questions, whether friendly or hostile, and for our panel of experts to answer them. When I say experts, I mean people like me. Yes I am. I've been one all my life, and I really think I'm beginning to get the hang of it. Well, there was that brief flirtation with the mystical in my 20s, but we don't talk about that. So don't. I don't go round rattling the skeletons in your closet, do I? Well yes, maybe I do, but you can't compare my temporary gullible phase with what you did to that poor dog. I mean, people need to be warned not to visit you at home, or at least not to eat the bolognese.

Any-way, it's meant to be a kind of atheism FAQ. I think the main target is people in places like Cairo or Arkansaw, where the availability of atheist material may be limited.

Go have a look, anyway, and perhaps you could link to it on all your various media outlets. We're not coming up in Google yet, so we need the buzz.

You could also ask questions. For instance, a lot of people like to ask me, "what are you doing in my garden?" Incidentally, does anyone remember the name of the comedian I stole that line from? A more relevant question I've been asked is "Why are you wasting your time on this, when there are 600,000 dead Iraqis you could be writing about?" It's a good question (thanks, Sean), I've been thinking about our conversation quite a lot, and I've addressed the subject here. Sean, incidentally, is off to Poland on Wednesday to carry on his walk around the European coastline. Follow his exploits on his blog.

And let's have a round of applause for bitbutter, father of the Ask the Atheists brainchild.

Turns out the Doctor's latest enemies have escaped into the Internet, and are hiding here, here, and maybe even here. Don't blink, and don't turn away. Just reach down, keeping your eyes on the screen, and turn off the computer.

Next week: the Doctor is pursued by two identical middle-aged men with exaggerated skin flaws, and some offal.

So first they drop him, then they leave him thinking that's it, his England career's over, so he goes and gets a job in LA, then they bring him back and of course he's completely brilliant, but now he plays halfway around the world and won't necessarily be available for the big games. What a way to run a railroad.

Why did they forget about the balls in? Why did they think we could do without them? OK, he didn't work miracles at the World Cup, but who did? Of our six goals, he scored one and had assists on two others. What were they thinking?

While I'm doing pictures, here's one courtesy of Jeff. Does it remind you of anything?

Which is of course the official new NASA report about their strategy for the coming times. Let’s see what they’ve got to say for themselves (HTML, or PDF).

Apparently it’s “a strategy for exploring the solar system that encompasses the interests of many stakeholders including national space agencies, academia, and commercial investors”.

Gets you right there, doesn’t it? Hang on, there’s more. “A plan that identifies enabling objectives and dependencies between objectives that drive the time-phasing of their accomplishment”, it says. Then it goes on about stakeholders again.

Basically, they’re going back to the moon. They’ve already decided that, but they’re now going to have a big NASA conference to work out why. They say that the Moon is a stepping stone towards Mars, and they’ve got a picture that makes it look like it’s about half way, but they’re not fooling me. I did science at school, and I can confirm that the Moon is nothing like halfway. Why, half the time it’s pointing in completely the wrong direction. Yes the moon can point, it’s slightly oblate. You’re going to have to get up a bit earlier in the day if you want to catch me out like that.

Hang on, I’m sure I remember Tony Blair saying we were all stakeholders too. So if I’m a stakeholder, how come they aren’t trying to encompass my interests? I haven’t had a consultation form or anything. I could have pointed out that the moon wasn’t all that much nearer to Mars. Bloody hell, when they want to ask about the local car park I can’t move for the guff piled up at my letter box, but when it comes to the future of humanity they just plough on regardless. Bastards.

The Catholic Church may not be to all our tastes, but you do have to admire their thoroughness. Here, for instance, is a very catholic list, of all the patron saints for everything.

The patron saint of computers is one Isidore of Seville. I have to ask, firstly why do computers need a patron saint, and secondly why is he so appropriate given he died in 636. Can they really not find some good Catholic geekboy who's miraculously repaired a corrupted hard disk and canonise him?

For sexual temptation, meanwhile, there’s Mary Magdalen, presumably for managing to resist the urge to have sex with the son of God. Dunno ‘bout that. I would have thought they'd have been better off with Macarius the Younger, who “spent six months naked in the marshes, beset constantly by viscious blood-sucking flies and mosquitoes, in the hope of destroying his last bit of sexual desire.” If anything’s going to do it that would. But no, he’s the patron saint of pasty chefs.

I also notice that there are four patron saints for disappointing children. Fingers crossed there’s a lot of saintbothering parents who think their children have let them down.

The answer is here.

Why does the whole world love the AK-47? It's not the best machine gun on the market by a long run. It’s not even the best for the price.

It turns out it’s another example of technological lock-in. Because there’s so many out there, it’s easy to get the ammo and spare parts. Because it’s easy to get the ammo and spare parts, people keep buying it. There's an estimated 100 million in existence, and they're still making them.

And how did it get to this position? Because it was designed by a Russian (the original Kalashnikov was a war veteran who wanted their soldiers to have a machine gun as good as the Germans had), it was never patented, so anyone can make it without paying for the design.

So let’s hear it for the AK-47, further proof that the open source business model works. But let's hear it rather more loudly for César López, inventor of the escopetarra. This is a brilliant modification of the basic design, which converts it from a gun into a guitar. You could play all the great songs spawned by the peace movement on it, and it would still be an improvement. Let's hope Stalin is spinning in his grave.

I like cops on TV, but you have to wonder at the body count. Famously, Miami Vice had more dead bodies in it than there were murders in the whole of Miami during that period.

So where does that leave poor old Midsomer Murders? Facing something of a credibility gap. And how brilliantly they’ve solved it. In the televisual equivalent of dazzle paint camouflage, they not only have at least three murders in every episode, they make sure nearly all the victims are personally known to Inspector Barnaby’s family.

In the latest episode, Barnaby’s wife signs up for an art class. The first week, the group sit out on a village green and do the houses and trees around them in watercolours. It’s the epitome of a tranquil rural scene, but John Sessions is teaching them, so you do suspect things may not go entirely to plan. Before you can say statistically implausible she’s found a student’s mangled corpse under the hibiscus bush. You can guess what she’s thinking. Oh no, not again. Why can’t I have a normal life? Why is it always like this?

Meanwhile, despite driving Morse to a fatal heart attack Oxford’s crazed dons still haven’t drank their fill of human blood, so Lewis is back without him. This week a mathematics tutor murders his student so he can claim her brilliant research as his own. Imagine, an adult education teacher driven to murder one of his students. I couldn’t possibly imagine what it would be like to feel that way. Maybe she typed her password in with Caps Lock on one time too many.