It is my mission to correctly re-shelve books to the appropriate section of the bookstore.

For example, "Darwin's Black Box", the famous psuedo-science book by the non-evolutionary non-scientist Michael Behe, should not be in the "Evolutionary Biology" section, but something more appropriate, such as "New Age", "Religion", "Christianity", or even "Fiction". You get the idea.

I call on all readers of this blog to follow my example. Help your local bookstore correctly stock their science section. Spread the word.

In recent years, the bonobo has found a strange niche in the popular imagination, based largely on its reputation for peacefulness and promiscuity. The Washington Post recently described the species as copulating “incessantly”; the Times claimed that the bonobo “stands out from the chest-thumping masses as an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness”; a PBS wildlife film began with the words “Where chimpanzees fight and murder, bonobos are peacemakers. And, unlike chimps, it’s not the bonobo males but the females who have the power.” The Kinsey Institute claims on its Web site that “every bonobo—female, male, infant, high or low status—seeks and responds to kisses.” And, in Los Angeles, a sex adviser named Susan Block promotes what she calls “The Bonobo Way” on public-access television. (In brief: “Pleasure eases pain; good sex defuses tension; love lessens violence; you can’t very well fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.”) In newspaper columns and on the Internet, bonobos are routinely described as creatures that shun violence and live in egalitarian or female-dominated communities; more rarely, they are said to avoid meat. These behaviors are thought to be somehow linked to their unquenchable sexual appetites, often expressed in the missionary position. And because the bonobo is the “closest relative” of humans, its comportment is said to instruct us in the fundamentals of human nature. To underscore the bonobo’s status as a signpost species—a guide to human virtue, or at least modern dating—it is said to walk upright. (The Encyclopædia Britannica depicts the species in a bipedal pose, like a chimpanzee in a sitcom.) This pop image of the bonobo—equal parts dolphin, Dalai Lama, and Warren Beatty—has flourished largely in the absence of the animal itself, which was recognized as a species less than a century ago

Ever society in every generation has questions that people dare not ask in public at the risk of being ostracized or worse.

• Do women, on average, have a different profile of aptitudes and emotions than men?
• Were the events in the Bible fictitious -- not just the miracles, but those involving kings and empires?
  
• Did Native Americans engage in genocide and despoil the landscape?
• Do men have an innate tendency to rape?
  
• Would society be better off if heroin and cocaine were legalized?
• Is homosexuality the symptom of an infectious disease?
• Would it be consistent with our moral principles to give parents the option of euthanizing newborns with birth defects that would consign them to a life of pain and disability?
• Is the average intelligence of Western nations declining because duller people are having more children than smarter people?

After graduating Yale in 2003 with a double major in film studies and gender studies, Tara moved to San Francisco to pursue queer documentary filmmaking. She settled in the Castro district, the historic epicenter of American gay culture, and quickly discovered plenty of enticing projects. "There were lots of opportunities to do film and to help people with their films, but no one had any money to pay me so I did a lot of volunteering and part-time work," she told me in a Castro coffee shop.

SOMETIMES when the earth shudders it doesn’t make a sound. That’s what happened in Harrisburg, Pa., recently.

On April 30, a state Superior Court panel ruled that a child can have three legal parents. The case, Jacob v. Shultz-Jacob, involved two lesbians who were the legal co-parents of two children conceived with sperm donated by a friend. The panel held that the sperm donor and both women were all liable for child support. Arthur S. Leonard, a professor at New York Law School, observed, “I’m unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child’s support and are also entitled to visitation.”

This page is scaled so that the smallest thing on it, the electron, is one pixel. That makes the proton thousand pixels across, and the distance between them is... yep, fifty million pixels. If your monitor displays 72 pixels to the inch, then that works out to eleven miles - making this possibly the biggest page you've ever seen.

A Houston woman is suing a former high school classmate who took her name and starred in pornographic movies.

Kristen Syvette Wimberly, 25, is asking that Lara Madden and film distributor Vivid Entertainment Group stop using or publicizing her name, which Madden took as a stage name.

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Four Hundred generous people have already ponied up £3 to buy John a pint through Paypal, leaving us with 600 to go. A good night out, for an average man perhaps, but not for John.

But let me ask you this. Is this any way to treat a national hero? Is this how you want the man who said, “You’re nae hitting the Polis mate, there’s nae chance”, to be remembered? Is that how you want John to go down in history? Do we deserve our reputation for meanness (apart from you 400, who are now exempt from being complained about)?

To this travesty, I say - “That’s nae gonnae happen - nae way”

Join me, brothers and sisters. Let us join together and rise up to honour the ordinary hero of that day. Let us make a shining example of community spirit and heavy drinking.

The country needs to see 1,000 pints lined up behind the bar of the Glasgow Airport Holiday Inn with John Smeaton’s name on them. JohnSmeaton.com will not rest til 1,000 pints are paid for and foaming on that counter.

That is the tribute that the great man deserves for his acts of heroism, community spirit and kicking.