I was looking through the news this morning and two interesting (to me at least) stories jumped out: Smoking Makes You More Angry and Aussies still hunting for Iraq WMDs.

The upshot of story one is that smoking increases the aggressive centres in the brain, but only of normally aggressive people. For some reason I suddenly started seeing new anti-smoking things appearing. For instance, a new box label “Warning – Smoking may make you angry”, or a quite campaign advert with someone getting grumpy, grabbing their pack of cigarettes, lighting up and then napalming the local church. We can then have the catch phrase: “If you get pissed off and smoke, you’re a bloody idiot”, or “Don’t fool yourself, smoking makes you nasty”, or maybe “Don’t make me smoke, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” (I wonder if the Hulk could do tat one?).

The second story just seems plain silly. We tag along behind the US waving our little flags and chanting war songs (out of time). The US smile benignly at us and try to find a sand pit for us to play in. Then, when it is all over and the Americans are saying “Look, we were wrong, there are no Weapons Of Mass Destruction, but we did a good job anyway”, we are jumping about going “Hang on mister… We can find them… Hang on… Really… Aw, c’mon, wait….” Haven’t we realised yet than no one gives a shit if there are WMDs there or not? It was a convenient excuse, and now it needs to go away. Imagine the embarrassment when some are found, and they have “Made In USA” printed on them….. That I’d like to see.