Het Graun has a test that attempts to discern one's thinking style. According to the theory, thought can be measured by two orthogonal variables, Empathy and System. The stereotype suggests that males tend to higher System scores, females to higher Empathy scores. Very high System scores and low Empathy values tends to a diagnosis of autism. The converse, high Empathy and low System, isn't a scientific phenomenon, as it's most prevalent in females.

My results are a Chums Only post on SITS 2.

1. Who is your favorite celebrity?
Chris Tarrant, Antan Dec, Sarah Vowell.

2. Who is your least favorite?
Maddonna, Jennifer Whoitt, Thomas Cruise, John Revolting.

3. Have you ever met or seen any celebrities in real life?
Counting those I've been within spitting distance, knew about at the time, and in approximate chronological order...
Richard Manzoli (the guy from Right Said Fred with hair, and the only one I spotted on the street)
Justin Urquhart Stewart (financial bigshot, and quondam lift companion)
Peter Craig (DJ)
Phillip Schofield, Trev and Simon (entertainers)
Colin Baker (actor)
Ian Baker (golfer)
Patrick Cormack (MP)
Steve Bull (then footballer)
Lizo Mzimba (now Newsround)
Tony Robinson (then Maid Marion)
Rolf Harris (painter and singer)
Tim de Jongh (comedy producer)
Christina Odone (then editor of the Catholic Herald)
Karren Brady (then MD of Birmingham City)
Sir Patrick Mayhew (then Northern Ireland secretary)
Marie du Santiago and Johnny X (then of Kenickie)
David Bodycombe (writes puzzles)
Dean (from Big Brother 2)
Robert Brydges (author, by phone)
Melissa Ferrick (matchmaker)
...and work's head honcho is also minorly famous, but he doesn't count.

OK, these people are pretty esoteric, and most are only household names in their own household, but all are Famous.

4. Would you want to be famous? Why or why not?
The sort of micro-celebrity described above will do me fine.

5. If you had to trade places with a celebrity for a day, who would you choose and why?
The Pope. Just think of the havoc I could wreak...

Readers may now review the pictures and words from my recent trip to the Ann Arbor area.

"Here's one you've not heard in ages," quoth the DJ, before playing the Barenaked Ladies' US #1 One Week. Yeah, haven't heard it since - ooh, Monday night. It's all over the CBC hockey coverage, thanks to its use in a commercial. And if I had a million dollars for each time I'd heard that tune... I'd be rich.

Look who's back... Abu Dhabi television shows a new videotape of President Sadaam Hussein of Iraq. The previously reliable station says that the tape was filmed on April 9, over a day after the US announced that they had killed the national leader. What we really need is a tape of President Sadaam holding up a daily newspaper, then we'll know he was around at that date.

In yesterday's Indie, Robert Fisk reported how it's all going belly-up already.

"Go away! Get out of my face!" an American soldier screamed at an Iraqi trying to push towards the wire surrounding an infantry unit in the capital yesterday. I watched the man's face suffuse with rage. "God is Great! God is Great!" the Iraqi retorted. "Fuck you!"

Why, Iraqis are asking, did the United States allow the entire Iraqi cabinet to escape? Not just the Beast of Baghdad and his two sons, Qusay and Uday, but the Vice-President, the Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, Saddam's personal adviser, the ministers of defence, health, the economy, trade, even the Minister of Information.

The secret police headquarters in Baghdad are empty. At the end of the Second World War, German-speaking British and US intelligence officers hoovered up every document in the thousands of Gestapo and Abwehr bureaux across western Germany. In Iraq, however, the British and Americans have simply ignored the evidence.

The top security men in Saddam's regime were busy in the last hours, shredding millions of documents. Shouldn't they be taken to Washington or London and reconstituted to learn their secrets?

On 8 April, the Americans dropped four 2,000lb bombs on the Baghdad residential area of Mansur. They claimed Saddam was hiding there. They knew they would kill civilians because it was not, as one Centcom mandarin said, a "risk free venture" (sic). So they dropped their bombs and killed 14 civilians in Mansur, most of them members of a Christian family.

The Americans said they couldn't be sure they had killed Saddam until they could carry out forensic tests at the site. But this turns out to have been a lie. I went there two days ago. Not a single US or British official had bothered to visit the bomb craters. Indeed, when I arrived, there was a putrefying smell and families pulled the remains of a baby from the rubble.

No American officers have apologised for this appalling killing. And I can promise them that the baby I saw being placed under a sheet of black plastic was very definitely not Saddam Hussein.

I drove to find flames curling out of all the windows of the Ministry of Higher Education's Department of Computer Science. Right next to it, perched on a wall, was a US Marine, who said he was guarding a neighbouring hospital and didn't know who had lit the next door fire because "you can't look everywhere at once".

The crowds setting light to the buildings of Baghdad, including the great libraries and state archives, are not looters. The looters come first. The arsonists turn up later, often in blue-and-white buses.

The official US line is that the looting is revenge and that the fires are started by "remnants of Saddam's regime", the same "criminal elements" who feature in the marines' curfew orders. But people in Baghdad don't believe Saddam's former supporters are starting these fires.

Why did Donald Rumsveld, US Secretary of Defence, claim last week that there was no widespread looting or destruction in Baghdad? His statement was a lie. The Americans say they don't have enough troops to control the fires. If they don't, what are the hundreds of soldiers deployed in the gardens of the old Iran-Iraq war memorial doing all day?

The people of Baghdad are asking who is behind the destruction of their cultural heritage: the looting of the archaeological treasures from the national museum; the burning of the entire Ottoman, Royal and State archives; the Koranic library; and the vast infrastructure of the nation we claim we are going to create for them.

Why, they ask, do they still have no electricity and no water? In whose interest is it for Iraq to be deconstructed, divided, burnt, de-historied, destroyed? Why are they issued with orders for a curfew by their so-called liberators?

America's war of "liberation" is over. Iraq's war of liberation from the Americans is about to begin. The real and frightening story starts now.

May as well start with the BLAIR. The war may be over, but the battle for the Labour party leadership rages on. Elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales, and council elections in England outside London will take place two weeks today. Labour will be looking for a Khaki Bounce, enabling them to maintain their position from 1999. Two weeks is a full news cycle, long enough for some short-term problem to overtake the mind of the electorate.

The war may be over, but the battle for the truth remains. As the Independent asked on yesterday's front page:
Where are the weapons of mass destruction?
Where is Saddam?
What about the alleged links to al-Qa'ida?
Did the Allies stick to the Geneva Conventions?
Was the war illegal?
What side deals were made?
Who is in the 'coalition'?
Who was really responsible for the two marketplace bombings?
What about North Korea?
What are the chances of an Iranian-style revolution?
Is the world a safer place?

A good newspaper never poses questions to which it doesn't have an answerHere's the Indie's.

But now, it's time for me to introduce Dane Judi Dench.

Now, Brian Perkin reads today's Donald Rumsveld Soundbite Of The Day

Some people tell lies; they entertain us, but we don't believe a word of it.

That was today's Donald Rumsveld Soundbite Of The Day. There will be another Donald Rumsveld Soundbite Of The Day on another day.

RIP to the Innovations Catalogue. For almost twenty years, no Sunday magazine has been complete without this A5 combination of comedy and technology. Remember the plasma ball? £250 when first advertised in 1986, now £20 from Argos. Or the Theraputic Back Massager, which could massage your back while sitting down? £150 in 1991, and as completely useless then as now. Best idea: the Normal Battery Recharger, allowing your regular coppertops to be recharged again and again, almost (but not quite) as good as new. Worst idea: buying your spellchecker from them. The quality increased, and the size decreased, with each of the quarterly catalogues. Missing idea: two words - clockwork radio.

Interesting. Buffy popup, season 7, epi 14.