Is it a teddy bear mutated beyond recognition? A spider in disguise? Or is it a really bloody weird caterpillar? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Bolivia Bug.

These days it seems bizarre that art works and scientific treatises can be almost lost for good so easily, so casually ...Or at least it did, then I remembered Bagdhad museum being looted and felt a bit sad that even today we're so brutal as to trash our history.

At least these pages by Archimedes aren't completely gone (admittedly copies of them made 700 years later).

I was slightly surprised on telling my workplace I wouldn't be in on Monday (due to a funeral) to find out I wouldn't get paid in my absence, despite previously attending the death of a relative not that long ago and the issue never having been raised. Don't get me wrong, going to the funeral of a long lost acquaintance and getting paid nevertheless isn't something I'd expect as a matter of course, but I'm not from a big clan and my uncle's hardly that removed from my immediate family, is he? Anyhow, my boss checked up and said there was no problem but, what does everyone else think - should paid compassionate leave be restricted to your nearest and dearest, or are the vagaries of peoples' upbringings too difficult to legislate for?

Dave xx

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