I've been breeding fire-bellied newts this year and the first of my young larval stage newts have started morphing into the adult form.
The new morphs are very cute mini-me versions of the adult three I have. It's amazing how they've grown from a tiny dot.
Interesting talk at Chatham House on Monday - Patrick Clawson was speaking for the BBC Hecklers Programme (Radio 4) recording: 'It's better to have a war with Iran than a nuclear Iran' and being opposed by George Galloway, Robert Fox & Ali Ansari.
There is a legitimate position that could be argued in favour of a 'pre-emptive' war, on the basis that nuclear proliferation makes 'accidental' nuclear war more likely (see arguments by Scott Sagan). However, Patrick limited his case to a variant on the 'mad mullah' polemic - which, to Iran watchers outside of the US at least, was dreadfully poor. Perhaps the US might have made better use of diplomacy sometime between 9/11 and early days post-victory in Iraq...
