Silly question, I know. All papers have political agendas. But it’s interesting to note that Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem MP who has stepped in as Chief Secretary to the Treasury as replacement for Mr Laws, has now also been fingered by the Daily Telegraph on the basis of what they’ve uncovered in their precious unexpurgated CD of the Commons Fees Office’s records.

Now of course one could argue that this was just a further example of the Fourth Estate fulfilling its constitutional duty. But, if one had a nasty suspicious mind, one might wonder if it were a symptom of the proprietors’ disapproval of the coalition idea.

The madness begins. Lovely piece by Emine Saner in today’s Guardian. It seems that England’s spoilsport manager Fabio Capello has limited the access his players will have to their wives and girlfriends to one day after each game, with further restrictions should the team progress.

“There is a historic element that has become a kind of mythology in sport,” says Greg Whyte, professor of applied sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University. “The Ancient Greeks believed that sex was detrimental in the build up to the Olympics – that it sapped energy, lowered test-osterone and reduced aggression. But research runs counter to this. There have been a few studies on sex before sport and they have shown it has no effect on performance. However, sleep quality is crucial in terms of performance and sex can enhance sleep, so therefore it may enhance performance.” Unless it’s preventing them getting any sleep.

But it seems that not all teams are facing a sex ban. Argentina’s team doctor Donato Villani was reported in the Sun (where else?) last week as saying:

“Sex is a normal part of social life and is not a problem. The disadvantages are when it is with someone who is not a stable partner or when the player should be resting.” It is very important, he notes, that “the action should not reverberate in the legs of the players.”

Quite so. I’m depressed about this. One of the most entertaining aspects of the last World Cup was the spectacle of the England Wags wandering like a cloud through a host of upmarket shopping malls.

Truly, you couldn’t make this up.

SAUSALITO, Calif. — Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, is turning his attention to Silicon Valley. Mr. Blair is becoming a senior adviser at Khosla Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by Vinod Khosla, an investor and a proponent of green technology.

Khosla Ventures, which Mr. Khosla founded in 2004 after leaving the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made the announcement here on Monday at a meeting of its investors. The firm is investing $1.1 billion in clean technology and information technology companies.

Mr. Blair will offer strategic advice on public policy to the firm’s green portfolio companies. They include Calera, a manufacturer that uses carbon dioxide to create cement products; Kior, which converts biomass like wood chips into biofuels; and Pax Streamline, which aims to make air-conditioning more environmentally friendly.

“The more I studied the whole climate change issue and linking it with energy security and development issues, I became absolutely convinced that the answer is in the technology,” Mr. Blair said in an interview.

You know what this appointment reminds me of? Mike Lynch’s decision to appoint Richard Perle (aka the US Prince of Darkness) to the Board of Autonomy.

“A man-made genome, Mycoplasma liberaloides, is transplanted into a related bacterium, Mycoplasma conservacolum. This ‘reboots’ the cell, transforming it into another, coalesced, species. Ethically troubling and frighteningly risky.”

Lovely cartoon by Peter Brookes.

Cue Randy Newman. For those of us d’un certain age, this is a poignant moment.

This week marks the end of an era for one of the earliest pieces of Internet history, which got its start at Duke more than 30 years ago.

On May 20, Duke will shut down its Usenet server, which provides access to a worldwide electronic discussion network of newsgroups started in 1979 by two Duke graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis.

Working with a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, they came up with a simple program to exchange messages and files between computers at Duke and UNC using telephone modems.

The “Users Network,” Usenet for short, grew into an international electronic discussion forum with more than 120,000 newsgroups dedicated to various topics, from local dining to computer programming languages. Each group had a distinctive name such as soc.history or sci.math.

Usenet also played an integral role in the growth of the popularity of the Internet, said Dietolf Ramm, professor emeritus of computer science. At the time, a connection to the Internet was not only expensive but required a research contract with the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency.

“ARPA had funded a few schools to begin the early stages of Internet, but most schools didn’t have that,” said Ramm, who worked with the students who developed Usenet. “Usenet was a pioneering effort because it allowed anybody to connect and participate in communications.”

When I was writing A Brief History…, Usenet archives provided a wonderful treasure-trove. They also provided a picture of the Net as it was before the arrival of AOL’s redneck hordes. When the groups alt.sex and alt.drugs were started (after a hoohah) on April 3, 1988, for example, it was immediately felt necessary to start alt.rock-n-roll. One has to be consistent in these matters. Those were the days.

Thanks to Rex Hughes for spotting the announcement.

Why can’t the New York Times call a spade a spade? This is how it reports Connecticut Attorney-General Richard Blumenthal’s claim — in a speech to military veterans — that he had served in Vietnam:

“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it — Afghanistan or Iraq — we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”

There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records.

The deferments allowed Mr. Blumenthal to complete his studies at Harvard; pursue a graduate fellowship in England; serve as a special assistant to The Washington Post’s publisher, Katharine Graham; and ultimately take a job in the Nixon White House.

In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he landed a coveted spot in the Marine Reserve, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. He joined a unit in Washington that conducted drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.

And the headline over this story?

This seems a bit of an understatement, to put it mildly. A British tabloid would doubtless scream “Attorney-General Lied About Serving in Vietnam”. The Guardian might have “Memory Loss Afflicts Top Lawyer”.