Fallout Shelter

Storm kills "lolcat"!

I love the Weather Underground, and even give them money, but this is just wrong.  :)

"Mainly your goal is to be as clear as possible and avoid confusion."

1. I love the English language. 
2. I didn't always feel that way, but I do now.
3. However, one of my pet peeves about English is that the apostrophe and letter "s" are overloaded: there are just too many uses for them, and it gets confusing. 
4. I guess pretty soon I really can throw away all my books, especially when I can find gems like this online:
   • Many nouns derived from a foreign language retain their foreign plurals: (from Latin) alumna, alumnae; alumnus, alumni; bacillus, bacilli; genus, genera; series, series; species, species; (from Greek) analysis, analyses; basis, bases; crisis, crises; criterion, criteria or criterions; phenomenon, phenomena or phenomenons; (from French) adieu, adieux or adieus; beau, beaux or beaus; madame, mesdames; (from Italian) paparrazzo, paparazzi; (from Hebrew) cherub, cherubim or cherubs; kibbutz, kibbutzim. As you can see, many words of this type also have a regular plural ending in -s or -es, in which case the English plural is usually the one used in everyday speech, and the foreign plural is reserved for a technical sense or for use by a specialist: antennas (TV or radio part) or antennae (physiological structure).
     
5. Barry, I guess the collective noun for "grouper" is "grouper:"
   • Some nouns, mainly names of birds, fishes, and mammals, have the same form in the plural as in the singular: bison, deer, moose, sheep, swine. Some words that follow this pattern, such as antelope, cod, crab, elk, fish, flounder, grouse, herring, quail, reindeer, salmon, shrimp, and trout, also have regular plurals ending in -s: antelope, antelopes; fish, fishes; salmon, salmons. Normally in such cases the unchanged plural indicates that the animal in question is being considered collectively, while the plural ending in -s is used specifically to indicate different varieties or species or kinds: We caught six fish but Half a dozen fishes inhabit the lake. By far, however, most animal names take a regular plural: dogs, cats, lions, monkeys, whales.
6. I think this is my favorite:
   • LACKING an exact correspondence between its sounds and its written symbols, English spelling can be frustratingly inconsistent and can pose problems for even the best spellers. Although it would be impossible to formulate a set of rules that would cover the spelling of all English words....
7. Yes, this post is a little odd.  You should have seen it to start with.  :)
8. Wow, the two spell-checkers I have handy really have trouble with this post.  ;)

Snow Crash re-release

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is being re-released in a signed, limited edition by Subterranean Press.  But it ain't cheap.

All styptic, all the time

I'm about to shave with a razor that has 6 blades.  That's thrice the number of 2 that were on razors when SNL first aired one of its fake commercials about a 3-bladed razor.  One of the blades on the new thing is on the back, but on the other hand, at least I don't have the version with the AA battery in it.  The razor came in the mail today.  I feel sorry for the postal employee who has to deliver all that shit.  We have a hard enough time keeping a delivery person for this neighborhood as it is. 

SNL is trying to stay ahead of the curve, because they apparently did another fake commercial about a razor with 14 blades.  The Onion is apparently behind the times.

OTOH, I can't get those disposable Japanese straight razors from Lee Valley anymore.  I never had the nerve to shave with one anyway. 

Mojave Air/Space Port explosion site

Gads, it took me forever to find the exact site of the explosion that happened Thursday to the Scaled Composites folks.  2 dead, 4 injured.  Yuck.

Edit: A third person died this morning after surgery.  The three injured folks left have a lot of what are essentially shrapnel wounds.  BTW, what blew up was a tank of nitrous, which would be funny of three people hadn't died already.  The testing didn't involve anything purposefully being ignited -- the Scaled Composites people were testing the nitrous oxide flow in part of the propellant system when the explosion happened. 

It's kinda odd that this happened on the same day as the story about sabotage on a NASA computer. 

Equal time has gone too far

Wow, the Democratic Party is really bending over backward to make sure they get equal time corresponding to everything the current administration does: 

:)

Petting Zoo Hell

I bet this tore hell out of a nice sleep-in at the petting zoo: Mountain lion eats goat at kids camp.  OTOH, the kids [the human ones :) ] got a real taste of what animals do in the wild. 

Wasn't this in the plot on an episode of Law & Order: CI?

Body found in nose of United Airlines plane at SFO

Emperor Norton II?

Does this account seem odd to anyone?  No account I've read has said that the guy in Denver actually pulled his gun out.  Clearly he was off his rocker, but I wonder about his being shot if he never drew his gun.  I guess now we'll have to wait for Norton III and ask him, as I assume these people are all channeling each other. 

I wonder if anyone else -- other than Mr. Snyder and Joshua Norton -- has ever proclaimed themselves Emperor of the US?  (I did a few minutes ago, but that doesn't count -- ya gotta get famous, preferably not by being shot by cops.)  The "Protector of Mexico" had a reign marked by very little violence (committed by or at him), and even has a nice looking tombstone.  I recently found out he's buried little more than a mile from where I grew up.  My mom used to take us from Broadmoor into Colma all the time to feed ducks at the various ponds these graveyards tend to have.  I bet I went near Norton's grave and didn't even know it.  Dammit. 

Goliath and David

Special "Close-Up" traffic circle photo: