I am in New Jersey, but not near Seaside Heights. I had to learn about our giant squid attack from the tabloids. Hmpf. I'm never around when the fun stuff happens!

Good luck, Tom! Ouchie.

Sometimes the pain meds work, sometimes they don't.

A hot shower or bath can give me some short-lived relief though.

Ugh. Here's hoping for something more permanant.

Tom, that blows.

Oh, Tom. I got nothing but sympathy for you.

Hee! Also, oops.

[link]

It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.

A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation.

The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation.

Rogers thought it had a five-year deal with Aliant Inc. to string Rogers' cable lines across thousands of utility poles in the Maritimes for an annual fee of $9.60 per pole. But early last year, Rogers was informed that the contract was being cancelled and the rates were going up. Impossible, Rogers thought, since its contract was iron-clad until the spring of 2007 and could potentially be renewed for another five years.

Armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation, Aliant disagreed. The construction of a single sentence in the 14-page contract allowed the entire deal to be scrapped with only one-year's notice, the company argued.

Language buffs take note — Page 7 of the contract states: The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

...

The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point — the second comma in the sentence.

Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn't have applied to the first five years of the contract and Rogers would be protected from the higher rates it now faces.

“Based on the rules of punctuation,” the comma in question “allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year's written notice,” the regulator said.

after Godzilla defeats the giant squid, he can eat it, thus solving the deceased giant squid disposal problem...

But then how will scientists study the giant squid without access to a carcass?

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the scientists???!!bang!?

Speaking of scientists, here's one getting in a kerfuffle with creationists.

[link]

I love the fact that someone was finally really punished for misuse of a nonrestrictive clause. It helps me justify a lifetime of obsessive comma editing.

Speaking of scientists, here's one getting in a kerfuffle with creationists.

His final paragraph is a very efficient description of the epistomological differences between creationists and scientists. The scientific approach is not inconsistent with religious faith. It's only inconsistent with a dedication to remaining ignorant.

The true tragedy of “creation science” is that it is an invitation to stop thinking. Instead of taking puzzling aspects of Nature as clues to something deeper, and mulling over the possible lessons we can learn from them in our quest to undertand the universe better and better, the creationist attitude just wants to say “God did it!” and declare victory. It’s a form of giving-up that could have been invoked thousands of times in the history of science, but thankfully was not. Instead, stubborn naturalistic investigators took seriously the clues they had, and used them to gradually uncover marvelous new features of the natural world. And that’s what we’ll continue to do.

Scully got there first: "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature. Only in contradiction to what we know of it." (She was a devoutly Catholic character, too.)