...read and take to heart aurilee's comments on this strip.

Is there a road in the USA - a ribbon of highway that can be driven without taking an on-ramp or off-ramp in the middle of the trip, not necessarily a single Interstate - equivalent to Canada's Trans-Canada Highway?

The defining characteristic of the Trans-Canada Highway is that it stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It has different names or numbers in different provinces, but it's identified as the Trans-Canada Highway along its entire route. (While it exists in all ten provinces, it doesn't extend to the territories, and the section in PEI is as connected as are the Interstates in Alaska. Thus, it doesn't matter whether the road that I'm wondering exists does or doesn't pass through all 48 contiguous states.)

IIRC, "Route 66" only went as far east as Chicago, so it isn't long enough...

The Grinch's growing heart and Rudolph's red nose explained by science

CDC gets list of forbidden words...

The CDC is now forbidden from using the following words in official documents.  The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

Really... the CDC is now forbidden from using "Science-based" in official documents.  I'm in medical research and WTF?!?!

*Shakes head*  I just... *sigh*

A Robot Wrote a Chapter of Harry Potter Fan Fiction, And It's Spectacular

Or at least so the author of that piece claims.  I've read the chapter, and it's hilarious, but I wouldn't call it "spectacular".  Frankly, it looks like they just fed a lot of Harry Potter into a travesty generator.  There's nothing ground-breaking here, as fun as it is.

There are parts of the story, most prominently in the middle of February 1996/Chapter 9, where this is what I hear when writing Hermione's parts.



(Now I just have to find theme music that matches other people's awesome.  I have some, but many of them -- such as Hannah Abbott's -- are such massive giveaways that I don't dare post them.)

For some reason I've gotten a spate of registration requests for the old boards this past week or so.  About half a dozen new accounts have been created and are requesting approval.  And I'm figuring they're just spammers because every board is locked and topped with a message saying "boards are closed", as I'm sure everyone already knows.  So these alleged new users obviously can't have actually, you know, read the boards there recently.

But that brings me back to something I was thinking about back in September.  It's been three months or so since I moved the boards, and aside from a little minor cleanup left here and there on the data, I'm pretty sure we don't need the old site any more.  I mean, most of that cleanup can be done without needing to consult the old boards, and what can't, we can get by going to the Wayback Machine most of the time.  So I'm thinking I'll blank out the Tapatalk boards completely after the New Year.

I'm announcing it here in case anyone wants to argue that it's a bad idea, or needs to pull something off the Tapatalk site, or something.

Let's post this here, rather than in General Chatter.

RIP Dan Johnson, Kentucky state legislature member, apparently by suicide

Johnson was under investigation for possible sexual assault ... and news of his suicide broke the day after Moore was not elected to the Senate.

Aaron Saltzman thinks so...

tl;dr - There are many, many craft breweries popping up across Canada, but the overall consumption of beer remains steady.

Fox and Disney have come to an agreement that among other things explicitly returns Deadpool, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four to Marvel control, meaning like Spider-Man they're coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Gizmodo story

Variety story

(And in an unrelated story, which I found as a link off the Gizmodo article, Wolverine's youngest clone, Gabby, has finally gotten a codename:  Honey Badger.)