Monday, March 10, 2008

Enjoy Life's Little Moments

Seriously! Who in the world sits around and worries about this? What they are talking about here is an event that may or may not ever happen, with the likelihood of an actual event of a pinpoint-beam of gamma rays making it eight thousand lightyears to a direct hit next to nil, even statistically zero, rounded to the nearest hundredth of a percent! Not only is it extremely not likely to happen, but even if it did, we would never see it coming until it hit. In fact, if we are to be obliterated by a shock of gamma radiation from a distant (or even a relatively close) point in space, the emission has already happened, several thousand years ago. We're not talking about a little trip to the grocery here. This binary system would have had to spit out it's wickedly-charged, cosmic emanation prior to Christ walking the earth, and even prior to the glory of ancient Egypt. So, if you are ever going to be aware of being burned alive by gamma rays from another system like this, it has already been spun into play, has essentially happened, and there is no escape, even if we did have any kind of warning, which we do not. What kind of wet-pajamaed, nail-biting, calculator-hugging momma's boy of a scientist would even try to suggest that this MIGHT be worth worrying about in 8,000 years? When they are looking at the spiral in the telescope, I wonder how may astronomers feel the cold sweat run down their back as they think, "Oh, I hope that thing didn't fire off some incredibly precisely-aimed, radioactive ray beam some eight thousand years ago that's going to kill me." Seriously, people!

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Grammar

This particular rant is in response to this article.

I can't get over the grammatical error of using the plural verb on the singular noun. How many Ferrari companies are there, if they must have the plural conjugation of verbs as their predicate? As far as I know, Ferrari IS ONE company, therefore needs a singular conjugation. If it was otherwise, wouldn't it be "Ferraris?"

For instance, Ferrari are not demanding, but Ferrari is demanding that he remove the badges. Similarly, the car giant are not demanding that he never modify one of their cars again, but the car giant is demanding that he never modify one of their cars again. This is because the simplified version of the subject is "giant" -a singular noun. You wouldn't say, "The giant are in the park picking apples" would you?

Or, is this simple, logical grammar rule only for American English? I suppose that would make sense from the people that have more silent "e's" than any other language or dialect. And, it would make sense from the people who wrap lamp posts in foam to protect the half-retarded, text-messaging citizens. For that matter, it makes sense from the country where even the cops have no guns. Sheesh!