Giant Squid!

Has everyone seen the pictures of the giant squid (25 ft/8m)?

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRrr!

Ahoy, today is talk like a pirate day! Savvy, ye scallywag!?

What's the deal with l'Academie française?

I was looking over this article in Wikipedia when I came across the entry for "diaeresis", which makes reference to a 1990 reform that changed the spelling of the feminine form aiguë to aigüe. In a way, I've always thought that the old form made little sense orthographically, but I didn't know that the official spelling had changed.

The website for l'Academie française makes reference to some of the changes implented in 1990 on this page (français, see Transformations et "réformes" de l'orthographe). But what were they thinking? While I suppose dropping the circumflex in words like traitre and paraitre is a minor change, the rule for pluralization of compound nouns just seems totally wrong. And why did they violate the letter e? Sècheresse? Cèleri? They're joking, right?

My Larousse (printed in 1996) reflects almost none of these changes (although it lists évènement as an acceptable alternate spelling). Most of the changes look positively alien compared to what I've seen in common usage (charriot? relai?).

My question for someone who speaks French natively (probably finou): Have any of the 1990 changes been adopted into common usage in France, or have they all been (rightfully) ignored?

If you thought the Roberts nomination was interesting

Chief Justice William Rehnquist has tied. A New York Times article has been rushed online-- there are some really awful typos. Confirmation hearings for John Rberts are scheduled to start in less than 72 hours.

Regenerative mice

Not sure how many people saw this on Slashdot, but apparently all those biologists may have some use after all (even the French PhD's with biology leanings). A group at Penn State has apparently created mice that can regenerate limbs and internal organs and even have even found ways to pass this ability on to other mice via cell transfer. Maybe one day I'll be able to have a couple of extra hands grown so I can type twice as fast-- think of the productivity gains.