Happy Loss of the Petty Colonies We Never Really Wanted Day !

It's 4th July, and to my delight, Astronomy Picture of the Day has declared the existence of the Southern Ocean. Huzzah ! Congratulations, America, all is forgiven. I think I'll celebrate with a nice cup of tea and an episode of Sharpe on blu-ray. That's a very American thing to do, right ?

Independence Day must be very confusing for Puerto Ricans. After all, it was captured from Spain by the Americans in 1898. Not until 1947 were Puerto Ricans given the right to elect their own governor. How then, does this tiny island react on such an occasion ? As far as I can tell, by having a damn good clean. That's what my street appears to be doing anyway. The only other difference is a tenfold increase in the number of extremely obnoxious quad bikes.

On an unrelated note, it's well-known that Americans can't spell, preferring as they do to more often than not omit the "u" from most words, thereby making the spelling more logical, intuitive and wholly wrong. For some reason metallurgy offers particularly strange examples. First, they insist on "aluminum" but at least they have the decency to spell it the way they mispronounce it.

Secondly, and much more bizarrely, Americans can't do soldering. Oh, sure, they spell solder, but pronounce it sodder, which is just baffling. I've never heard of a soddering iron before, but it sounds damn dodgy to me. Good thing I'm not an engineer or I could be in real trouble. Being paid for soddering is surely illegal and likely to get you stoned to death in certain less inclusive countries.

I'll never look at this in the same way again...