zero

Right purty, too..can you m0ve it?

 

Not a mound -- it's a helluva mesa we got into.

 

"Why?"

"Railroad's comin' through - Right now."

 

And for the punch line......... WHØØØ-WHØØØØ!
Thanks for playing!

 

I used to live near Fort Stinking Desert (aka Nellis AFB), and close enough to the cobalt testing range to be able to see the big mushrooms when they grew them above ground.

Now there's black stuff coming out of the ground, but it's only what's left of the artesian springs that formerly watered "The Meadows" (in Spanish : ͈Las Vegas" - one of the Seven Cities of Gold).

Civilization - HO!

 

Sometimes black stuff coming out of the ground can be a good thing!

 

Scalp 'em, Tantric!

 

When I write the word "Zero" I put a line thru the Z. Looks like a 2 sometimes.

 

Steve - that's what we've been referring to as a "slashed Z" or "slashed Zed". I never learned any "slashed" letters or numerals in school - at least until my sophomore year in High School when I was reading and learning about this "ham radio" thing. The zero was always slashed upper right to lower left ("per bend sinister" for you heraldry scholars). The slashed Z and 7 didn't really start until I was working with Navy linguists and learned that even touching the pen/pencil to the paper in a random place could completely change the meaning of a sentence. Sort of:

Let's eat Grandma!
versus
Let's eat, Grandma!

 

Similarly, it pays to be VERY familiar with the language customs of those with whom you do business...as Lockheed Martin found out the hard way. A simple punctuation mistake cost them $70M.

http://money.cnn.com/1999/06/18/worldbiz/lockheed/