Random Stories Affected By The Shutdown

This is just a general roundup of news today, with one caveat: every single thing you see here is affected in some way by the government shutdown.

*James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas Sudhof, all Americans working at American universities (Yale, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford, respectively) have become the first Nobel laureates of 2013, winning the physiology/medicine prize for their work in figuring out how cells transport molecules throughout the body. Congratulations!.... except that the shutdown will prevent them from getting grant money to do further work. They're lucky: they're in academica. Government scientists, having been furloughed, cannot attend or speak at conferences, as they cannot legally work without pay.

*King crab season is set to begin on the Bering Sea, which means the latest season of The Deadliest Catch is set to begin filming!.... except there's nothing to film, because there's nobody available to supply fishing permits.

*A sugar-daddy site, openly setting up rich people with attractive people, is reporting a 50% increase in traffic over the past week. Guess what's being blamed.

*A nearly complete Tyrannosaurus-rex fossil is currently getting ready to leave Montana to be installed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.... well, not currently it's not. Because the museum's shut down. The fossil transport has been put off until April.

*Lake Mead in Nevada is also closed, which explains what a bunch of boats were doing cruising down the Las Vegas Strip last night.

*Food trucks in Washington may be pulled off the street in about a week, due to all the government employees who aren't there to buy from them.

*Facial hair is becoming more popular... because people are growing shutdown beards, allowing their beards to track the length of the shutdown.

*San Francisco 49ers safety Donte Whitner, in response to a growing reputation for delivering hard hits, announced that he wishes to legally change his last name to Hitner.... except the paperwork can't be completed because take a wild guess.