Good game, but a dissapointing finale.

This morning I was reading this article about the Litvinenko murder in Britain. As horrible as the whole situation is, I noted this brief statement in the article:

The Government’s Cobra special emergencies committee met every few hours to discuss the crisis.

Why would you give a “special emergencies committee” the same name as a fictional terrorist organization?

It’s actually an acronym that stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, and as far as I can tell they didn’t start using that acronym until the late 90’s. In other words, way after G.I. Joe. They should have known better.

A related thing that’s always been a mystery to me. How come the payments you make to maintain your health insurance when you change jobs are called COBRA payments? Turns out that they are named after the law that compels insurance companies and employers to offer that service, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985. In a typical display of congressional pace, the law itself wasn’t passed until April of 1986. But that still doesn’t get our government off the hook. The Cobra Commander action figure was released in 1982. Four years is plenty of time for someone to point out the relationship between the name of the bill, and the name of the villains in a popular comic book and cartoon series.