Martin World News

ITEM:  If the author seems to be shifting uneasily in his chair, it's because I may be heading towards round two of "shoot the rock out of that little thing?!"  Bear with me.

ITEM:  Tune in Wednesday for Part II of This Week In WWI- this time it's WAR!

ITEM:  How's this for irony?  A tree planted in an LA park in 2004 in honor of the late George Harrison died this month- of a Beatle beetle infestation!

ITEM:  And now, on top of giant inflatable ducks, there are giant inflatable toads in China.

But there seems to be one little problem:

China's censors seem to have banned internet reports about a giant inflatable toad floating in a Beijing park, amid mockery on social media comparing it to ex-president Jiang Zemin.

References to the 22m (72ft) toad unveiled in Beijing's Yuyuantan Park last month have vanished from all major news portals, and a story on the Xinhua news agency site is now unavailable, Channel News Asia cites the AFP news agency as saying. One paper - the official China Daily - dismisses the toad as a "poor attempt to replicate the success of an original work", but fails to mention the still-powerful Jiang - who was nicknamed The Toad during his 13-year rule.


ITEM:  The US House of Representatives got banned from Wikipedia last week for "disruptive edits."  Apparently some juvenile staffer with nothing better to do (like his/her JOB)  has changed certain entries such as:

-Donald Rumsfeld is an alien lizard who eats Mexican babies;
-The Kennedy assassination was Castro's doing- as well as all the moon landing conspiracy theories;
-Media site Mediaite is "sexist transphobic".

ITEM: Democratic senator John Walsh of Montana, who already got a tainted Masters degree from US Army War College by copying huge chunks of his thesis from sources he didn't credit- has now copied the all-the-rage condition to blame it on.  He's blaming it - partially- on PTSD.

The Democrat also said he was dealing with the stress of a fellow veteran's recent suicide.
Walsh said he made an unintentional mistake and did not intend to plagiarize.
"I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor," Walsh told The Associated Press. "My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment."
A spokesperson for Walsh's campaign said the apparent plagiarism was "unintentional."
"There were areas that should have been cited differently but it was completely unintentional," Lauren Passalacqua said in a statement.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that.  You plagiarize because you don't have an original contribution to make after you've gathered everyone else's work.  Frankly he should have led with this:

"What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?"  At least then he'd be plagiarizing a fellow Democrat.

ITEM:  Speaking of Democrats, Allen West did them a great service by giving them a top ten list of "why I vote Democrat."  To wit:

10. I’ll vote Democrat because I can’t wait for college football season to be delayed or cancelled because the student athletes are union employees.
9. I’ll vote Democrat because I believe oil company’s profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t.
8. I’ll vote Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
7. I’ll vote Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
6. I’ll vote Democrat because I’m way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves. I am also thankful that we have a 911 service that get police to your home in order to identify your body after a home invasion.
5. I’ll vote Democrat because I’m not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy.
4. I’ll vote Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits, and we should take away the Social Security from those who paid into it.
3. I’ll vote Democrat because I believe that businesses should NOT be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.
2. I’ll vote Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.
And the Number One reason I’ll vote Democrat is:
1. I’ll vote Democrat because I think that it’s better to pay billions for oil to people who hate us, but not drill our own because it might upset some endangered beetle, gopher, fish or frog.

Were it me, I'd have dropped the "death row" from "death row inmates", bump 2, 7, and 4 to 1, 2, and 3, and maybe add a caveat that the NCAA made their own bed in how they treat "student-athletes", but other than that, I'm good.

ITEM:  And because we can't do MWN without drunks:

The Gainesville Sun reports 48-year-old Joseph Carl had been drinking and drove into a vehicle stopped at a red light. He got out of his truck without putting it in park and began banging on the window of a woman's car. When the frightened woman drove away, there was nothing holding his truck in place.
The truck rolled into Carl. A police report says he was taken to the hospital where he was treated for fractures in his hand and foot.
He's charged with DUI and DUI property damage. It isn't known whether he's obtained a lawyer.



Do I need to note the connection between a road rage incident completely FUBARed and yet another MWN story from Florida?  No?

ITEM:  You've heard of people who are described as having a "toothy smile".  How 'bout THIS toothy?

Doctors in India have extracted 232 teeth from the mouth of a 17-year-old boy in a seven-hour operation.

Ashik Gavai was brought in with a swelling in his right jaw, Dr Sunanda Dhiware, head of Mumbai's JJ Hospital's dental department, told the BBC.
The teenager had been suffering for 18 months and travelled to the city from his village after local doctors failed to identify the cause of the problem.
Doctors have described his condition as "very rare" and "a world record".

"Ashik's malaise was diagnosed as a complex composite odontoma where a single gum forms lots of teeth. It's a sort of benign tumour," Dr Dhiware said.


The good news is, that's over 200 teeth he won't have to have braces on...


ITEM:  An interesting article connected to the upcoming Scottish referendum on independence listed ten European areas who are watching what happens for its effect on their OWN plans.  Most of them a good poly-sci head like me already knew about- Catalonia and Basque areas in Spain, Flanders in Belgium.  But one I didn't recognize was Padania.  I had to ask, WTH is Padania?


Separatists in the north of Italy have long called for an independent state made up of several of the country's wealthiest and most populous northern regions, sometimes referred to collectively as Padania.
Economic imbalance is key to demand for northern self-rule, since many in the north see themselves as "exploited" - not getting back what they pay in taxes, and (as they see it) subsidising the poorer south. 


So, boiling this down, the wealthy Italian north tried for 60 years to unite Italy as one country.  Finally successful in 1871, they soon discovered, "Ey, all the paisans south of Roma are bums!"  So, instead of spending the last 140 years teaching them to fish rather than giving them fish, NOW they want to get rid of them.  I got a better idea- move the northerners down to Napoli, let the southerners take over up north, and THEN give the northerners independence.  Thank God that could never happen in Obama's America, huh?

ITEM: For our liberal and libertarian friends (if I haven't offended them away by now), this will be a shock.  Everyone else may smirk and ask, "Geez, already?"

DENVER –  Officials at Denver homeless shelters say the legalization of marijuana has contributed to an increase in the number of younger people living on the city's streets.

Legal MJ contributes to homelessness.  Who'da thunk it?

ITEM:  Finally, a story a friend of mine sent me:

Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills. Those skills can include “the hunt for shawarma” for example, the popular among Muscovites eastern cuisine dish. This hunt scene can be seen as this:

Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened – some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.  “This method of ambushing people from their back is widely exercised by Moscow dogs”, saying A. Poiarkov, working in Ecology and Evolution Institute of Moscow. “The main point here is to define who would drop the food scared and who won’t, but the dogs are great psychologists they can do it better than us”.

Among some more amazing skill those Moscow dogs are the ability not to miss their stop while going on the subway train. Biologists say dogs have very nice sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”, Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car – those are less crowded usually.

It’s funny but the ecologists studying Moscow stray dogs also tell the dogs don’t miss a chance to get some play while on their travel in the subway. They are fond of jumping in the train just seconds before the doors shut closed risking their tails be jammed. “They do it for fun, just they have enough food”, they conclude.

You really thought Putin ran this country?