Martin World News

ITEM:  First of all, whatever made me go all screwy last week finally let go this morning.  Nothing changed work or stress-wise, except a lot of answered prayer.  I feel like the COPD elephant in the commercials has gotten off my back.  So you know what that means...


ITEM:  I tried to take a nap today, I really did.  But there was one little problem...

 

 

...and I'll bet you all can guess what it is.  Fortunately- we rent.  Other than getting used to nature's telegrapher again, not my problem.

ITEM:  I have a lot more saved than I thought, so let's hit the road flying.  James Doppler of Anchor Point, AK, may be a bit off the radar (NOW you know what that means- bad puns are back!), but even in the remotest places in the world, I think his medical sense may be a bit off.  He accidentally shot himself in the HEAD... but insisted all he needed to treat it was to use some antibiotic ointment.  After several days, however, his girlfriend finally convinced him that, even though he had no brain to injure, he might want to get it looked at.  The doctor in Homer, AK, told him the wound was "serious, but not life threatening."  Uh-huh.


ITEM:  Russell Becklaw, currently a guest of the Missouri penal system, had his execution stayed by idiot Supreme Court "Justice" Sam Alioto.  It seems that he has an odd medical condition that could cause him "undue pain" if executed by lethal injection.

Poor guy, just because he killed his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend in front of her AND her two children AND bf's two sons- then beat her, took her to a secluded place and raped her- shot at a state trooper who discovered him in the act- hid out at the ex's mother in law's house, whom he beat with a hammer- who'd wanna hurt a sweetheart like that?  As for the "more suitable means" that Alioto told them to find, I have a suggestion:

ITEM: How do you, as a former Major League baseball player, hitting .368 with 10 home runs, get released by your parent team?  Well, here's how Miguel Olivo did it:

Two minor leaguers for the Los Angeles Dodgers got into a heated argument Tuesday night that lead to a physical confrontation and one player having part of his ear bitten off, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Scott Boras, an agent, told the paper that Miguel Olivo bit off part of Alex Guerrero's ear after the two exchanged words during the Triple-A game in Salt Lake City.
"Guerrero was in the far end of the dugout," Boras told The Times. "He went to the front to get his bat and helmet to hit. As he walked across, Olivo decked him."
According to the report, the two were separated by teammates in the dugout and Olivo had a part of Guerrero's ear in his mouth.


I believe we call that move "the Tyson."  So far, no one else has taken a chance on Olivo, but I'm sure they'll be someone out there, before all is said and done, willing to take on a hungry player such as Miguel.

ITEM:   

What is that, you ask?  Why, it is a 40-ft high condom, standing in a park in the Santiago, Chile, suburb of La Florida.



...mayor Rodolfo Carter says it's meant to help tackle sexually transmitted diseases and high levels of unwanted teenage pregnancy...

Okay...

Carter's safe sex campaign isn't the only part of his agenda likely to raise eyebrows with conservatives - he's also planning to create a cannabis plantation for La Florida cancer patients. He has asked President Michelle Bachelet to take marijuana off Chile's list of hard drugs.

Okay...


 The social media reaction has been generally positive, although one user commented
: "What's next, a flying sperm over Santiago?"

ITEM: Meanwhile, in Manning, OR, we have a distant relative of James Doppler:

MANNING, Ore. –  A 19-year-old man caused a three-car crash when he fainted while holding his breath as he drove through a tunnel northwest of Portland, Oregon State Police said.
Daniel J. Calhon, of Snohomish, Washington, told investigators he fainted Sunday afternoon while holding his breath in the Highway 26 tunnel near the community of Manning, according to a news release. His car, a 1990 Toyota Camry, drifted across the centerline and crashed head-on with a Ford Explorer.

 

Both vehicles struck the tunnel walls before a pickup hit the Camry.
Calhon and his passenger, 19-year-old Bradley Meyring, of Edmonds, Washington, suffered non-life-threatening injuries, as did the two people in the Explorer: Thomas Hatch Jr., 67, and Candace Hatch, 61, from Astoria. All four were taken to hospitals.


Apparently this tunnel is a hotbed for this game- hold your breath until you make it out of the tunnel.  And most people are probably a bit better at it than Calhon:


The tunnel, called the Dennis L. Edwards Tunnel, was completed in 1940 and carries the highway through the Northern Oregon Coast Range mountains. It's 772 feet long, meaning that a car traveling at the posted speed limit of 55 mph would get through it in about 10 seconds.


I hope Danny doesn't take long showers...


ITEM:  And we have a winner in the "Stupidest Debate of All Time" category, and the winners might surprise you.  Hats off to Benjamin Netanyahu and Pope Francis.  The debate?  What language would Jesus have spoken? 

Benjamin Netanyahu and Pope Francis appeared to have a momentary disagreement. "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told the Pope at a public meeting in Jerusalem. "Aramaic," interjected the Pope. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back.

Excuse me, but Netanyahu, who is Jewish, could be excused for booting this, but the Pope?  Think about it, dude.  Jesus is GOD.  He can speak ANY language!  He knows languages you never heard of, and languages no one's spoken yet!  Remember Peter's first sermon after the Spirit descended upon the Disciples?  He was understood by the speakers of at least FIFTEEN languages according to Luke.  What language did Jesus speak?  Doesn't matter.  Whatever it was, you UNDERSTOOD it.

ITEM:  Finally, there was a BBC article of the Ten Greatest Miscalculations of all time.  Allow me to share this fun with you.

10- London's Millenium Bridge, that was braced for the up and down of mass foot traffic- but not the side to side aspect.  Two years after it's original, frightening opening, it was re-opened with side-to-side shock absorbers installed.  Shake it, you won't break it!

9- One of the many stories of Russian know-how from the Sochi Olympics- the Biathlon track was 130 feet too short.

8- Robert Falcon Scott's fatal South Polar race was full of miscalculations, but one of the most severe was their missing the mark on how much food to bring by 3,000 calories PER MAN.  A doctor who studied the expedition now says that they may have lost as many as 55 lbs per man on the trip.  As if the blizzards and the below-ridiculous temperatures weren't enough.

7-  The builders of a bridge in Lauffenburg, a town that sits on the border of Switzerland and France, knew they had a problem.  You see, Switzerland goes by German measurements of "sea level", which is based on the North Sea coast.  However, the French base theirs on the Mediterranean.  Knowing this, they adjusted for the approximately 10.6 inch difference.  In the wrong direction.  So that when the two ends of the bridge met in the middle, they were almost 2 feet off.  The shabby state of technology in 2003, I guess.

6- Black Sabbath's 1983 tour was supposed to have a life-size version of Stonehenge on the stage.  A mix up in feet versus meters resulted in "very few of the stones fitting on the stage"- and those that did blocked the view of the band.

5- The Big Ben bell at the Houses of Parliament in London cracked during testing in 1857 and was melted down to be recast. But the new bell, winched into position over three days in 1859, also quickly cracked. Disputes raged over who was at fault - there was even a libel case. One theory is that the massive hammer, at 6.5 hundredweight(725 lbs), was too heavy - at least for the particular alloy the bell was made from (seven parts tin to 22 of copper). The foundries which cast the bells had always argued this material was too brittle. The second bell was not replaced (it is still cracked), just rotated by an eighth of a turn. The hammer, however, was replaced by a lighter one.


I guess we aren't the only ones whose bells are cracked...

4- The Hubble Space telescope.  The 2.2 Micron difference that nearly blinded the telescope was blamed on a speck of paint on a measuring device.

3- The "Gimli glider"- the first jet Air Canada sent up after converting from English to metric had only half the fuel they thought because they mistook kgs of fuel for lbs.  The flight got it's name from its safe, gliding landing on the airstrip of Gimli, Manitoba.

2- In 1628, the brand new warship Vasa, armed with 64 bronze cannon and thought to be the most powerful ship in the world, sank less than a mile into her maiden voyage with a loss of all 30 hands.  Apparently, it was asymmetrical, and thus sank- how did that happen?

Archaeologists have found four rulers used by the workmen who built the ship. Two were calibrated in Swedish feet, which had 12 inches, while the other two measured Amsterdam feet, which had 11 inches.


Reminds me of a tale I told a Mexican co-worker once... ah, but this is a family show.


Annnnnnd #1:

The good ol' Mars Climate Orbiter... which didn't really get the hang of the orbiting part:

Designed to orbit Mars as the first interplanetary weather satellite, the Mars Orbiter was lost in 1999 because the Nasa team used metric units while a contractor used imperial. The $125m probe came too close to Mars as it tried to manoeuvre into orbit, and is thought to have been destroyed by the planet's atmosphere.  Oops!


Scrappy says it's dinnertime, and while his sits in his bowl, untouched, he awaits the making of MY dinner with groans and sighs.  See ya next time!