Martin World News

I feel like I should have a fanfare or something here....

ITEM:  First out of the block came a story off Wane.com with a link to a place called MovotoBlog: the lighter side of real estate.  They came up with an arcane formula to determine the most boring cities in the nation, involving per capita bars, clubs, live music, parks, fast food vs fine dining, and so on.  And guess who made the top ten?

1. Lubbock, TX
2. North Las Vegas, NV
3. Chesapeake, VA
4. Irving, TX
5. Fort Wayne, IN
6. Plano, TX
7. San Bernardino, CA
8. Stockton, CA
9. Mesa, AZ
10. Laredo, TX


That's right, my loveable home base came in as the fifth most boring city in the nation!  A feat more surprising when you note that Texas and California hogged 6 of the ten spots!

Right off the bat, we’ll give Fort Wayne its due in a few areas. This place does have a ton of festivals and some really decent minor league sports. So, yeah, good for you guys on that stuff. But once you’re sick of those, there aren’t many alternatives.
The population was decidedly older, there was not much nightlife or fine dining options per capita, and there were very few music venues scattered throughout the city. This city is rather pretty, and if you’re looking for a place to kick back and relax there are worse places to go. But if you want to be wild and crazy and you’re not there during a festival, you’re probably out of luck.


So basically, this should have been called, "The ten most boring cities for you post-teens trying to continue your childhood and act like you live in an episode of Jersey Shore".  I had to chuckle at Plano (a town I always pronounce "plain ol' ") making the list.  But the most fun came when I commented on Wane.com's story.  I basically said, "Well, we'd have more night life if the idiot gang bangers would stick their weapons up their butts and stay the hell home (for those not in the know, just because we had a record number of murders last year, this does not mean that we have a gang problem.  This PSA brought to you by the FWPD and the Mayor's Office.)"  Shortly thereafter I was notified that a person (using the term loosely, as you will see) by the "name" of David had commented on my comment.  His comment?  "Please translate idiot gang banger."

So, like a nice guy amused by someone's massive stupidity, I went back to the site to enlighten him.  Scrolling my way down, I saw he had commented on several comments, mostly extolling Marxism and how we will love it when they take over the country.  Yes, "David" was a troll.  I'm suspecting some punk kid trying to see how much of a rise he could get out of people.  So I obliged:

Well, I wondered if this was a task I would need crayons for, but having seen some of your other comments, I see it's not worth my time. Anyone who would prefer to be a murdering Marxist is a different class of idiot.


ITEM:  Before we get off the subject of WANE.com, I saved something of theirs for the show, in honor of them blocking Bobby G. off the comment section.  (Why?  I don't know.  He took a shower...)  Today, I found more evidence that there may be no intelligent life there...

 

 

Note line 4- All three were shot in the LOWER LOWER extremities.

Apparently differentiating between the upper lower extremities, which might have included the ding dong or whoo hah, and the lower lower, which might have meant a foot or a toe.


ITEM:  Question, what do you call the professional basketball league in Japan?

Answer:

The BJ League!!!!!


ITEM: A website called NameOfTheYear, "formed in 1983 on an Ivy League campus", has a yearly contest where readers select the weird names of real people, they put them in a bracket a la March Madness, and have a vote to determine the name of the year.  The winner this year is the son of an actual English League coach and former player, and given that you all know Scrappy, you'll see why I had to share his name. The winner for 2014 is....

Wow, two straight "say no more" items!


ITEM:  That North Korean news site sure is entertaining.  From this week's peek:

Korean Revolution Emerges Victorious by Dint of Ideology

Pyongyang, June 6 (KCNA) -- The Nigerian Group for the Study of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism on May 26 posted an article titled "Might of ideology is tremendous" on its internet website. The article said: The whole course of the Korean revolution which emerged victorious, going through all difficulties of history eloquently proves that the might of ideology is tremendous. Korean revolutionaries fought against the Japanese imperialists who were armed to the teeth, holding high the banner of the Juche idea and Songun idea. (Blah blah blah...) After the liberation the Korean revolutionaries successfully carried out complicated and difficult tasks in building a new society by organizing and mobilizing broad masses by dint of ideology. They shattered to smithereens the myth of the U.S. "mightiness" with the political and ideological might in the 3 year-long Fatherland Liberation War, making the U.S. imperialists fall like the setting sun. The U.S. vouched that Korea would not be able to rise up again even in 100 years' time, but Korea completed the post-war rehabilitation and construction in just three years on the ruins of war and accomplished the historic task of industrialization in a matter of 14 years. The Korean people are vigorously advancing toward the goal of a powerful nation in all fields including economy, science, technology and sports with the tremendous might of ideology.

Several points to cover here.

1.  There really is a website called "The Nigerian Group for the Study of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism ". Their HQ is right next to the one that teaches the fine art of scam e-mails for fun and profit.  Whether it has anything to do with Nigeria, who knows?

2. "Organizing by dint of ideology."  Remind you of any Presidents out there?

3.  So the US imperialists "fell like the setting sun" between 1953-6.  Okay.

4.  Who in the US "vouched" that North Korea wouldn't rise in 100 years?  Did Chris Matthews say that?

5.  I notice "feeding our people" wasn't high on the list of things done by dint of ideology.  "Yes, can I have an order of "Kimilsungism", hold the pickles, and an order of fries?

ITEM:  Hey, Michael DeGrasse Tyson!  Here's another example of "fit the evidence to the theory, not fit the theory to the evidence".  From a Science journal story quoted in the BBC, we see how to prove a theory without much evidence:

The accepted theory since the 1980s is that the Moon arose as a result of a collision between the Earth and Theia (A theoretical planet that just happened to bump into the early earth) 4.5 billion years ago.

Theia was named after a goddess in Greek mythology who was said to be the mother of Selene, goddess of the Moon. It is thought to have disintegrated on impact with the resulting debris mingling with that from the Earth and coalescing into the Moon.

It is the simplest explanation, and fits in well with computer simulations. The main drawback with the theory is that no-one had found any evidence of Theia in lunar rock samples.

Earlier analyses had shown Moon rock to have originated entirely from the Earth whereas computer simulations had shown that the Moon ought to have been mostly derived from Theia.


However, no one had found any evidence that ANY moon-rock was any different than earth rock.  Until....


"But we have now discovered small differences between the Earth and the Moon..."


Uhm, how small?

"What you are looking for is a much bigger difference, because that is what the rest of the Solar System looks like based on meteorite measurements," (Professor Alex Holliday of  Oxford) said.



Studies of meteorites from Mars and the outer solar system show that these ratios are markedly different - rather like a fingerprint. So Prof Halliday and others are puzzled by the fact that the fingerprints of Earth and Theia seem almost identical.


So, there should have been a BIG difference between earth rocks and moon rocks.  And after 50 years of looking at moon rocks, they finally found a teeny tiny, "almost identical" difference.  And that means:

"...this confirms the giant impact hypothesis."


Say what?  Oh, yeah, fudge the need for a difference down, and we've found JUST what we were looking for.


Modern science is a big, steaming pile.  That's what I found.


ITEM:  Last but not least, what's MWN without a dildo fight in Australia? Courtesy The Japan Times, where you can follow the B-J League:

SYDNEY – A shop manager was pelted with sex toys by an intruder wearing a wig and crotchless pants in an Australian erotica store stickup, local police reported Sunday.
The man forced his way into the Brisbane adult shop through the roof just before 5:30 am on Saturday, setting off the alarm.
“Upon being disturbed, the man threw a number of items he was attempting to steal out of his hands and proceeded to climb back through the roof,” police said in a statement. “Police located the man climbing down from the roof of the business.”
According to local media reports, the intruder was wearing a wig, crotchless pants and a dress. He was charged with break and enter and drug possession offenses.
“There’s definitely a funny side to it,” the manager, Fiona Coldrick, stoically told The Australian newspaper. “Obviously what he was wearing was pretty amusing. You’ve got to see the lighter side of it.”
It is the second sex store robbery in northern Australia this week. On Thursday, a man crashed through the roof of a Cairns erotica outlet during a botched burglary, making off with a “Fantasy Fetish” pack that included a saddle. He was arrested near the scene of the crime and appeared in court on Friday


And I don't think I have to add too much to that one, either!