Martin World: News, opinion, and (animal) society

ITEM:  Just got back from the Doggie Park (AKA the Hump 'n' Dump):

Scrappy and two beagles

Scrappy's new BFF- new neighbor Daisy the Labradoodle.

ITEM:  Opinion piece here.  We had a motorcycle crash Saturday, I believe, in which a woman in a car ran right over a man and his bike.  He made it through amazingly with broken ribs and road rash.  According to the appropriately inflammatory local news report, the woman claimed that "God told me to just let it go and He'd take it from here", and thus let go of the steering wheel.

Of course this brought out all the lovely atheist commentators telling everyone how stupid religion is, and how much it hurts people.  This does nothing more than highlight their ignorant, agenda-driven thought processes as they dangle on the strings of their puppeteers.  But I have to blame News15 for triggering this- by leaving off any reporting of what kind of mental health care she was under or being referred to.  You see, only in the mind of a troubled soul or an idiot atheist would "God" tell anyone to let go of the steering wheel of a moving car.  Anyone should have seen that the coda of this story is, here we have a woman that needs help.  But News15 was delighted to leave that out, and the atheists were oh so happy to chuck common sense into neutral so they could bash the Being they claim doesn't exist.  I wonder how prominent Christian Mark Mellinger justifies to himself remaining in mainstream media these days.  I actually just e-mailed him on the subject, we'll have to see what he says.

ITEM:  My son KC has sent me a picture of Jeffrey, the chipmunk who wakes him up every morning.

ITEM:  And now, the news:

In Britain a government reshuffle on the heels of the election of an EU president Her Majesty's Government didn't approve of led to the demotion of one Michael Gove from Education Minister to chief whip in Parliament.  But that was just the beginning of troubles for Gove.


His cabinet career has already gone down the toilet, so Michael Gove appears to be getting comfortable there.
The minister - demoted by David Cameron in his dramatic reshuffle earlier this week - missed a speech in the House of Commons on his first day on the job because he was stuck in the loo, it has emerged.
Labour minister Anglea Eagle took great delight in revealing the unfortunate episode during questions in Parliament today.
She said the new Chief Whip New "got stuck in the toilet in the wrong lobby" yesterday so had not made a good start. (Courtesy the Daily Mirror)


Apparently when a vote is about to be taken, they seal the chamber- and the chambers, too.  And Gove didn't realize a vote was about to be taken.  On the bright side, he was able to get a good count from the "porcelain parliament", I guess.

We never had this sort of problem in the Ministry...

ITEM:  A sad note for longtime MWN followers:


Giant rubber duck bursts in Taiwan

That's right, the "new-art" fifty-foot rubber ducky mysteriously deflated right around New Years day... but then, even worse catastrophe occurred...


Giant rubber duck lost in China flood

A giant yellow rubber duck floating on Nanming River in China's south-west Guizhou Province has reportedly been swept away by floodwaters just months after it exploded on display in Taiwan.

The 18m (59ft) sculpture by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman disappeared around 19:00 local time on Wednesday, after the city saw days of heavy rainfall, the Taiwan-based Want China Times reports. Even though the duck weighs 1 tonne, and was sitting on a 10 tonne metal platform lashed to the riverbed with steel wires, it was easily dislodged by the storm. "The duck flopped over and was flushed away really quickly by the torrential flood," exhibition co-ordinator Yan Jianxin tells the Wall Street Journal's China Real Time blog. "It disappeared right in front of me."


This happened Friday.  But don't cry, all is not lost....

The organizer's official microblog page said a reward is being offered to anyone who can find the missing duck, but if nothing turns up over the next two days a back-up duck will be brought in from authorized makers in Taiwan to take its place.



Thank God there's a back-up duck.

ITEM:  So you think it's bad in India...

Beijing marathon 'public peeing' ban

Organisers of the Beijing Marathon have said runners will be disqualified if they're caught urinating in public, apparently after dozens of people relieved themselves on the red walls of the Forbidden City last year.

In their defense, contestants claim it has become a tradition to pee on the red walls, which are an International Heritage site.  Perhaps they should take a clue from the Indian mayor on a previous MWN, and put up posters of Mao Tse-Tung to discourage peeing on them.


ITEM:  Scrappy takes a break Sunday...

And so did the swallows... it was that hot!

ITEM:  Now here's the kind of news story you'd like to see in YOUR hometown...

EL SERENO, LOS ANGELES (KABC) --

An attempted robbery at a liquor store in El Sereno Friday ended with one suspect in custody and the other suspect dead.  Two suspects entered the store at Alhambra and Hollister avenues at 11:15 a.m., one suspect armed with a gun and one armed with a machete.  Witnesses say a bullet intended for the owner actually ended up killing one of the suspects.  A suspect was declared dead at the scene. Another suspect was taken into custody.


(A witness) says witnesses in the store told her one suspect stood behind the store owner with a knife to his neck while the other suspect pointed a gun at the store owner and suddenly opened fire. However, (she) says, the store owner performed some kind of martial arts move evading the bullet, which instead hit and killed the suspect behind him.

"He did some karate move, he said that as soon as he heard the shot go off, he moved and it got the other guy."

ITEM:  Finally, a real estate blog called Estatley calculated, by using the top fears of American homeowners, which states are the "scariest".  The top ten:

1. Florida
2. Georgia
3. Texas
4. Louisiana
5. Alabama
6. North Carolina
7.California
8. South Carolina
9. Mississippi
10. Virginia


Indiana came in a mild 22nd, mainly because it was dead last in bears, hurricanes, and shark attacks.  In fact, the Hoosier state didn't top any of the categories, but did make third in tornadoes and meth labs.  South and North Dakota were top ten least scary.  Here's a link to the full list, if you want to see where your state ranks.