Martin World News

Well, I was just going to rant about work today, but when the simple phrase, "Days like this are why Murphy formulated his law" about covers it, why bother?  Let's just look and see how bad everyone else's lives are...

ITEM:  Anthem came out with a list of who are the healthiest among the 50 biggest metro US areas, and Indianapolis came in DEAD LAST.  C'mon, you fat so-and-sos!  Actually, there were several categories, and the MSA included Carmel and Anderson, but there were only two out of 26 categories that they got a good score on- amount of farmer's markets and golf courses.  Yes, golf courses.  Among the ones they bombed on:

-lowest percentage of any physical activity in last 30 days

- high percentile of smoking, obesity, and diabetes and asthma

- lower in total parkland- INCLUDING DOG PARKS

-and, for God's sake, not enough tennis courts!

Now the top ten healthiest were (you can fill in the MSAs yerselves):

10- San Jose

9- Boston

8- Seattle

7- Portland 

6- Denver

5- Sacremento

4- San Diego

3- San Francisco

2- Minneapolis/St Paul

1- Washington DC.

Hmmm, I smell a liberal bias here....

ITEM:  And another list brings us the ten worst US cities in which to start a business.  This one had a lot to do with cost of living and resources available.  You can just about guess where this one is headed...

10- Anaheim

9- San Jose (but at least they're healthy)

8- Santa Ana

7- Oakland ( a visit to the A's clubhouse would tell you that)

6- Ontario, CA

5- Fremont, CA (Seeing the pattern here?)

4- And moving to the east, Yonkers

3- Garden Grove, CA

2- Jersey City (Wow, these are some surprise, huh?)

And at #1... 

And stay tuned for the "Most wanting to escape" list...

ITEM: Another list?  Why not?  Merriam-Webster added 1,700 new "words" to their dictionary this year.  Among the winners:

Net neutrality

Clickbait

Emoji

Meme

Vocal fry (noun): a vocal effect produced by very slow vibration of the vocal cords and characterized by a creaking sound and low pitch

Jegging- a word that I just learned on Jo-Anne's blog last week

NSFW

And, in a show of real class, WTF.

Thanks to AWB for leading me to this story- and the next one:

ITEM: A lawyer from Kenya wants to marry 16- year- old Malia Obama.  And he's willing to pay top dollar.  Unlike mama Michelle, which ISIS earlier this month announced would only fetch around $140 as a slave (less as a concubine, no doubt), Malia was priced at 70 sheep, 50 cows, and thirty goats.  According to  a 2001 paper entitled “Valuing Indigenous Cattle Breeds in Kenya: An Empirical Comparison of Stated and Revealed Preference Value Estimates,” that means Malia is worth to him around $30,000 just in cows.

“I got interested in her in 2008,” Kiprono said of the first daughter, who was just 10 years old when Obama won the presidency. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t dated anyone since and promise to be faithful to her. I have shared this with my family and they are willing to help me raise the bride price.”

 “I will teach Malia how to milk a cow, cook ugali (basically a big ball of cornmeal dough that you dip in stew) and prepare mursik ( cows' milk fermented in ash-treated gourds, with blood an added option) like any other Kalenjin woman.”  Wow, charmer here.   And, “as an indication that she is my queen, I will tie sinendet, which is a sacred plant, around her head.” 

Wow, she'll look like a babe in that!

ITEM:  You know, there are about a million reasons why I hope that Islam is wrong about everything.  Here's one:

A Turkish televangelist advised viewers recently that men who masturbate would have to deal with “pregnant” hands after they died.

According to Hurriyet Daily News, a 2000 TV viewer told Muslim preacher Mücahid Cihad Han on Sunday that he “kept masturbating, although he was married, and even during the Umrah [pilgrimage to Mecca].”

Han warned the man that Islam viewed masturbation as a “haram” or forbidden act.

“Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights,” Han opined, according to the translation provided by Hurriyet Daily News.

“If our viewer was single, I could recommend he marry, but what can I say now?” the televangelist noted, adding that the viewer should try to “resist Satan’s temptations.”

Spock will have siamese twins...

Many of Han’s 12,000 Twitter followers responded by mocking him.

“Are there any hand-gynaecologists in the afterlife? Is abortion allowed there?” one person asked.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” another Twitter user wrote. “The only men not having pregnant hands would be the ones without hands.”

I wonder what that means for those who use other "personal sexual devices"...

ITEM: Christian LeBlanc, a Canuck touring in Thailand, got his camera (which was in time lapse mode) pinched by an elephant.  The result:

...a perfect selfie!  The animalpocolypse is coming, I tell you!

ITEM:  Just to prove stupid crap does occur in Indiana:

Just before 1:00 Tuesday morning, police tried to pull over a vehicle heading into the town of Leesburg on State Road 15. The driver pulled over in the 300 block of East Van Buren Street and everyone inside fled the scene.

Sheriff’s deputies got a tip around 10:00 a.m. regarding one of the occupants. They took Brady Shepherd into custody after he apparently slept overnight in the gravel pit south of town.

Four people were arrested following an early morning pursuit in Kosciusko County. From top left, Santana A. Collingsworth; top right, Bruce K. Tillman; bottom left, Jordan J. Schultz; and Brady L. Shepherd. (Courtesy: Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department)

Four people were arrested following an early morning pursuit in Kosciusko County. From top left, Santana A. Collingsworth; top right, Bruce K. Tillman; bottom left, Jordan J. Schultz; and Brady L. Shepherd. (Courtesy: Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department)

About an hour later, officers were notified that a Warsaw police officer had discovered two individuals sleeping in his personal pickup truck, which was parked next to his squad (car) at his home. Police took Bruce Kitson Tillman, Jr., 24, and Santana Ann Collingsworth, 20, into custody. Tillman and Collingsworth were arrested and preliminarily charged with resisting/fleeing law enforcement, as well as unauthorized entry into a motor vehicle. They are both currently being held on individual $10,000 bonds at the Kosciusko County Jail. (Courtesy WANE.Com)

Sometimes, the term "people unclear on the concept" seems overused, but...

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