Martin World News- the return

(Gosh, but I love this meme!)

So now, all the news that didn't fit into yesterday's post:

ITEM:  Here is the condition of driving in Fort Wayne 2016:

This is part of my path home Friday afternoon, an approximately half mile stretch of North Clinton usually but five minutes from home.  In this stretch, the following happened:

About three cars ahead as we were all stopped (with me at spot A) a car at Chipotles on the right side of Clinton wanted out- and wanted to cross two lanes of traffic to get to the left turn lane onto Coliseum.  Being stopped that third car ahead gave him room to get out.  Another car heading south and just crossing Coliseum decided he needed to go to Chipotle's in a hurry.  So when the first vehicle came across, he stepped on the gas and headed for the Chipotle entrance- and at the same time, the third car ahead, who didn't see him, started to pull forward.  Missed an accident by prolly a foot.

Then, we started moving (after getting those two disengaged) and seconds later, the car in front of me slammed on the breaks at spot B.  I narrowly avoided being bumper food as that person turned right (which I assumed incorrectly was the reason behind the quick stop.  When they cleared, I spotted an approximately 8-inch diameter PVC connection, on the round side, right next to my lane.  The next second, the car beside and in front of me came close enough to it that it rolled into me, went BANG-scritch-scritch-scritch-BANG! and exited the underneath of my car at about spot C.  Then as I approached point D, the traffic came to a crashing halt, and when I was well and buried, the radio said, "Crews are still on the scene of an accident at North Clinton and St Joe Center...


ITEM:  Sometimes, a little forethought goes a long way...

LIMESTONE COUNTY, AL (WAFF) -
On Friday, a deputy with the Limestone County Sheriff's Office was getting gas at the Shell station on U.S. Highway 72 and I-65 when a clerk asked him to give a 38-year-old man from Virginia a ride to Wal-Mart.

The deputy agreed to give the man a ride after he consented to a search.

During the search, the deputy found two suboxone strips in Alex Wiley Smith's pocket.

After further investigation of Smith's backpack and two duffel bags, the deputy found the following:

A container with 0.5 grams of methamphetamine 
6.4 grams of marijuana
0.7 grams of crystals (to be identified after further testing)
5 baggies containing 5.2 grams of black tar heroin
A "ball" of black tar heroin weighing 13.2 grams 
18 needles 
1 cooking spoon 
2 smoking pipes for marijuana 
1 smoking pipe for methamphetamine 
1 grinder 
A large quantity of plastic baggies commonly used for packaging small amounts of narcotics.

Makes you wonder what he was gonna get at Wal Mart...

ITEM:  This is starting to read like a rebuttal of the "bad girl" items of yesterday.... anyway, I may not know what Alex wanted at WM, but I have a good idea of who he wanted to meet up with...

Murrieta Police said a Walmart loss prevention worker summoned officers to the store Sunday after spotting a suspicious car that matched the description of a vehicle seen during several thefts at Walmart stores in the area.

Police said the car had two different license plates and neither matched the information of the vehicle.

The driver, identified as Brady Loser, 48, consented to a search of the vehicle, police said. Officers found drug paraphernalia and a set of tools Loser allegedly admitted to stealing earlier in the day.


On the bright side, Mr. Loser was well named...


ITEM:  US News and World Report did a ranking of "the world's best countries" based on a sampling of respondents asked to rank a list of nations on various attributes. Over 13,000 responded, and based on the following requirements:

Attributes were grouped into nine subrankings that rolled into the Best Countries ranking: Adventure, Citizenship, Cultural Influence, Entrepreneurship, Heritage, Movers, Open for Business, Power and Quality of Life.

- They came up with this top ten:

1- Germany
2- Canada
3- UK
4- USA
5- Sweden
6- Australia
7- Japan
8- France
9- Netherlands
10- Denmark

They only went with sixty countries- "The 60 countries in the 2016 Best Countries rankings are the only countries whose achievements reached four reputable benchmarks: the United Nation’s top 100 countries in terms of 2013 gross domestic product, the World Bank’s top 100 countries in terms of 2012 international tourist arrivals, the top 100 countries in terms of foreign direct investment inflows from the United Nation's 2013 World Investment Report and the top 150 countries of the United Nation’s 2014 Human Development Index" -and the bottom of the pile included:

Algeria (at the bottom)
Ukraine (Something about a Russian invasion that really screws the pooch)
Iran (moved up due to the Kerry deal, I suppose)
Nigeria (despite the sugar mummys awaiting me)
and Pakistan (The world's MPD case).

ITEM:  Want another list?  How about the nation's best selling cereals?

1- Honey-Nut Cheerios
2- Frosted Flakes
3- Honey Bunches of Oats (see the theme here?  You can't advertise with "sugar" anymore (i.e. SUGAR Frosted Flakes), so now you have to add honey)
4- Cheerios (Formerly about thirty-five percent of my diet)
5- Cinnamon Toast Crunch
6- Special K
7- Frosted Mini-Wheats
8- Lucky Charms
9- Fruit Loops
10- Raisin Bran

Stay tuned to see whether 2, 6,7,9, and 10 hold their positions after the news of the Kellogg's worker that tried out on-the-job urinating...

ITEM:  And one more list- how do you come up with the World's most renowned people? according to The Mirror, you do this:

 Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab have created a database of every person to have had their Wikipedia biography page translated into at least 25 different languages as of May 2013.

And based on that, here are the most renowned people who ever lived:

1- Jesus Christ
2- Barack Obama (basically the same thing, right?)
3- Corbin Bleu (so renowned that I never heard of him, even with the wiki article)
4- Confucius
5- Isaac Newton
6- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
7- Leonardo Da Vinci
8- Adolph Hitler (well renowned doesn't have in the definition "in a good way")
9- Huang Xian Fan ( a famous Chinese historian-educator type, that I still never heard of)
10- Albert Einstein

The article goes on to say this about the category of Musicians:

Michael Jackson is the most renowned musician in the database with 147 languages. John Lennon is fourth on the musician list but he does finish behind Avril Lavigne and Lady Gaga as well as Michael Jackson.

Maybe they should have said "pop musician", because I don't think Mozart was a philosopher...

ITEM:  Finally, I came across on FB an article published on the Hot Air website.  It seems that the economy of Seattle has had a rough time since the new $15 an hour minimum wage came into effect.  Not surprising to those of us who passed third grade math, but here's some of the details:

The AEI study, worked up from Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly surveys, shows that, between April and December last year, Seattle saw the biggest employment drop in any nine-month period since 2009 — a full year into the Great Recession.

The city unemployment rate rose a full percentage point.

Before the minimum-wage hikes begin, Seattle employment tracked the rest of the nation — slowly rising from the 2008-09 bottom. But it started to plunge last spring, as the new law began to kick in.

Furthermore, Seattle’s loss of 10,000 jobs in just the three months of September, October and November was a record for any three-month period dating back to 1990. (ited from the NY Post)

Oh, but you say that it's prolly some sort of regional aberration, right?  Well, they checked that out too, and...

Meanwhile, employment outside the city limits — which had long tracked the rate in Seattle proper — was soaring by 57,000 and set a new record high that November.


So how do you explain why the city is in the tank and the county is not?  Let me put it in simple terms...

And with that, we finally pull the curtain on this MWN marathon!