Bizarre News Items

About the first piece of news I saw today:

Lawyer dies after being shot when gun being used as evidence is dropped in court

Couldn’t someone have made sure it was unloaded before bringing it into a crowded court? And do shotguns habitually go off when dropped? Who was holding it when it was dropped? Did they have a finger on the trigger? Might this have been a murder that took place during a murder trial? The whole thing is unreal. It’s stranger than fiction.

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I think I’ve had an overdose of politics in recent months. I can’t raise any interest in the current General Election campaign. I’m sick and tired of politicians. I just wish it was over and done with.

It seems to be even worse in America, where Democrats have started an impeachment inquiry into a telephone conversation that Donald Trump had with someone in Ukraine. I really can’t see what the fuss is about. And it seems to me to be making the Democrats look like a bunch of clowns. It’s become a bizarre piece of political theatre.

The truth is that the Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump ever since he was elected. He wasn’t supposed to win. She was. It was Her Turn. And they’ve been looking around for some impeachable offence for the past three years, and not finding any. So now they’ve just invented one, out of thin air. They want to impeach him for something he said. Or for something that a “whistleblower” says he said. Only the whistleblower won’t testify in public. And the hearings are being held in secret. The whole thing is a joke.

Couldn’t they impeach him for something he is well known to have actually done? Couldn’t they impeach him for covering his steaks with tomato ketchup? Tomato ketchup! Surely that’s an impeachable offence. And if not, then it ought to be. Evidence:

WHAT DONALD TRUMP ATE IN CHINA: STEAK AND KETCHUP

…Prominent on the menu was “Stewed Beef Steak in Tomato Sauce,” an homage, perhaps, to Trump’s love of steak with ketchup—the tomato sauce that the Chinese claim to have invented hundreds of years ago

The Chinese invented tomato ketchup? Doesn’t that mean that Trump’s love of steak with ketchup is also collusion with the Chinese?

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At times like this I really just want to stop listening and do something else.

And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.  I’ve been thinking about geography. Yes, geography.

And one thing I came across last night was the remarkable view of the Earth below, showing that the Pacific ocean occupies pretty much one entire hemisphere of the Earth.

It’s huge. Most maps don’t do it justice. I always knew that the Pacific was larger than the Atlantic.  I never realised how big it really was until I saw this view of it.

How come pretty much all the continents are on one side of the Earth? One plausible explanation has always seemed to me that the continents arrived on the surface of the Earth in the space of a few hours – splat!! – when the Earth passed through a cloud of dust and rocks. How else can it be explained?

And it also looks like the continents have begun to ooze slowly round onto the other side, with New Zealand leading the pack, and Australia following closely behind, followed by New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and Malaysia.

Many of these islands look like they’re being pulled and stretched, and are sliding past each other. The weirdest island of all is Sulawesi, which looks like it’s spinning in an eddy. And maybe that’s exactly what they’re all doing, as they flow southeastwards in the wake of Australia.

Anyway I think that’s more interesting than most of the news we get these days.