Martin Freeman

The actor who plays Dr. Watson in the Sherlock, Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbitt was interviewed at the premiere of the last one and reveals a nice, self-deprecating sense of humor that is very much like the character of Watson and his first role in the BBC TV series The Office which is where I first became aware of him.
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Atheists denied notary services

The idea that people can deny services to those who views they disagree with is a menace to the smooth working of society. The people who are the latest victims of this are David Silverman and Amanda Knief of American Atheists who went to a local bank to get a document notarized. This is a routine service that banks provide but to their surprise, the notary refused to sign it, though they had had no problems in the past with this bank.
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Obama’s hypocrisy and petulance on display again

The Ukraine situation has once again shown that when president Obama is faced with an international situation where the sheer brute force of the US cannot be used to get his way, he resorts to childish language and taunts. This happened last year when Edward Snowden took refuge in Russia to escape from the clutches of the US security apparatus and president Putin ignored US calls to hand him over. Then Obama gave a press conference where he made the extraordinary comment that Putin looked like “he’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom”, hardly the way to speak about a foreign leader.
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Humorists take aim at TV coverage of missing plane

It looks like there is a long line of comedians who are taking shots at the cable news networks and CNN particularly for obsessively and ridiculously covering the Malaysian Airlines plane disappearance. The bad news is that CNN almost doubled its ratings during this period among the much-coveted 25-54 age group, making Fox News jealous. So next time around, you can be sure that the coverage will be even worse.
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The last polio victim in India

CNN ran the story of Rukhsar Khatoon, a four-year old girl who is the last recorded case of polio in India. She contracted the disease in 2011 when she was just 18 months old. She had not been vaccinated against the disease but this was not a case of anti-vaxxer parents. They had held off vaccinating her because “she was a sickly child, in and out of hospital with liver infections and diarrhea” and “they thought it safer not to subject her to more medication.” They now bitterly blame themselves for her condition.
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Dramatic rescue from fire and Chicago derailment

Here is a video showing how a construction worker was rescued from a burning building. He seems to have shown considerable presence of mind, buying time by jumping from one ledge to another as the fire came closer. The whole thing has a voiceover, perhaps from the person doing the recording. She actually said at one point, “OMG!”. Do people actually use such initialisms in conversation?
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