Lazy dog walker earns title

A father has been named one of the laziest men in Britain for walking his pet dog while sitting in his car.
Kevin Pyle, 35, gets his son to drive him slowly around the block and, with his arm stretched out of the window, holds a lead attached to his bull mastiff Bruce, who walks alongside.
He claims to cover around four miles a week but never does any walking himself.
He said: "It sounds terrible that I take Bruce for a walk like that, but it saves me from getting wet when it's raining. He really enjoys it and it saves my legs."
Now he's won the title of being the region's Great North Bum.
Mr Pyle, of Fenham, Newcastle, was nominated for the competition by his 18-year-old son Karl.
"My dad is the laziest person I know. When he gets in from work he has a bath and goes straight to bed. He just lies there and watches the TV," said Karl.
"He even shouts down the stairs for us to go up and turn the channel over for him. But even we couldn't believe it when he came up with the idea to take Bruce for a walk like that.
"Dad goes to work at around 4.30am to 5am and he gets me up so I can drive around the block while he holds Bruce's lead. He is so lazy and deserves the title."
Karl heard the competition to find the Great North Bum on Century Radio and nominated his dad without hesitation.
Competition bosses say he won by a landslide.

Baby answers phone to help mom

An 11-month-old baby answered a mobile phone to help raise the alarm when her mother collapsed.
Amelia Boyle picked up the ringing phone after her 20-year-old mother Elizabeth fainted at home in Braintree, Essex.
Grandmother Linda Wright, making the call, heard the baby say "Mama."
Realizing her daughter's history of passing out and having seizures, Mrs Wright feared something was wrong and called an ambulance.
Paramedics attended and found Miss Boyle had woken up, although she was in a confused state.
She was later told that her phone had been answered by Amelia and how her daughter had played such a vital role in getting help in the incident.
Joy Hale, of the East of England Ambulance Service, said: "We often hear of children who help their parents but this is one of the youngest we've been told about.
"The grandmother also did brilliantly in alerting the emergency services. Thankfully, the mother did not need hospital treatment."

Did You Know.......

Were the stop signs at one time black and white?

If so, when did they change to red and white and what was the reason?

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Stop signs began appearing in various American cities in the 1910s. In the early days, stop signs were not standardized, and in many cities black letters on a white background were used. The first national group to create rules standardizing stop signs, the American Association of State Highway Officials, convened in 1922 and developed the octagonal shape as the standard. At this time, stop signs had the word "STOP" painted in black on a white background. From 1924 to 1954, stop signs were made with a black "STOP" legend on a yellow field. In 1954, the white-on-red stop sign replaced the black-on-yellow version. Red already signified "stop" on traffic lights, so the move was meant to standardize red as a stop signal. In 1966, that standard became a national law.

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In the News

Joey Chestnut Wins Pizza Contest in New York
Chowdown champ Joey Chestnut has done it again — this time proving he's a pizza powerhouse.
He downed 45 slices in 10 minutes Sunday to win the first Famous Famiglia World Pizza Eating Championship in New York's Times Square.
The 24-year-old from San Jose, Calif., says he fasted for more than a day to prepare. He folded and squeezed the slices to make them easier to swallow.
The 24-year-old rocketed to competitive-eating celebrity when he won Coney Island's July Fourth hot-dog eating contest in 2007. He took the title again this summer by gulping down 59 dogs in 10 minutes. He won a contest in Tennessee last month by wolfing down 93 Krystal hamburgers in 8 minutes.
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Florida Mailman Bitten by Rattlesnake Hiding in Mailbox
Forget rain, sleet or snow.
The bite of a poisonous snake didn't keep mail carrier Efraim Arango from his mail route on Friday.
The 66-year-old Arango was bitten as he slipped mail inside a box. He told authorities that he shook his arm and thwacked the small snake against his car door to break its grip.
Arango continued to deliver mail for 30 minutes before seeking help.
Authorities said Arango identified the snake that bit him; it was likely an eastern diamondback rattlesnake.
Arango was treated at a Tampa hospital.

Kitty Afraid

Kitten afraid of remote control mouse

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Kitten afraid of remote control mouse 2!

Arrest threat for 'Good Samaritan' comic

Stand-up Tom Wrigglesworth was threatened with arrest – after coming to the aid of an elderly train passenger who had been reduced to tears by Virgin Train staff.
The comic stepped in after he saw 75-year-old Lena Ainscow sobbing after she was forced to pay £115 for getting on the wrong train.
He organized a whip-round among fellow passengers to cover the fare, but the officious train manager said his actions amounted to begging – and called police. He ordered 32-year-old Wrigglesworth to hand back the cash or face being arrested.
The incident occurred yesterday as Mrs Ainscow was traveling from her home in Bolton, Greater Manchester, to see family in Bromley, Kent, including her son-in-law, who had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Royal Artillery.
She had paid £11.50 to travel on the 10.45am Manchester to Euston service. But her travel itinerary, issued by Virgin, said she had been booked on the 10.15am train. When she queried the discrepancy with Virgin staff in Manchester, they told her to board the earlier service.
However, that held no sway with the train manager who forced her to pay for a new ticket for being on the wrong service.
Wrigglesworth told Chortle: ‘I was trying to sleep when I heard the train manager insisting this old dear pay the fare, so I tried to intervene, because it was obviously just a mistake.
‘She said, "It’s all right, love" and produced loads of notes from her handbag to pay the fare. But it was only pride that she said that, and I saw she was crying. It turned out she was carrying all that cash because she’d saved up her pension money to buy her grand-kids presents.’
‘I thought I had to do something, so I got a paper bag from the buffet car and started a collection.
‘I wasn’t sure that I wanted to get involved, but I had this weird sense that I had to, because of what I do for a living. If anyone was going to be able to stand up in front of a carriage full of people and ask for money, it should be me. I thought that I just said the words of anger that were ringing in my head, the worst thing that can happen is that I die as if it was a bad gig.’
‘So I went through about six carriages, making a little speech that if we all chucked a quid we would get the money in no time. Everyone was happy to help and someone even put in £30.
‘But there was this drunk bloke in one carriage – and this was about 11.30am – who accused me of begging. He started heckling me. I thought, "You don’t know who you’re dealing with." I turned it into a gig and put him down. People were happy to pay the £1 for that entertainment. At some carriages I got a round of applause.’
‘The manager, who was the Nazi jobsworth personified, accused me of begging and asked me to give everyone’s money back. I started to get quite cocky. He said I should have asked his permission first – but I told him I hadn’t done this sort of thing before, so I wasn’t aware of the procedure.
‘He lost his temper and said he was going to get me arrested if I didn’t give people their money back. I told him people didn’t want it back.’
So the comic was met at Euston by transport police, and he had to explain what had happened – as a supportive ‘mob’ of about a dozen fellow passengers looked on. Among them was fellow stand-up Jack Whitehall, who happened to be on the same train. ‘It all kicked off,’ said Wrigglesworth. ‘I was the calmest man there.’
When the police learned what had happened they walked away, taking no further action.
Wrigglesworth said: ‘Virgin’s Customer Service people at Euston were horrified at what happened. They promised to refund the £115 – so the money we collected will go to charity when she gets that back.
‘They asked me what else I needed, sand I asked for a form to complain about the train manager – and I told them they should get a cab to take this lady to Bromley. She got that cab, all paid for by Virgin.’
Mrs Ainscow said: ‘When the guard said I had to buy a new ticket I was devastated. The only money I had was the savings I’d scraped together to get my grandchildren a present. Tom really spoke up for me, he was marvelous.’
Virgin Trains today apologized for ‘the distress that has been caused to both these people’.

Rainbows

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Semi-circle double rainbows

Alaskan-Rainbow
Takakkaw Falls
The Double Rainbow
Every once in a while, if you get lucky, you may see a second rainbow on the outside of the first, brighter rainbow. This is the "secondary rainbow" which occurs when raindrops high in the atmosphere refract and reflect light back to the viewer.

Chimp and tiger cubs being friends

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In the News

NY election mix-up: 'Osama' on the ballot
Who is running for president? In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for "Barack Osama."
The absentee ballots sent to voters in Rensselaer County identified the two presidential candidates as "Barack Osama" and "John McCain." In the United States, the best-known individual named Osama is Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaida terrorist group behind the 2001 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City.
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Retailers start eco-friendly packaging as cost-saving measure
Due to the soaring prices of raw materials, retailers are trying to cut costs with measures to reduce packaging, such as simplifying plastic wrapping and abandoning the use of polystyrene trays.
Retailers also hope that this new positive attitude toward garbage reduction will appeal to eco-conscious consumers and thereby boost sales.
Convenience store chain FamilyMart is changing the way it packages about 70 percent of its lunch boxes. Although the entire box used to be covered in plastic wrap, the company is planning to now only cover the area where the box meets the lid, a move that could reduce the amount of plastic wrap used by about 60 percent.
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