The Scotsman reports:

A WEALTHY businessman was “deluded and insane” when he turned his back on his family and left his £8 million fortune to the Conservative Party, a court heard yesterday.
Branislav Kostic removed his only son from his will after stating that Margaret Thatcher was “the greatest leader of the free world in history” and that she would save the world from the “satanic monsters and freaks” conspiring against him.

N24 has it too:

Aus Bewunderung für die ehemalige britische Premierministerin Margaret Thatcher hat ein Geschäftsmann sein gesamtes Vermögen von acht Millionen Pfund (zwölf Millionen Euro) der Konservativen Partei vermacht. Das passte allerdings seiner Familie gar nicht, die am Mittwoch vor einem Gericht in London gegen das Testament klagte. Sie führt an, Branislav Kostic sei geistig verwirrt gewesen, als er die Torys zu seinen Erben gemacht habe.

I don’t believe that Margaret Thatcher reduced the number of Satanic monsters in Britain. Still, at least the testator knew the Prime Minister’s name. One test of mental stability included a question as to the name of the current PM, and apparently in Thatcher’s day more people answered the question correctly than under anyone else.

(Via Boing Boing)

I’m still working on these pictures of house martins. They don’t pose well.

From Our Lips to Your Ears is a weblog about interpreting by Nataly Kelly in New Hampshire. She is collecting interpreters’ stories for a book project, whose site is here (‘Contact Us’ must be the royal we) and the main purpose of the blog is presumably to support the book, but she has other topics too.

Interpreters’ stories are often interesting, so let’s hope she gets some good ones. Others can be read online from the unfortunately infrequent blog the court interpreter.

(Via Céline)

Supernatural Law – among other things, a web comic.

The decomposing corpse of Mary Lou Henderson has returned from the dead to seek revenge on her husband, who was just acquitted of her murder. Talk about no justice! … Mary Lou has retained legal counsel to take revenge in court.

Via Wikipedia:

In May 1994 an ongoing comic book series was launched “Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre”, under the imprint Exhibit A Press. The title was changed to Supernatural Law with issue #24, in part to avoid readers’ confusion over how to pronounce “macabre,” and to bring it in line with the planned title of a motion picture adaptation.

Sometimes there seems to be a very wide gulf between Britain and the USA.

Comment #15:

I’m still scratching my head over the fact that the three kids go to Tottenham Court Road and find an all-hours greasy spoon complete with gum-cracking waitress.
And then they order cappuchino. Instead of, say, grits.

I nearly blogged last week about the wash-away image of Homer Simpson that was painted next to the Cerne Abbas giant. I may not be a pagan, and I may like the Simpsons, but I was not impressed with this blatant act of publicity. This is what it should look like, without Homer:

But at the time I decided against it, I didn’t realize how effective rainmaking magic can be – Sky reported on July 17 (with a complete picture):

Pagans have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson after he was painted next to their famous fertility symbol – the Cerne Abbas giant.

BBC News, July 20:

Severe flooding has hit roads in several residential areas throughout Dorset causing drivers major problems.
There have been floods in Bournemouth and Poole, with roads submerged and drains overflowing.

I haven’t read anything about how Homer is doing.

LATER NOTE: See Céline’s comment with the link to the Daily Telegraph.

One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless.

Pursuing this further, I checked up Sodom and Gomorrha in Wikipedia and quote:

A few classical Jewish texts do not specifically indicate that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because the inhabitants were homosexual, or sexually deviant from what was recorded as God’s law of natural order, but rather, they were destroyed because the inhabitants were generally morally depraved and uncompromisingly greedy. Though homosexual acts were seen as an abomination, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of many other sins as well.

So the jury is still out on this one, as they say.

LATER STILL NOTE:
Via a commenter on SkeptoBot, the bishops have been misquoted. Gow disclaimed on July 1st, so the Telegraph is digging up old dirt. Liverpool, Carlisle:

The Bishop of Carlisle did not say that God “sent” the floods.
He and the Bishop of Liverpool did point out what environmental campaigners have been saying for years: that the floods are a consequence of global warming, which is a result of our lack of restraint and lack of care for our planet. The two Bishops expressed their sympathy for those who are suffering as a result of the floods.

I doubt the matter is as simple as that, but let’s not deflect attention from Homer Simpson.