The Nut Cache - a collection of recent things I found interesting, or amusing, or nutworthy.
The Bible may say, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” but lawmakers in Romania, it seems, wanted to tax them, instead. Two of Romania’s senators sponsored a law that would have held witches and fortune tellers liable for wrong predictions. Some sort of "accuracy tax" I guess. Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not at all in favor of excessive taxation, but I’m not a real big fan of fraud and deceit, either. Let’s face it; unless a fortune teller can meet the Biblical standard of 100% accuracy 100% of the time (which none of them can!), they are just swindlers and cheaters who take advantage of people’s gullibility. I don’t think they should be taxed, I think they should be arrested for theft by fraud. Oh, that Romanian law? It didn’t pass…You may recall in the August 5, 2010 Nut Cache I told you about Sogen Kato, whose mummified corpse was found hidden in a back bedroom of his family’s home in Japan. Officials said that his family had collected upwards of $100,000 in retirement benefits since his death 30 years ago. Finding Mr. Kato’s remains and the associated fraud led Japanese officials to audit their entire pension program to see if there were other cases of fraud and the system. There were. The investigation has discovered somewhere around 230,000 people over the age of 100 years old who cannot be accounted for. In fact, it seems that more than 100 people would be over 150 years old, if they’re still alive. Doubtful, that. I wonder, how do you say “welfare fraud” in Japanese?I remember some five years ago, teaching through the book of 1 John. It is an eye opening book, full of deep theological insights. One of the key themes of 1 John is how the disciple of Jesus Christ is to relate to the world around him. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,” John tells us (1 John 2:15). This is a message that many in today’s “church” didn’t get. There are far too many “churches” that are much more concerned with “relating to” the world than they really should be. Take, for example, City Church in Anaheim California. It seems that the pastor, in a promotional move to drive up attendance, promised to get the church motto tattooed on his arm if church attendance doubled. It did and he did. Funny, I just have a real hard time imagining Timothy or Titus doing something that blatantly superficial…I’ve known for a long time that our British cousins take their gardening very seriously. It seems that gardening is almost iconic of, and possibly even synonymous with, being British. Well now there is a man in Steeton, England who is worried that new housing being developed adjacent to his home will make it much more difficult for him to do his gardening… in the nude. It seems that Mr. Howard, age 70, took care to build a high privacy fence around his garden to protect his privacy, and, possibly, his neighbor sanity, as he pursued his passion for tending his plants in the buff. Now he is upset that new high-rise dwellings are being planned for his neighborhood; dwellings which will overlook his garden. Mr. Howard is planning on filing a complaint under Britain’s Human Rights Act. "I think it's disgusting,” Howard said. “Human rights legislation says that I should have the right to control who sees my body." My money is not on Mr. Howard winning his case… But, then again, we are talking about the English and their gardens…And, finally, we go from a naked gardener in England to a naked car thief in Louisiana. It seems that late Saturday night, technically early Sunday morning, a Michigan woman hailed a cab in Covington Louisiana. For some unknown reason, a 29 year old woman disrobed in the back of the taxi and demanded that the driver take her home… to Michigan. When he refused, she refused to get out of his taxi, so he drove to the police station for help. When the when inside to tell the police about his problem passenger, she jumped in the front seat of the taxi and drove away. She didn’t make it far, the police found her, still naked, still in the taxi, parked about a block from the police station. Officers say she appeared to be intoxicated. I know, surprising, isn’t it? But at least she wasn’t trying to do any gardening…And the Nuttiness goes on and on...
