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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, May 31, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Groaner ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   
   
Think Forward ... !
Today is - What You Think Upon Grows Day 

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Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Hard of Hearing!

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Today in History

1433
Sigismund is crowned emperor of Rome.
1678
The Godiva procession, commemorating Lady Godiva’s legendary ride while naked, becomes part of the Coventry Fair.
1862
At the Battle of Fair Oaks, Union General George B. McClellan defeats Confederates outside of Richmond.
1879
New York’s Madison Square Garden opens its doors for the first time.
1889
Johnstown, Pennsylvania is destroyed by a massive flood.
1900
U.S. troops arrive in Peking to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.
1902
The Boer War ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging.
1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) holds its first conference.
1913
The 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for direct election of senators, is ratified.
1915
A German zeppelin makes an air raid on London.
1916
British and German fleets fight in the Battle of Jutland.
1928
The first flight over the Pacific takes off from Oakland.
1941
An armistice is arranged between the British and the Iraqis.
1955
The Supreme Court orders that states must end racial segregation “with all deliberate speed.”
1962
Adolf Eichmann, the former SS commander, is hanged near Tel Aviv, Israel.
1969
John Lennon and Yoko Ono record “Give Peace a Chance.”
1974
Israel and Syria sign an agreement on the Golan Heights.
1979
Zimbabwe proclaims its independence.
1988
Reagan arrives in Moscow, the first American president to do so in 14 years.

The Failures of 'Conscious Capitalism'

The Belgian royal family is very upset with Burger King

The Belgian royal family rapped Burger King over an online advertising campaign suggesting a new “king” for the European nation.
The Belgian royal family was not amused.

How Fast Food Chain Failures In America Led To Success Overseas

It's hard for new fast food chains to compete with the big names who have cemented their control of cities across America, and even Kenny Rogers couldn't compete with the big chicken chains- his chain of Kenny Roger's Roasters officially closed for business in 2011.
But many failed fast food chains have found success overseas, because these American exports are popular around the world and the market isn't saturated in Asia or Europe like it is here in the U.S.
Kenny Roger's Roasters was sold to a Malaysian firm in 2008 and has since become so big they now have 400 locations worldwide (more than they ever had in the U.S.), and they just opened their first restaurant in India.

When you die, how long until you're actually brain dead?

Patients with this type of cancer are most likely to commit suicide

Depression is common among those facing chronic life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, but according to a new study, one form of cancer is significantly associated with suicide risk. The report found that lung cancer patients are 420 times more likely to attempt suicide than a member of the general public

Psychotic City Living

The claim:
Living in a city makes people develop schizophrenia.
Tell me more:
The claim is not quite that stark, but it's close. For a study published last week, researchers interviewed 2,063 British twins (some identical, some not) at age 18 about "psychotic experiences" they'd had since age 12 - such as feeling paranoid, hearing voices, worrying their food might be poisoned, and having "unusual or frightening" thoughts. Among those who lived in the most densely populated large cities, 34 percent reported such experiences; 24 percent of adolescents in rural areas did.

The Most Dangerous City in Each State

US crime rates are near historic lows, but violent crimes are still scary even if they are rare. If you want to stay safe, it might pay off to avoid the most dangerous areas in any given state. To find out what the most dangerous city in each state is and to find out more specific information about how they happen to be dangerous, be sure to check out this great article on 24/7 Wall Street.

'I Spent 13 Years Killing People'

California man screaming racial slurs hospitalizes black man in machete rampage

According to the Lake County News, a local newspaper in the central-northwest region of California, a white man has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing a black man.

The Police Murder of Alton Sterling

Spencer Got The Boot

NASA to reveal details on mission to visit the Sun

NASA is set to make a big announcement about its mission to “touch the sun”—its first attempt at flying directly into the sun’s atmosphere, where the spacecraft will face unprecedented radiation levels and temperatures of up to 1,400 degrees Celsius.
NASA to reveal details on mission to visit the Sun

Great Barrier Reef bleaching for second consecutive year

The Great Barrier Reef, a 1,400-mile World Heritage Site along Australia’s east coast, is in trouble, and that trouble is growing to proportions that might soon become impossible to alleviate. The colorful corals that make the site an attractive destination are undergoing a second consecutive year of bleaching and the effects of the bleaching in 2016 are significantly worse than previously estimated.
In an announcement Monday, the Australian government’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said an estimated 29 percent of shallow water corals died due to bleaching — caused by rising ocean temperatures — during 2016. The number was revised upward from 22 percent, which was the estimate given in mid-2016.

Octopus Steals Crabs From Fisherman

A giant Pacific octopus has learned where to get an easy crab meal -from a crab fisherman's trap! An octopus is about the smartest creature living underwater, so a trap designed for dumb crabs is easy to break into -and then break out of.
In this video from BBC Earth, we see how the octopus takes advantage of the trapped seafood feast presented to him. Not only does he figure out the trap, but his ability to fit through the smallest of holes serves him well.

Great White Shark Jumps Into Fisherman's Boat

Fisherman telling about a great day of fishing sometimes refer to "fish jumping in the boat." This time it happened for real -and it was a great white shark! Seventy-three-year-old Terry Selwood was out fishing off the shore of New South Wales, Australia, when an almost nine-foot shark weighing over 400 pounds leapt into his boat!
"There I was on all fours and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and then he started to do the dance around and shake and I couldn't get out quick enough onto the gunnel," Mr Selwood said.
"I was losing a fair amount of blood, I was stunned, I couldn't register what happened and then I thought oh my God, I've got to get out of here."
Mr Selwood reached for his radio and called the local marine rescue volunteers at Evans Head.
Marine Rescue Unit commander Karen Brown said a crew was sent out to rescue Mr Selwood and then went back out a second time to retrieve the fisherman's boat and the shark.
Selwood was not bitten, but the shark fin hit him so hard that he was taken to a hospital for treatment of his injured arm. The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) used a forklift to remove the shark from the boat. It was taken away for a necropsy. Selwood says the incident will not stop him from fishing.

Zookeeper killed by tiger in 'freak accident'

A tiger in a U.K. zoo has killed a keeper in what the park has described as a “freak accident.”
The zookeeper killed was 33-year-old Rosa King, who died on the scene on Monday after the tiger entered the enclosure. The incident happened in Hamerton Zoo Park, in Cambridgeshire, central England, at around 11.15 a.m. local time police said.

Killing coyotes doesn't make livestock safer

Few Americans probably know that their tax dollars paid to kill 76,859 coyotes in 2016. The responsible agency was Wildlife Services (WS), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Its mission is to “resolve wildlife conflicts to allow people and wildlife to coexist.” This broad mandate includes everything from reducing bird strikes at airports to curbing the spread of rabies.
Controlling predators that attack livestock is one of the agency’s more controversial tasks.

Animal Pictures


Tuesday, May 30, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Our Flag ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   
   
Minty ... !
Today is - Mint Julep Day 

 You want the unvarnished truth?
Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
The Truth Hurts!

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here

Today in History

1416
Jerome of Prague is burned as a heretic by the cult.
1431
Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by the English.
1527
The University of Marburg is founded in Germany.
1539
Hernando de Soto lands in Florida with 600 soldiers in search of gold.
1783
The first American daily newspaper, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, begins publishing in Philadelphia.
1814
The First Treaty of Paris is declared, returning France to its 1792 borders.
1848
William Young patents the ice cream freezer.
1854
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri Compromise.
1859
The Piedmontese army crosses the Sesia River and defeats the Austrians at Palestro.
1862
Union General Henry Halleck enters Corinth, Mississippi.
1868
Memorial Day begins when two women place flowers on both Confederate and Union graves.
1889
The brassiere is invented.
1912
U.S. Marines are sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.
1913
The First Balkan War ends.
1921
The U.S. Navy transfers the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.
1942
The Royal Air Force launches the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany.
1971
NASA launches Mariner 9, the first satellite to orbit Mars.

Legend of an Australian Pirate Ship in Japan Confirmed

Convicts in Australia hijacked the British ship the Cyprus in 1829. When they were eventually captured, William Swallow, leader of the pirates, and some of his men were put on trial. They gave an account of sailing to Japan in 1830, but no one believed them. Almost 200 years later, the story was considered a legend -until now. Nick Russell searched through 19th century Japanese writings and found and translated an account from samurai Makita Hamaguchi that confirms a Western ship showed up at Shikoku island on January 16, 1830.
Hamaguchi wrote of sailors with “long pointed noses” who were not hostile, but asked in sign language for water and firewood. One had burst into tears and begun praying when an official rejected an earlier plea.
A skipper who looked 25 or 26 placed tobacco in “a suspicious looking object, sucked and then breathed out smoke”.
He had a “scarlet woolen coat” with “cuffs embroidered with gold thread and the buttons were silver-plated”, which was “a thing of great beauty, but as clothing it was gaudy”.
Hamaguchi’s watercolor sketch of the coat has what Russell said may be a telling detail on the sleeve: a bird that could be a swallow, the skipper’s own stamp on a British military officer’s jacket taken as a souvenir in the mutiny.
The skipper gave instructions to a crew that “in accordance with what appeared to be some mark of respect” followed orders to remove their hats “to the man, most of them revealing balding heads”.
They “exchanged words amongst themselves like birds twittering”.  
Japan was isolationist at the time, so a few days later, orders came down to repel the foreigners. After some cannon fire, the ship left. Read more of how the Japanese saw the strange foreign pirates at the Guardian.

George Takei scorches racist Star Trek critics

"These trolls carry on without knowing what they’re talking about and knowing even less about the history of what they’re talking about," Takei said before adding, "And some of these trolls go on to be presidents of nations.”

Star Wars Is a Fantasy Film Firmly Based on America’s Real Conflicts

The Stormtrooper Who Banged His Head in "Star Wars"

It was only a split second shot in the most famous space movie of all time. A stormtrooper follows his commander through a corridor and bangs his head against the ceiling. It was a moment that actor Laurie Goode thought would be edited out, but it wasn't. When Star Wars was released in 1977, so many people watched it so many times that he became anonymously famous.
I remember after the first two takes, we were told to hold our guns in our left hands as opposed to our right. So I believe the head bang happened on the fourth take — whatever number of takes we did, the head bang happened on the last take. When it first happened, that day I told my fellow actor on the film, Mark Kirby, that I hit my head, but we didn't go for another take.
Afterward, nobody believed him when he said he was that stormtrooper. It turns out that quite a few people claimed to be the one. He even wrote a song about it. Goode tells the whole story of what happened on that day of filming and why he wasn't quite on his mark in an interview at The Hollywood Reporter.

Wish You Could Own a Castle in Italy?

Here's Your Chance
Want to own a medieval castle but don't want to spend the cash? Well, you're in luck! Now you can own a castle, post office or other historical building in Italy and all you have to do is revitalize it -well, technically, you have to submit a plan for revitalizing your histoical building and have it approved by the Italian government. Either way though, if you're approved, that building is yours for free and you have nine years to implement the changes you proposed. The plan is a clever way to help improve a number of historic buildings located across Italy and drive tourism back to those destinations, so it's a win/win for the government and new property owners.
You can read more about the program on Travel and Leisure and you can see the available properties here (though the site is in Italian)

Interlocking Wooden Blocks Make It Easy To Build A Wall Or A Tiny House

People have come up with some pretty brilliant ways to help solve humanity's problems, helping people in need by inventing ways to ensure they have clean water, food, clothing, medicine and shelter.And since viable shelter is one of the most important problems to solve and the problem with the most solutions it's not surprising so many inventors have focused on this problem.But so far I've yet to see a semi-permanent housing solution that works as well as Brikawood- the weatherproof, fully recyclable and extremely durable interlocking wooden brick system that makes building shelter a snap.

Student loan debt in the US is so high that many aren't even paying it

Though you'd think the bubble would've burst by now, college costs are still on the rise, and as a result, student debt is at an all-time high. Among 2016 graduates who took on student loans, the average student debt load is more than $37,000, up 6% from the previous year. All told, more than 44 million Americans carry student debt to the collective tune of $1.4 trillion.
 The problem has gotten so bad, in fact, that many graduates are resorting to drastic measures to address their crippling debt. Specifically, they're not paying it. A new report from progressive think tank Demos found that almost 40% of student loan borrowers are either in default or more than 90 days late on their payments. What's even more disturbing, however, is that those owing less than $10,000 in loans have virtually the same default rate as those who owe more than $100,000.


Why working robots in the future might pay taxes

Capitalism works reasonably well as an economic system - provided that human beings are required to do effectively all of the labor. It worked far better than previous systems (slavery most notably).
But capitalism has a long list of grievances, not the least of which is that human labor has slowly become devalued over time. 50 years ago in Detroit, an unskilled laborer could make a living wage on the assembly line. The reason for that was simple: the assembly line, and the company that made its profits off of it, needed those workers. There was a need, and the car companies were more than willing to pay workers to fill those needs. The workers won, the company won, it was a positive sum game.
But that game is changing, thanks to robots.

US Navy skydiver killed in parachuting accident at New York Fleet Week festival

A member of the U.S. Navy’s elite skydiving demonstration team plunged to his death on Sunday when his parachute malfunctioned while performing in an aerial exhibition as part of New York Harbor’s annual Fleet Week festival. U.S. Coast Guard personnel pulled the parachutist from the water near the mouth of the Hudson River moments after the accident, witnessed by thousands of spectators watching the show from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The skydiver, a Navy SEAL commando performing as a member of the U.S. Navy Parachute Team, the Leap Frogs, was pronounced dead at the Jersey City Medical Center, Rear Admiral Jack Scorby told a news conference outside the hospital.

The CIA’s secrets about JFK, Che and Castro

In the early 1960s, Antonio Veciana was the CIA’s man in Havana. With a senior position in the Cuban government, he wreaked havoc on Fidel Castro’s Communist regime, firebombing the capital’s largest department store and plotting to kill Castro with a bazooka.

John F. Kennedy at Prep School

Portrait of a Troublemaker
When young Jack Kennedy entered Choate, the prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, he was following in the footsteps of his older brother Joe. Joe was an excellent student and a standout athlete. Jack was not, and didn't even pass the entrance exams. But he was admitted anyway, and made mediocre grades. His energies went into pulling pranks.
Aided by the sons of America’s most influential families, young Jack—then a student at Choate—had successfully snuck firecrackers onto his elite boarding school’s Wallingford, Connecticut campus, and headed straight for the bathroom. That morning, during the obligatory daily assembly, long-suffering headmaster George St. John held up the defenseless victim—a badly injured toilet seat—for all to see.
St. John railed against “the muckers,” as he labeled the culprits, which Jack took to heart, though not in the way the headmaster likely intended. Inspired, the future president named his band of first-class troublemakers “The Choate Muckers Club.”
The school administration didn't think much of John F. Kennedy, but his classmates saw leadership. Read about Kennedy's boarding school days at Town & Country.

Massachusetts Charter School Backs off Exclusionary Hair Policies —for Now

The Horsemen of Our Apocalypse

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: A White Feminist’s Dystopia

Life is Getting Much Worse for the Poor

Utah Mom Stuffed Kids in Trunk While Shopping

A 39-year-old woman in Utah is facing child abuse charges in what witnesses are describing as an appalling incident: Tori Lee Castillo is accused of locking her two children, ages 2 and 5, in the trunk of her car while she left to shop at a local Walmart. The Riverdale City Police Department got a call Thursday after a witness reported seeing Castillo put her kids in the trunk. "The small children ... began making noise and moving frantically, causing the vehicle to shake," Utah police tell CNN.
"Several good Samaritans observed this and came to the aid of the children." Those good Samaritans coached the 5-year-old on how to open the trunk using an emergency latch.
"I was shocked, I was shaken, and I was mad," a witness tells CNN. "And there's two kids there, tears coming down their face. Bawling. They were scared." Castillo was arrested after returning to her car, per the AP.

US might ban laptops on all flights into and out of the country

The United States might ban laptops from aircraft cabins on all flights into and out of the country as part of a ramped-up effort to protect against potential security threats, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Sunday.

Animal Pictures


Monday, May 29, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Our Flag ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   
   
Remember ... !
Today is - Memorial Day 

 You want the unvarnished truth?
Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
The Truth Hurts!

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here

Today in History

1453
Constantinople falls to Muhammad II, ending the Byzantine Empire.
1660
Charles II is restored to the English throne, succeeding the short-lived Commonwealth.
1721
South Carolina is formally incorporated as a royal colony of England.
1790
Rhode Island becomes the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution.
1848
Wisconsin becomes the thirtieth state.
1849
A patent for lifting vessels is granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1862
Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard retreats to Tupelo, Mississippi.
1911
The Indianapolis 500 is run for the first time.
1913
The premier of the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) in Paris causes rioting in the theater.
1916
U.S. forces invade the Dominican Republic.
1922
Ecuador becomes independent.
1922
The U.S. Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport not subject to antitrust laws.
1942
The German Army completes its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union.
1951
C. F. Blair becomes the first man to fly over the North Pole in single-engine plane.
1953
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1974
Nixon agrees to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1990
Boris Yeltsin is elected the president of Russia.

How would engineers build the Golden Gate Bridge today?

Ever since the Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic on May 27, 1937, it’s been an iconic symbol on the American landscape. The Conversation
By 1870, people had realized the necessity of building a bridge spanning the Golden Gate Strait to connect the city of San Francisco with Marin County. However, it was another half-century before structural engineer Joseph Strauss submitted his bridge proposal. The plans evolved, and the final project was approved as a suspension bridge that ended up taking over four years to build.
When the Golden Gate Bridge went up, it was the longest suspended bridge span in the world – cables hold up the roadway between two towers, with no intermediate supports. And the setting had a number of inherent challenges. It cost about US$37 million at the time; building the same structure today would cost about a billion dollars. So how has the design held up over the past 80 years – and would we do things differently if we were starting from scratch today?

Are Millennials lazy workers?

Yes

The Virtual Couch