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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.


Tuesday, October 31, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
It is Samhain ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily. 
   
Go ahead, beg ... !
Today is - Beggar's Night 

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To happens to be National Magic Day ..!

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Today in History

1517 Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the cult at Wittenberg in Germany. Luther’s theories and writings inaugurate Protestantism, shattering the external structure of the medieval cult and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe.
1803 Congress ratifies the purchase of the entire Louisiana area in North America, adding territory to the U.S. which will eventually become 13 more states.
1941 After 14 years of work, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial is completed.
1952 The United States explodes the first hydrogen bomb at Enewetok Atoll in the Pacific.
1968 The bombing of North Vietnam is halted by the United States.
1971 Saigon begins the release of 1,938 Hanoi POWs.
1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated in New Delhi by two Sikh members of her bodyguard.
1998 Iraq announces it will no longer cooperate with United Nations weapons inspectors.
1999 EgyptAir Flight 990 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 217 people on board.
2000 Soyuz TM-31 launches, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station.
2002 Former Enron Corp. CEO Andrew Fastow is convicted on 78 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction of justice and wire fraud; the Enron collapse cost investors millions and led to new oversight legislation.

Bible not true ... Tell us something we don't know

The bible and its stories about the first man and the creation of the world are not true because there is no physical evidence to back it up, according to a new lengthy investigation from one of Israel's top newspapers. Spanning roughly 5,000 words the article from left leaning Haaretz compares accounts in the bible, from ancients Jews fleeing Egypt to descriptions of King David, and dismisses them all as fables. 
We've known the bible was a load of hogwash for millennia so this isn't exactly news.
Now, the deluded might not be aware it is a collection of fables advocating, rape, murder, incest, homosexuality, prostitution, bestiality, slavery just to name a few.
OK, so the homosexuality and prostitution are fine and dandy for everyone (except for the deluded) but the rest are most certainly not.

The Vampires of Drawsko, Poland

Belief in the ability of the dead to rise up and vex the living as vampires came to us from Eastern Europe. An archeological excavation of a cemetery in Drawsko, Poland, reveals some of the lengths that the villagers went to to make sure the dead stayed dead when they were buried. Anthropology professor Marek Polcyn from the Lakehead University in Canada tells us about the beliefs that lay behind some of these burial rituals.
Polcyn’s work describes one female body discovered with a sickle across her pelvis, a rock on her neck and a coin in her mouth. Four other bodies were found with sickles strewn across their throats. While Polcyn said in one study that sickles have been discovered in excavations in other countries like Slovakia before, burials with sickles across the throat are rare during this period. He says the practice could corroborate with historical knowledge of folk tales and beliefs about creatures that rise from the dead to commit evil deeds and bring misfortune to the living.
“Throughout the world, people believe that sharp tools, iron—anything that was created by fire, by hammering, had anti-demonic properties,” Polcyn says.
Some of the earliest beliefs surrounding vampires came on the heels of the conversion of Slavic people to Christianity sometime between the 7th and 9th centuries, says Christopher Caes, a lecturer in Polish at Columbia University who has taught classes on Slavic vampires. Before Christianity, Slavs predominantly cremated their dead, in the belief that a person’s soul would only be released with the burning of their body. When missionaries converted them, the new practice of burying the dead would have horrified some.
So then the burial practices had to be adapted to accommodate some of those older beliefs. Not everyone had the potential to rise again as a vampire, and there were some clues in the living to indicate who might. Read more about the excavation and what we've learned from it at Smithsonian.

2-year-old rushed to hospital after denied kidney transplant

2-year-old rushed to hospital after denied kidney transplant due to father’s probation

No, You Probably Don't Have Adult ADHD

Hair Loss Has Been Linked to Late Summer and Early Fall

hair loss season peak
Hair Loss Has Been Linked to Late Summer and Early Fall
But experts say the findings could be a little thin

Adults Had Their Very First Kiss on Camera With Complete Strangers

strangers awkward first kissThese Adults Had Their Very First Kiss on Camera With Complete Strangers
First kisses are always awkward, but this slow-motion video takes it to the next level

Vermont Has Developed America's Most Comprehensive Food System Plan

Bundy goes on trial

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy goes on trial on Monday for his role in leading a 2014 armed standoff against federal agents that became a rallying point for militia groups challenging U.S. government authority in the American West.

Gavin Grimm Wants To Fix The Education System That Failed Him

Whitefish Energy fired from Puerto Rico power restoration deal

Puerto Rico’s municipal power company the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA) canceled its deal with Montana-based Whitefish Energy after the group’s “shocking” contract with FEMA leaked to the media. 

Who Owns Puerto Rico’s Debt, Exactly?

Racists’ Heads Will Explode When They Find Out White-On-White Crime Is Higher

Racists’ Heads Will Explode When They Find Out White-On-White Crime Is Higher
It’s time that the U.S. government started to report the facts when it comes to the issue of race and crime.

High Schoolers Are Lashing Out in the Increasingly Racist, Anti-Immigrant Atmosphere Dumbass Trump Has Created

The FBI Is Once Again Profiling Black Activists Because of Their Beliefs and Their Race

Outnumbered By Anti-Racist Protesters, Nazis In Murfreesboro Forced To Cancel Hate-Circle Jerk

Elephants vs. Giant Pumpkins

Elephants and giant pumpkins come together in an orgy of destruction during the Oregon Zoo's annual Squishing of the Squash! The crowd was impressed by both the huge elephants and the huge pumpkins. The elephants like the pumpkins as both playthings and a snack. And they know smashing pumpkins is a crowd-pleaser.
The Squishing of the Squash kicks off a series of 'Howloween' events at the Oregon Zoo.

Emotional states discovered in fish

The occurrence of emotions in animals has been under debate. Now, a research team from the Centro de Ci̻ncias do Mar (CCMAR), at the University of Algarve, the ISPA РInstituto Universitario, the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC) and the Champalimaud Research (in Portugal), demonstrated for the first time that fish have emotional states triggered by the way they perceive the environmental stimuli. This study, published in Scientific Reports, reveals that the ability to assess emotional stimuli may have a simpler neurological basis than expected that was conserved throughout animal evolution.
The evaluation of an emotional state is not an easy task. Whereas in humans emotions are felt consciously, and can be verbalized, there is no way to check if animals can feel emotions. But an emotional state is more than a feeling. It is characterized by behavioral, physiologic, neurological and genetic changes. Therefore, it is possible to run tests to infer if the response to a certain stimulus is associated with an emotional state. Previous studies suggested that some animals, namely primates and other mammals, show emotional states, without knowing if this process is conscious or not. Now, the team led by Rui Oliveira, researcher at ISPA, IGC and Champalimaud, decided to investigate if fish, “simpler” animals that are more distant from humans in the evolution scale, respond emotionally to stimuli of their environment
Tests were held in sea bream after the fish were trained under favorable or adverse conditions that could trigger an emotional state. Contrarily to what is expected in a non-emotional response, the researchers observed that fish responded differently to the same stimulus depending on the way they were assessing the stimulus. The emotional reactions were monitored through the evaluation of interaction or escape behaviors among fish, measuring the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, and assessing the brain areas that were activated and that are known to be associated with positive and negative emotional states.
“This is the first time that is shown that fish can trigger physiologic and neuromolecular responses in the central nervous system in response to emotional stimuli based on the significance that that stimulus has for the fish”, says Rui Oliveira. The researcher explains that “the occurrence of the cognitive assessment of an emotional stimulus in fish means that that this cognitive capacity may have ‘computational’ requirements simpler than what has been considered until now, and may have evolved around 375 million years ago.”

Animal Picture


Monday, October 30, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
The Truth Hurts ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily. 
   
Spooky ... !
Today is - Haunted Refrigerator Night 

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Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Tonight happens to be Mischief Night ..!

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Today in History

1270
The Seventh Crusade ends by the Treaty of Barbary.
1485
Henry VII of England is crowned.
1697
The Treaty of Ryswick ends the war between France and the Grand Alliance.
1838
Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Lorain County, Ohio becomes the first college in the U.S. to admit female students.
1899
Two battalions of British troops are cut off, surrounded and forced to surrender to General Petrus Joubert’s Boers at Nicholson’s Nek.
1905
The czar of Russia issues the October Manifesto, granting civil liberties and elections in an attempt to avert the burgeoning support for revolution.
1918
The Italians capture Vittorio Veneto and rout the Austro-Hungarian army.
1918
Turkey signs an armistice with the Allies, agreeing to end hostilities at noon, October 31.
1922
Mussolini sends his black shirts into Rome. The Fascist takeover is almost without bloodshed. The next day, Mussolini is made prime minister. He centralizes all power in himself as leader of the Fascist party and attempts to create an Italian empire, ultimately in alliance with Hitler‘s Germany.
1925
Scotsman John L. Baird performs first TV broadcast of moving objects.
1938
H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is broadcast over the radio by Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. Many panic believing it is an actual newscast about a Martian invasion.
1941
The U.S. destroyer Reuben James, on convoy duty off Iceland, is sunk by a German U-boat with the loss of 96 Americans.
1942
Lieutenant Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier, and canteen assistant Tommy Brown from HMS Petard board the sinking submarine U-559, capturing code books that will help British code-breakers at Bletchley Park crack the German naval “Shark” Enigma cipher.
1950
The First Marine Division is ordered to replace the entire South Korean I Corps at the Chosin Reservoir area.
1953
US Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves a top secret document to maintain and expand the country’s nuclear arsenal.
1961
The USSR detonates “Tsar Bomba,” a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb; it is still (2016) the largest explosive device of any kind over detonated.
1965
US Marines repel multiple-wave attacks by the Viet Cong within a few miles of Da Nang where the Marines are based; a sketch of Marine positions was found on the body of a 13-year-old boy who had been selling the Americans drinks the previous day.
1973
The Bosphorus Bridge is completed at Istanbul, Turkey, connecting Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus Strait.
1974
The “Rumble in the Jungle,” a boxing match in Zaire that many regard as the greatest sporting event of the 20th century, takes place; challenger Muhammad Ali knocks out previously undefeated World Heavyweight Champion George Foreman.
1975
Prince Juan Carlos becomes acting head of state in Spain, replacing the ailing dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.
1985
The Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for its final successful mission.
1991
BET Holdings Inc., becomes the first African-American company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
2005
The rebuilt Dresden Frauenkirche (Cult of Our Lady) that was destroyed during the firebombing of Dresden in WWII is rededicated.

Obama has been called up for jury duty

President Barack Obama is being called up to participate in one of the most important tasks that a civilian can be summoned to perform: jury service.
In fact, he will be a willing juror in court, according to reports.
After eight years as president, Obama will now take on a new job and will become an unbiased juror in an as yet unidentified case.
Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans told officials on Friday that Obama had been called up for the civilian service next month in Illinois, the state where he served as a senator.

Century after 1917 revolution, some Russians crave return of a tsar

Mikhail Ustinov’s ancestors were executed in 1917 for supporting the tsar but a hundred years later the 68-year-old yearns for the return of monarchy to Russia.

Fermented Foods to Boost Digestion and Health

Things You Should Never Put In A Salad If You're Trying To Lose Weight

Ways To Be A Sex-Positive Parent Without Making Things Weird

Birds and Bees Talk9 Ways To Be A Sex-Positive Parent Without Making Things Weird
We asked sex experts for their best advice.

SIDS Is Every Mom's Worst Nightmare

Why were California's wine country fires so destructive?

As of late October more than a dozen wildfires north of San Francisco had killed more than 40 people, burned approximately 160,000 acres and destroyed more than 7,000 structures.
This tragic loss of life and property is unprecedented in California. However, the fires are not anomalous events in terms of their size, intensity or the speed with which they spread. Indeed, the path of the destructive Tubbs fire in Napa and Sonoma counties mirrors that of the Hanley fire of 1964. This extreme wind-driven fire burned under similar conditions, across much of the same landscape and covered an area substantially greater than the recent Tubbs fire.

Wildfires devastate California marijuana farmers

Cheryl Dumont knew just where she had buried the gold and silver coins: down a ravine from her home by a big Douglas fir.
After Dumont lost her entire marijuana crop, her income for the year, she was anxious to see whether that savings had survived the Redwood fire.
She hiked down to the tree with a shovel and started digging for the plastic box holding the coins. Two feet deep she found what a week before was worth $40,000. It was a melted mess of gold, silver, plastic, dirt and pine needles.
She was among hundreds of growers — big and small, fully permitted, semi-legal and pure outlaw — devastated by the fires in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties.
Their losses illustrate how, despite new laws to make the marijuana industry legal in California, many farmers remain uninsured and trapped in a cash economy that leaves them vulnerable to natural disasters.

How to Educate Young People About Drugs

Texas broadcaster apologizes for slurring black high school football players as ‘Cougroes’

An announcer of Texas high school football games has apologized after being fired for using a racial slur against a rival team and making fun of a cheerleader’s weight.

Brawl between white nationalists and interracial couple leaves woman bloodied

In video posted to Twitter by a reporter from Mic, a fight broke out between an interracial couple and a gang of white nationalists outside of a Tennessee restaurant leaving the woman bleeding from her face.

Bezos-Owned Washington Post Is Publishing Amazon Press Releases and Pretending It's Journalism

Judge calls victim of sexual assault 'overweight'

A judge in Canada is being slammed for saying a 17-year-old “overweight” girl probably enjoyed attention from the 49-year-old man who sexually assaulted her.
Judge Jean-Paul Braun said these comments during trial, where he found taxi driver Carlo Figaro guilty of sexually assaulting the girl, who was his passenger, back in 2015, CBC News reported.

Rose McGowan Stands Tall And Blasts the Pussy Grabbing Culture

Rose McGowan Stands Tall And Blasts the Pussy Grabbing Culture Saying It Will Not Stand
For the first time since accusing Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of raping her, actress Rose McGowan spoke out, blasting the pussy-grabbing culture saying it cannot and will not stand.…

Guy Sexually Assaulted A Woman And Blamed It On His Protein Supplements

Grandmother in Rural Texas Used a Frog Secretion to Rid Toxins from Her Body

International Outrage May Have Delayed Further Elephant Habitat Destruction

Animal Pictures


Sunday, October 29, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
The Truth Hurts ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily. 
   
Like we care ... !
Today is - National Cat Day 

 You want the unvarnished truth?
Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
That's not funny ..!

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

Today in History

1618
Sir Walter Raleigh is executed. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh’s enemies spread rumors that he was opposed to the accession of King James.
1787
Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni opens in Prague.
1814
The Demologos, the first steam-powered warship, is launched in New York City.
1901
Leon Czolgosz is electrocuted for the assassination of US President William McKinley. Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot McKinley on September 6 during a public reception at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, N.Y. Despite early hopes of recovery, McKinley died September 14, in Buffalo, NY.
1927
Russian archaeologist Peter Kozloff apparently uncovers the tomb of Genghis Khan in the Gobi Desert, a claim still in dispute.
1929
Black Tuesday takes place–the most catastrophic day in stock market history, the herald of the Great Depression. 16 million shares are sold at declining prices. By mid-November $30 billion of the $80 billion worth of stocks listed in September will have been wiped out.
1945
The first ball-point pen is sold by Gimbell’s department store in New York for a price of $12.
1949
Alonzo G. Moron of the Virgin Islands becomes the first African-American president of Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia.
1952
French forces launch Operation Lorraine against Viet Minh supply bases in Indochina.
1964
Thieves steal a jewel collection–including the world’s largest sapphire, the 565-carat “Star of India,” and the 100-carat DeLong ruby–from the Museum of Natural History in New York. The thieves are caught and most of the jewels recovered.
1969
The U.S. Supreme Court orders immediate desegregation, superseding the previous “with all deliberate speed” ruling.
1969
The first computer-to-computer link is established; the link is accomplished through ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet.
1972
Palestinian guerrillas kill an airport employee and hijack a plane, carrying 27 passengers, to Cuba. They force West Germany to release 3 terrorists who were involved in the Munich Massacre.
1983
More than 500,000 people protest in The Hague, The Netherlands, against cruise missiles.
1986
The last stretch of Britain’s M25 motorway opens.
1998
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports condemn both sides on the Apartheid issue for committing atrocities.
1998
John Glenn, at age 77, becomes the oldest person to go into outer space. He is part of the crew of Space Shuttle Discovery, STS-95.
1998
The deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record up to that time, Hurricane Mitch, makes landfall in Honduras (in 2005 Hurricane Wilma surpassed it); nearly 11,000 people die and approximately the same number go missing.
2004
For the first time, Osama bin Laden admits direct responsibility for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US; his comments are part of a video broadcast by the Al Jazeera network.
2008
Delta and Northwest airlines merge, forming the world’s largest airline.
2012
Hurricane Sandy devastates much of the East Coast of the US; nearly 300 die directly or indirectly from the storm.

First Visiter From Beyond

It is smaller than a quarter of a mile (400 meters) in diameter, but A/2017 U1 is perhaps the first known object from outside the solar system that has made its way inside. Some more data-crunching and analysis is still needed to confirm the interstellar nature of the object, which could be a comet or an asteroid.

Serving Life in Prison for $5 Worth of Marijuana

How the Horrific 1918 Flu Spread Across America

The flu pandemic of 1918 killed between 50 million and 100 million people across the globe -more than died in World War I combat. But no one took it seriously at the beginning, because it was just flu, and few of the people who contracted it died. That's why it was able to spread so fast and so far. It was called Spanish flu, but it probably originated in the United States. After the fact, the outbreak was traced to Haskell County, Kansas, where many people became sick in January of 1918. The local doctor reported the outbreak, which meant it particularly worried him, since influenza was not a reportable disease.
Several Haskell men who had been exposed to influenza went to Camp Funston, in central Kansas. Days later, on March 4, the first soldier known to have influenza reported ill. The huge Army base was training men for combat in World War I, and within two weeks 1,100 soldiers were admitted to the hospital, with thousands more sick in barracks. Thirty-eight died. Then, infected soldiers likely carried influenza from Funston to other Army camps in the States—24 of 36 large camps had outbreaks—sickening tens of thousands, before carrying the disease overseas. Meanwhile, the disease spread into U.S. civilian communities.
The influenza virus mutates rapidly, changing enough that the human immune system has difficulty recognizing and attacking it even from one season to the next. A pandemic occurs when an entirely new and virulent influenza virus, which the immune system has not previously seen, enters the population and spreads worldwide. Ordinary seasonal influenza viruses normally bind only to cells in the upper respiratory tract—the nose and throat—which is why they transmit easily. The 1918 pandemic virus infected cells in the upper respiratory tract, transmitting easily, but also deep in the lungs, damaging tissue and often leading to viral as well as bacterial pneumonias.
The flu ravaged Europe, then abated in July, leading to a false sense that it was over. When it roared back, it was deadlier than ever. The disease was exacerbated in the US, where government officials refused to acknowledge it, fearing it would hinder the war effort. The lack of information only fueled panic. Smithsonian magazine tells us about the spread of the 1918 flu pandemic.

Four Things That Haven't Died Out …Yet

SHAKERS
What was it? An 18th-century offshoot of the Quakers. The communalistic religious community believed in celibacy and held weekly dances to “shake” out the lust.
Where is it now? New members were last admitted in 1957. Today, there are three surviving Shakers,
all of whom live in Maine. At their age, though, there’s probably not a whole lot of shakin’ going on.
Proximity to death? Unless woodworking and abstinence become popular pastimes again, they’re in
trouble. But who knows? Knitting came back.
Reason to keep it alive. Shakers invented the circular saw, the flat broom, and the clothespin. With any luck, the next generation will handcraft a line of simple yet functional jet packs!
SMALLPOX
What was it? Smallpox caused hundreds of millions of deaths during the 20th century. Worse still, it managed to infect -but not kill- a young Josef Stalin.
Where is it now? After being eradicated from humans in 1980, the virus lives on only in cultures stored in U.S. and Russian laboratories.
Proximity to death? Viral samples can stay frozen for decades.
Reason to keep it alive. Should the disease somehow enter the general population again, it may
be helpful in creating new vaccines.
THE IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER
What was it? The cousin of the pileated woodpecker that once thrived throughout the American South. It was so beautiful, it was called the Lord God Bird.
Where is it now? The bird was believed extinct for several decades due to deforestation. How-
ever, at least one male was sighted in 2004 and 2005 in Arkansas.
Proximity to death? We’re not biologists, but we’d be surprised if a lone male woodpecker managed to produce offspring.
Reason to keep it alive. Noah would’ve wanted it that way.
PUBLIC SCHOOL PADDLING
What was it? The biblically endorsed way not to spoil a child
Where is it now? Wooden paddle spankings are still legal in 19 American states. (For the record, you’re most likely to be paddled in Alabama.)
Proximity to death? In 2003, an average of 1,350 school paddlings occurred nationwide per day.
Reason to keep it alive.  Studies have shown it’s completely ineffective for child-rearing, though it might be good practice for when little Jimmy pledges Kappa Sigma Rho.