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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.


Saturday, September 23, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
The Truth Hurts ...!
 
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Today in HIstory

1553
The Sadians defeat the last of their enemies and establish themselves as rulers of Morocco.
1561
Philip II of Spain gives orders to halt colonizing efforts in Florida.
1577
William of Orange makes his triumphant entry into Brussels, Belgium.
1667
Slaves in Virginia are banned from obtaining their freedom by converting to Christianity.
1739
The Austrians sign the Treaty of Belgrade after having lost the city to the Turks.
1779
The American navy under John Paul Jones, commanding from Bonhomme Richard, defeats and captures the British man-of-war Serapis.
1788
Louis XVI of France declares the Parliament restored.
1795
A national plebiscite approves the new French constitution, but so many voters abstain that the results are suspect.
1803
British Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley defeats the Marathas at Assaye, India.
1805
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike pays $2,000 to buy from the Sioux a 9-square-mile tract at the mouth of the Minnesota River that will be used to establish a military post, Fort Snelling.
1806
The Lewis and Clark Expedition arrives back in St. Louis just over three years after its departure.
1864
Confederate and Union forces clash at Mount Jackson, Front Royal and Woodstock in Virginia during the Valley campaign.
1911
The Second International Aviation Meet opens in New York.
1912
Mack Sennett’s first “Keystone Cops” film debuts, Cohen Collects a Debt.
1945
The first American dies in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon to French forces.
1952
Nixon responds to charges of a secret slush fund during his ‘Checkers Speech.’
1954
East German police arrest 400 citizens as U.S. spies.
1967
The Soviets sign a pact to send more aid to Hanoi.
1973
Juan Peron is re-elected president of Argentina after being overthrown in 1955.
1983
Gerrie Coetzee (Gerhardus Coetzee), a boxer from South Africa becomes the first boxer from the African continent to win a world heavyweight tittle (World Boxing Association).
1983
Gulf Air Flight 771 from Karachi, Pakistan, to Abu Dhabi, UAE, bombed; all 117 aboard die.
1992
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonates 3,700-lb bomb in Belfast, completely destroying the Northern Ireland forensic laboratory, injuring 20 people and damaging 700 houses.
2002
The first public version of the Mozilla Firefox browser is released; originally called Phoenix 0.1 its name was changed due to trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies.
2004
Hurricane Jeanne causes severe flooding in Haiti; over 1,000 are reported dead.

Why Is America Losing Ground in the Contest to Grow the World’s Biggest Pumpkin?

Pumpkin is an iconic American food, as much as turkey, corn, and cranberries. Since the early European settlers first saw the squash, we've been trying to grow larger and larger pumpkins. The first world record pumpkin weighed 400 pounds in 1900. In recent years, they've surpassed a ton. But the current world record pumpkin was grown in Brussels, Belgium, last year. It weighed 2,624.6 pounds! How did Americans lose the title?
Yet for two out of the last three years, the world’s largest pumpkins have sprung up in Europe. “They’re doing very well, and I tip my hat to them,” says Ron Wallace, a country club manager in Greene, Rhode Island, who was paraded on the shoulders of jubilant pumpkin growers one glorious day in 2006 after his squash became the world’s first to break 1,500 pounds. Today, pumpkin growers are gaining on 3,000 pounds, but the Belgians, Swiss and British are in the lead.
Well, see, there was this American soldier stationed in Germany, and… an article at Smithsonian magazine looks at how the fascination with record-setting pumpkins spread to Europe.

The Bizarre Case of New Zealand’s Exploding Pants

New Zealand farmers hate the invasive weed known as ragwort, as it is poison to horses and cattle. The old method of using sheep and goats to clear it no longer worked during an infestation in the 1930s. Luckily, modern technology provided farmers with a new miracle herbicide that eliminated ragwort. The problem was that it was new, and that meant it came with unintended consequences, like exploding pants.
One of the earliest cases of exploding pants, and the one most closely associated with the phenomenon, involved a farmer named Richard Buckley, who made the local news after some of his pants exploded in his house. After wearing them to spray the sodium chlorate, he hung them in front of the fire to dry out. Out of nowhere, his trousers exploded with a bang. According to a news report from the day, he was able to snag his now flaming pants and throw them out onto the grass where small explosions continued to erupt in the garment. Buckley was alarmed, but unharmed.
Around the same time, similar reports of spontaneously combusting pants began to appear, and not all of them were as harmless as Buckley’s. One report claimed that a farmer was riding his horse when the friction caused his pants to begin to smolder right there in the saddle. Another pair of pants were hanging out to dry when they suddenly burst into flames. Then there were the unfortunate souls who happened to be wearing their pants when the chemical reaction got started. Some survived with serious burns, while at least a handful of farmers died from the ignitions. One person, referenced in Watson’s paper, died after lighting a match in his electricity-free home, just trying to check on his baby.
Eventually the phenomena was connected with the herbicide, and steps were taken to prevent it from happening. During Pants Week at Atlas Obscura, we get to read the story of New Zealand's exploding pants.

What Is Erotic Ecology and Can It Help Save the Planet?

Universal Basic Income

Marijuana Is a Major Regulation Success Story

Florida ‘Teacher of the Year’ candidate allowed boy to lick girl’s breast during class

A Jacksonville, FL teacher was suspended without pay this week after he allowed students in his middle school classroom to play “Dirty Dare.”

When Stealing a $2 Can of Beer Yields $1,000 of Debt

Texas parents send 7-year-old packing because they think he’s ‘possessed by demons’

A Texas couple has been arrested on charges of child endangerment and abandonment and are out of jail on bond.
The Hooks parents Rendy and Ronald Keith Wright refused to allow their 7-year-old son to live in their house after he visited one of their neighbors. They informed the boy he was to leave and never return, the arrest affidavit revealed, according to KLTV News.

Texas parents risk deportation to get life-saving surgery for infant son

A Texas couple agreed to be arrested and deported if Border Patrol agents would allow them to take their 2-month-old son to a hospital for life-saving surgery.
Oscar and Irma Sanchez were faced with a paralyzing choice after their 2-month-old son, Isaac, was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis, which causes vomiting, dehydration and weight loss in infants, reported NPR.
The life-threatening condition is curable, but no hospital in the Rio Grande Valley had a pediatric surgery team who could perform the operation, so the family had to travel to Corpus Christi — and through a Border Patrol checkpoint.
“The nurse told us we had to go there,” said Oscar Sanchez, who, like his wife, is an undocumented immigrant. “We said we couldn’t go.”
A Border Patrol agent, who they believe was tipped off by a nurse, showed up as the couple weighed the risks of staying against the risks of traveling north.
The agent told the parents he would arrange for them to travel to Corpus Christi with an escort, but he said they would be arrested and put into deportation proceedings once they arrived.
The Sanchezes agreed.
Border Patrol agents followed an ambulance carrying baby Isaac, with an IV in his arm and a tube in his stomach, across Texas on May 24, and uniformed officers followed Oscar into the bathroom and stood guard as Irma breast-fed her infant son.
“Everywhere we went in the hospital, they followed us,” Oscar told NPR.
Agents took Oscar and Irma Sanchez into custody separately the following morning and booked them, so one of them always remained with Isaac, and they were both allowed to attend his surgery — which was covered under Medicaid because the baby is a U.S. citizen.
Immigrant right advocates are baffled by the treatment of the Sanchezes, who overstayed visitors visa issued 12 years ago but have no criminal record.
“That’s how you treat criminals that are harmful, and that’s understandable for our own protection,” said Ana Hinojosa, an advocate with the Mennonite Central Committee. “But they’re a family that’s just here trying to make a living, provide an education and a future for their children.”
Oscar Sanchez works landscaping and construction, and Irma stays home with their four children.
Advocates say the case shows how the Dumbass Trump junta is chipping away at places immigrants once considered to be safe, such as cults, hospitals and schools.
“They’re pushing the envelope to the point where they’re trying to find out how far they can go,” says Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), who is pushing a bill to keep immigrants safe from arrest in certain places. “It violates human decency — you don’t interrupt medical procedures.”

Medicaid Privatization Kills The Disabled: Iowa Edition

Pittsburgh cop caught on video violently slamming suspect's head onto the ground

A Pittsburgh police officer was caught on camera punching and slamming a suspect to the ground.

Beef Jerky Company Just Bit Off More Than It Can Chew

Beef Jerky Company Just Bit Off More Than It Can Chew With Direct Appeal To Nazis
This ad so blatantly racist that it’s loudly proclaimed in the opening sentence.

Houston man on the run after hate assault on Lyft driver

A Houston, TX man is wanted by police in connection with a racist assault on an Lyft driver, said The Houston Chronicle on Thursday.
Court records say that Matthew W. Dunn, 39, has been identified as the suspect who attacked a Middle Eastern Lyft driver during a ride on July 21. Dunn reportedly shouted obscenities and called the driver ethnic slurs because he believed the man was from Pakistan.

White supremacists rush to distance themselves from the ‘alt-right’ after Charlottesville

What’s the term used to designate followers of a far-right ideology that supports nationalism, opposes feminism and political correctness, and propagates conspiracy theories like “Pizzagate"?

Video Captures ICE Agents Harassing U.S. Citizens

All hell breaks loose at Michigan racism protest

A white man was arrested after a fight broke out during a protest at the University of Michigan, where black students have been targeted by racist vandalism and social media posts.

Fun with Mudskippers

Mudskippers are some really strange animals. They are amphibious fish, which is not a new division of taxonomy; it just means they are fish that can spend time out of the water. Mudskippers can breathe through their skin, and they have some strange mating habits, too. This video from the BBC explains. It gets really good at about a minute in, so make sure you don't have any liquid in your mouth when they start to dance.
They sometimes get into shouting matches with each other, too, as you can see here.  -via reddit

Animal Pictures