The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:
You're may not be sure whether those glances coming from across the room are professional, romantic or friendly curiosity -- but it doesn't matter for now, because you're having a great time playing catch with them.
If you're already partnered, make sure that they're either unaware or that their trust in you in deep enough that they don't mind watching.
If not, ready a Plan B.

Some of our readers today have been in:

Vicenza, Veneto, Italy

London, England, United Kingdom

Kassel, Hessen, Germany

Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain

Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil

Bremen, Bremen, Germany

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

as well as Scotland, Poland, Wales and in cities across the United States such as San Diego, Scranton, Toledo, Billings and more.

Today is:

Today is Sunday, August 29, the 241st day of 2010.

There are 124 days left in the year.

Today In History August 29

Today's unusual holidays or celebrations are:

According To Hoyle Day

and

Less Salt, More Herbs Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

The Errand

Be careful what you tell a husband who is a programmer

A woman asks her husband, a programmer, to go shopping:

"Dear, please, go to the nearby grocery store to buy some bread. Also, if they have eggs, buy a dozen."

"OK, hun."

Twenty minutes later the husband comes back bringing 12 loaves of bread.

His wife is flabbergasted.

"Dear, why on earth did you buy a dozen loaves of bread?"

"They had eggs."

Not a morning person

Just think how I look BEFORE my first cup!

Expedition Titanic

Expedition Titanic is a free website that lets you explore and watch Titanic wreckage footage entirely through your web browser. You are virtually taken deep into the sea and the site of the wreckage is loaded up.

You can see a scale diagram of the wreckage. You can view the distances from the main ship to where its stern section and other parts are located. Photos and videos are also available in the virtual explorer, along with informative details on the wreckage that covers important topics such as bio-deterioration, plant and animal life, etc.

In The Land Of The Dogon

image credit

In the Mopti region of Mali a group of people, numbering less than a million, retain a unique cultural and architectural heritage which they have enjoyed for hundreds of years.

To outsiders their way of life, and certainly their buildings seem odd, bordering perhaps on the bizarre. Yet for the Dogon, isolated on their plateau, society and architecture evolved in a unique manner.

Shoe

Brother Can You Spare Dime

They used to tell me I was building a dream
So I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear
I was always there, right on the job.

They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting ... for bread?

Once I built a railroad, made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done,
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower to the sun
Brick, mortar and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done,
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee-doodle-dee-dum.
Half a million boots went marching through hell,
And I was a kid with a drum....

Brother, can you spare a dime?

When this was written, the "railroad racing against time" and "tower to the sun" (New York skyscrapers) were the bee's knees, the biggest and brightest that Money could produce with small people's labor. Then the small people were cast aside.

Tough times; it's not just for "those people" any more.

Call Centers Return to US Homes

Remember those call center jobs that corporate America outsourced to the Philippines and India a few years ago?

Well, they’re baaaack!

For years, Americans have had their phone calls about credit card bills and broken cell phones handled by people in the Philippines or India. But American firms are starting to bring call centers back to the U.S. — and this time around, they are hiring more people to work in their own homes.
Ten years ago, it made a lot of sense to outsource these jobs overseas. But that’s changing. Increasingly, companies that want to outsource their customer service jobs are happy with these domestic arrangements.
High inflation and double-digit annual raises in some sectors are pushing up the cost of labor in India. At the same time wages in the U.S. are falling and companies are rethinking the trade-offs associated with outsourcing.

Full Story

Non Sequitur

Horde of Vikings Attack Los Angeles

Forget pirates and ninjas, there’s a new meme in town. Here’s the Norse Hollywood Dining Viking, a group of marauding vikings who raid local restaurants, other guests be damned!

The leader of this roving band of meal-seeking marauders is Tony Swatton, who, by day, is a master blacksmith and the designer of custom-made weapons, armor and other props for television and film. [...]
Swatton says it’s great fun watching the crowd’s reaction to a horde of costumed vikings showing up, but the reaction they will get in Oktoberfest will probably pale in comparison to the reaction they got from IKEA employees during a recent visit.
"We got a group of nine vikings to go there for the Swedish meatballs," he said. "At one point, the security guards came up and asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ We said, ‘We’re from the home office in Sweden.’ They didn’t know how to react."

The downside of dressing up as vikings?

"Thanks to those Capital One ads, we can’t go anywhere without people yelling, ‘What’s in your wallet!’" he laughed.

Full Story

The 10 Greatest Fictional Inventors of All Time

Wouldn’t you love to know someone like the inventors in our movies and books -someone who can come up with gadgets, materials, and machines to solve your problems? Of course, in some stories inventors cause the problem themselves! Gizmodo takes a look at these geniuses from movies, TV, and literature and why we love them.

One of these geniuses is Doc Brown from Back to the Future, who invented

The flux capacitor, the core component of a machine that allowed Brown to travel through time. Brown came up with the idea of the capacitor on November 5, 1955, and worked tirelessly for the next 30 years developing it into a working time machine. The capacitor, which requires 1.21 Gigawatts of electrical power to function, was first implemented in a customized DeLorean and later, or maybe earlier?, in a 19th century train.

Full Story

Light Show

A light show projected on a building in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Aw, com'on watch it ... you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Two Times Unlucky

Miner's family stricken again with disaster

After surviving a devastating quake in Chile, Carola Narvaez's husband headed north to find work.  

Among 33 trapped 

Also: 

• High-tech rescue methods
• NASA mental health advice
• Find: How mines work

97-year-old woman's pet cat saves her from attacking pit bulls

It’s a modern day story of David and Goliath. A 97-year old woman, surrounded by a pack of dogs, is saved by an unlikely hero, her cat named Tiger. Sophie Thomas was pulling dandelions out of her garden when the unexpected happened.

Thomas says, “All of a sudden these four pitbulls came marching in and they surrounded me. They kept going around and around. One of them kind of lunged for me and I hit him on the head and he backed off. Then another came towards me and I was scared stiff. I gave him a wack. All of a sudden, my cat jumped in the middle of it." The cat ran towards the garage and the dogs chased after giving Ms. Thomas just enough time to run inside.

Fearing the worse for her pet, she waited, and washed her wounds in the sink. That’s when she spotted Tiger at the door. Thinking back she says she owes the cat her life. Thomas says, "I always thank God that my cat came because she was the one that really helped me out." The pit bulls live behind Ms. Thomas’s home. The owner, Ann Daniels, says it’s all an accident and says her dogs aren’t violent.

She has several broken windows and doors at her home and claims she will fix them soon so that something like this doesn't happen again. Daniels says “My son didn't shut the bedroom door and they went out the window. I feel terrible." Daniels has been fined $300 and the dogs must be quarantined for ten days.

Wizard of Id

Soccer moms trade blows at awards ceremony

Two Australian soccer mums were called into court after brawling over who was to blame for a grand final loss at their daughters' awards ceremony. Vickie Jovanovski and Angela Tasevski - whose 11-year-old daughters played on the same team - were hauled into court over the assault, which happened in front of a room full of children.

The women began arguing about who was to blame for the loss in a junior soccer league final held about an hour south of Sydney, when they got into a physical fight. Witnesses said Tasevski shoved Jovanovski, who in turn pulled the other woman's hair.

The women's husbands tried to break them up but ended up throwing punches as well, the court heard. Ms Tasevski also allegedly lost several clumps of hair in the fight last September. Judge Ian Guy found Jovanovski guilty of assault but did not sentence her to jail, though he did criticise both women.

"I accept there was an element of provocation that led you to behave the way you did, [but] to get to the level that there is an all-in brawl ... what message does that send in terms of good behaviour to young people? It ruined the day for all concerned, I'm sure," he said.

Man poses as a teenager at school

A 21-year-old man with a criminal record has been accused of posing as a teenager, enrolling in a school in the US, and playing in a football league for five to 14-year-olds. Julious Threatts has been charged with one count of trespassing on school grounds, and one count of "obstruction by disguised person" and violation of probation in Florida.

Threatts played in a season opening game in the Tampa Bay Youth Football League after allegedly turning in a birth certificate, registration form and a guardian's signature to the league stating he was just 14. But league officials now believe he faked all the documentation.

The authorities were tipped off to the fraud by a phone call from the West Coast Children's Football League - where Threatts had also allegedly played ball. "Obviously it was a well-thought out plot, because he's done it to other leagues, previously," Scott Levinson, Tampa Bay Youth Football League president, said.

Coaches say Threatts convinced them and other players he was a teenager - and even his athletic ability failed to give him away, they said. According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Threatts had enrolled in Webb Middle School as 14-year-old Chad Johnson. The motive for Threatts offending was not clear, authorities said, but he was being held in the Hillsborough County Jail on no bond.

B.C.