Welcome to ...

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.


Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Daily Drift

Amazing isn't it ...

Carolina Naturally is read in 195 countries around the world daily.
 
Damn, Straght ... !
Today is - (There is no special celebration today) Day


Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Pikangikum, Byward Market, Barrie, Vancouver, Sioux Lookout, Thunder Bay, Templeton and Edmonton, Canada
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Manta, Ecuador
Tipitapa, Nicaragua
Port-Of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
Mattoon, Alamosa, Macomb, Mishawaka, Kopperl, Dekalb, Gowrie, Buechel, Massillon, Pensacola and Coplay, United States
San Jose, Costa Rica
Lima, Peru
Europe
Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona and Teo, Spain
Ivrea and Cagliari, Italy
Langenfelde, Alstadt, Berlin, Hanau Am Main and Koeln, Germany
Rouen, Salon-De-Provence, Boulogne-Billancourt and Paris, France
Kiev and Zhovti Vody, Ukraine
Bratislava, Slovakia
Ryazan, Vladivostok, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia
Dublin, Irelan
Poznan, Bialystok, Warsaw, Gdynia and Krakow, Poland
Ostrava, Czech Republic
Athens, Greece
Helsinki, Finland
Skopje, Macedonia
Keflavik, Iceland
Copenhagen, Denmark
Gosport, Caddington and London, England
Minsk, Belarus
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Zurich, Switzerland
Ruse, Sofia, Varna and Burgas, Bulgaria
Oslo, Norway
Riga, Latvia
Stockholm, Sweden
Asia 
Riyadh and Ad Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Netanya, Israel
Kolkata, Bahadurgarh, Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, Bangalore, Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi, India
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan
Bandarlampung, Jakarta, Malang and Surabaya, Indonesia
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Beijing, China
Tokyo and Tsukuba, Japan
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Karaj, Varamin, Iran
Gaza, Palestine
Kuching, Sandakan and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Africa 
Cairo, Alexandria and Al Jizah, Egypt
Nsawam, Ghana
Lagos, Nigeria
Nairobi, Kenya
Tripoli, Libya
Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa
Pacific
Surrey Hills, Homebush, Brisbane and Sydney, Australia
Sampaloc and Quezon City, Philippines

Today in History

1760 Cherokee Indians held hostage at Fort St. George are killed in revenge for Indian attacks on frontier settlements.
1804 US Navy lieutenant Steven Decatur leads a small group of sailors into Tripoli harbor and burns the USS Philadelphia, captured earlier by Barbary pirates.
1862 Fort Donelson, Tennessee, falls to Grant's Federal forces, but not before Nathan Bedford Forrest escapes.
1865 Columbia, South Carolina, surrenders to Federal troops.
1923 Bessie Smith makes her first recording "Down Hearted Blues."
1934 Thousands of Socialists battle Communists at a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden.
1937 Dupont patents a new thread, nylon, which will replace silk in a number of products and reduce costs.
1940 The British destroyer HMS Cossack rescues British seamen from a German prison ship, the Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
1942 Tojo outlines Japan's war aims to the Diet, referring to "new order of coexistence" in East Asia.
1945 American paratroopers land on Corregidor, in a campaign to liberate the Philippines.
1951 Stalin contends the U.N. is becoming the weapon of aggressive war.
1952 The FBI arrests 10 members of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina.
1957 A U.S. flag flies over an outpost in Wilkes Land, Antarctica.
1959 Fidel Castro takes the oath as Cuban premier in Havana.
1965 Four persons are held in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument.
1966 The World Council of Churches being held in Geneva, urges immediate peace in Vietnam.
1978 China and Japan sign a $20 billion trade pact, which is the most important move since the 1972 resumption of diplomatic ties.

Non Sequitur

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Americans really don't care for Russia, Putin

By Dylan Stableford 
As the eyes of the world are trained on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, America's view of the host country has hit a two-decade low. According to a new Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans view Russia unfavorably — the most in the 20-year history of the poll — while 63 percent feel the same way about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The results reflect Americans' disgust with Russia's involvement in the Syrian civil war, its granting asylum to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, its restriction of gay and lesbian civil rights, the threat of terrorism at the Olympics and reports of substandard conditions in Sochi (as documented by the Twitter hashtag #SochiProblems), Gallup said.
The results are also not so surprising. Last fall, a Gallup poll found more Americans viewed Russia as "an enemy" than an ally for the first time in 15 years.
And Putin's unfavorability among Americans has jumped nearly 10 percent since September, when he criticized President Barack Obama in an op-ed for the New York Times, saying Obama's remarks about American exceptionalism were "extremely dangerous." At the time, 54 percent of Americans viewed Putin unfavorably, while just 19 percent had a favorable opinion of him.
And it's not just the U.S. pooh-poohing Putin. According to Gallup, Putin's popularity was waning among Russians even before the Olympics started.
A 2013 poll found that Putin's job approval rating (54 percent) was 29 points lower than the approval rating he received at the end in 2008.

Did you know ...

About outsourcing probation: a profitable industry

That birth control pills should be sold over the counter

That half of the nation's uninsured live in just 116 counties

That the LA Times goes easy on suspects with a badge when reporting rape cases

No firing for LAPD officers who shot up innocent woman's car

When cop-killer Christopher Dorner went on the run, the LAPD went on the rampage. One of its victims was an elderly woman, hit twice when officers fired more than 100 shots at her (despite her truck looking nothing like Dorner's), and a friend in the same vehicle who was hit by flying glass. The officers will not be punished, and they remain anonymous, reports The Wire.
The officers faced suspension or even firing, but police chief Charlie Beck elected instead to let them all return to duty once they undergo some additional training, according to a memo obtained by the AP. The officers have not been named, so you'll probably never know if the guy writing your speeding ticket once shot at an innocent senior citizen.
All that's left to do, then, is hope that the "additional training" won't involve being trained to shoot straight.

Jail for woman who cancelled brother's wedding because she didn't like his bride-to-be

A woman who cancelled her brother's wedding because she did not like his bride-to-be has been jailed for eight weeks. Ann Duffy, of Plymouth, was also issued an indefinite restraining order against her brother's wife. The 50-year-old had previously admitted harassment without violence.
Duffy impersonated her now sister-in-law Sandra in a phone call to Plymouth Register Office to tell them to cancel the ceremony. She made the call on 5 November, 20 days before the wedding was due to go ahead. The court heard she called her brother David Greatrex and told him: "You had better put this on speakerphone. I have saved you from a divorce. I have cancelled your wedding. Would you like me to send you the confirmation email?"
The couple contacted the police to say Duffy had impersonated Sandra and called off the ceremony. Prosecutor Will Rose said: "It is like a lift from an EastEnders' plot line, but it was the sad reality that confronted the complainants in this case." He said it was "a cruel and vindictive act which left the couple distressed and distraught". They were able to reinstate the wedding, which went ahead on the chosen day.

In a police interview, Duffy admitted she had a strained relationship with her sister-in-law who was looking after her mother. She said she was trying to protect her brother from a marriage to someone she disliked and who she felt was taking away her mother. Duffy said she only wanted to cause Sandra distress, not her brother. Miss Rebecca Wood, mitigating, said: "She does not like her sister-in-law and there are ongoing issues between them. It is not an excuse. She intended to cause inconvenience and upset." Magistrate Graham Price said: "It was a planned, deliberate, spiteful and vindictive offense."

Man arrested for trying to rob clothes store after being recognized as he's a loyalty card holder

A man was arrested when shop staff at the designer clothes store he tried to rob recognized him - as he was a loyalty card holder. Nathan Hirst, 24, spent the day downing pints before going into Frank Bird’s designer menswear store in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and threatening a 64-year-old shop assistant.

Leeds Crown Court heard the assistant was cashing-up the till around 5.30pm on December 10 last year when Hirst walked in and asked to try on some jeans. He returned with three pairs of jeans and Hirst told him he was going to take them without paying. Hirst then told the assistant that he had two options - either to let him leave with two bags full of clothes or give him cash from the till.
Hirst told the shop assistant he “wouldn’t be going home” unless he accepted his demands.The shop’s general manager then arrived and Hirst demanded “protection money” to prevent the shop from “being targeted by Romanians”. Hirst then left empty handed. The court heard Hirst was slurring his words and appeared to be under the influence of drink or drugs at the time.

Hirst, of Wakefield, was arrested after he was recognized as being a loyalty card customer. He told officers he had been drinking since 9am that day. He said he could recall having an argument in the shop but little else. He pleaded guilty to attempted robbery. Hirst was given a 15-month sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work.

Woman may face charges after underarm pepper spray mix-up in nightclub toilets

A German woman who mistook her pepper spray for deodorant and doused herself with it in a nightclub toilet, injuring two women and forcing the club to evacuate, could face negligent bodily harm charges.

The 20-year-old woman had nipped into the Bavarian club's toilets to freshen up late on Monday night. She reached into her friend's bag for her deodorant, but instead pulled out a canister of pepper spray.
Würzburg police said the woman knew her friend had the deodorant but did not think to check whether it was pepper spray, before letting loose on her armpits. It immediately became clear that the spray was not what she thought though, and the irritant gas spread out into the rest of the disco.

Two women sustained eye injuries and had to be given medical treatment. Staff cleared the club as quickly as they could, and police confirmed that it remained shut until the gas had cleared. Police have opened an investigation to see whether the young woman should be charged with negligent bodily harm.

Man asked for ‘pleH’ after getting trapped overnight in police car he'd sneaked into

A police officer in Portland, Oregon was surprised to find a man locked in the back seat of an unattended patrol car early on Tuesday morning.

Shortly before 8am an officer working out of Southeast Precinct heard someone yelling from the backseat of an unattended patrol car, parked in the lot. The officer opened the back door of the patrol car and found, 30-year-old Ruben James Turner III, who told the officer that he'd accidentally locked himself inside the back of the police car after deciding to sleep in the car, which had apparently been left unlocked.
Prior to getting himself locked in the backseat, which is the secure custody section of the vehicle, Turner rummaged through the vehicle's glove box and unhooked the Mobile Data Computer (MDC) from the mount. However, once Turner got himself tucked in to the back seat, he was locked in the vehicle. Turner caused extensive damage to the rear of the patrol car by ripping out foam padding from the headliner and around the plastic seats.

In an attempt to summon assistance, Turner wrote "pleH" (Help) with his finger in the condensation on a window. Turner was unaware that Southeast Precinct is not staffed 24 hours a day and nobody was around to help him until the next morning. Turner was arrested and booked into the Multnomah County Jail on charges of Criminal Mischief in the First Degree, Unlawful Entry into a Motor Vehicle and Criminal Trespass in the Second Degree.

Couple fined $500,000 after trying to get neighbor declared insane in fight over 12" strip of land

 
A couple in England waged a "troubling and sinister" five-year campaign against a neighbor, reports the Express newspaper—all over a tiny 12-inch path by their properties in a delightful Kent village.
Banker Peter Bayliss and wife Kim even tried to get Sarah Saxton committed to hospital under Britain's mental health laws, after the elderly woman refused to let them extend their yard into the shared right-of-way. In one incident, Saxton was “violently grabbed and shaken by her neighbor” when she attempted to use it herself.
The Baylisses now face a judgment of £338,000 (almost $500,000) imposed by a judge, who lamented the "sheer awfulness" of their conduct.

The Truth About Numbers … bible Math!

IN WHICH we learn that the TRUTH about numbers is in the bible, not in a “theory” of mathematics
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Books rate more negatively after winning award



Looking for a good book? Stay away from the award-winning […]

Activism Changes Subway's Bread

The fast-food chain Subway has agreed to remove a chemical from its bread, based on concerns from a blogger. But is it danger or hype?

Beauty Not Disease Motivates Teens to Wear Sunscreen



After offering information about UV light and sun-protective behaviors, the […]

Sedation before nerve block increases risk, not pain relief




New research suggests that sedating patients before a nerve block […]

Ziggy

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Burano

Italy's Technicolor Town

Burano is an island in the Venetian Lagoon in northern Italy. Long ago, the fishermen of the island of Burano decided to paint their houses with bright colors so that while coming back home they can easily distinguish them through thick fog. The result is a cheery rainbow-colored town bursting with charm, culture and history.

Prehistoric Boy May Be Native American 'Missing Link'

A prehistoric boy's DNA now suggests that ancient toolmakers long thought of as the first Americans may serve as a kind of "missing link" between Native Americans and the rest of the world, researchers say.
The findings reveal these prehistoric toolmakers are the direct ancestors of many contemporary Native Americans, and are closely related to all Native Americans.
Scientists investigated a prehistoric culture known as the Clovis, named after sites discovered near Clovis, N.M. Centuries of cold, nicknamed the "Big Freeze," helped wipe out the Clovis, as well as most of the large mammals in North America. The artifacts of the Clovis are found south of the giant ice sheets that once covered Canada, in most of North America, though not in South America.
The stone tools of the Clovis, such as distinctive fluted or grooved spear points, date to about 12,600 to 13,000 years ago, making them the oldest widespread set of artifacts in North America. For most of the past 50 years, archaeologists thought the Clovis were the first Americans, but investigators recently uncovered evidence that humans were in the New World before Clovis, at least more than 14,000 years ago.
Researchers focused on bones unearthed by construction next to a rock cliff on the land of the Anzick family in central Montana.
"I was just a small child in 1968 when the only Clovis burial site was identified accidentally on my parents' property in Wilsall, Montana,"study co-author Sarah Anzick  at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., told Live Science.
Anzick boy
The so-called Anzick skeleton was found with about 125 artifacts, including Clovis fluted spear points and tools made from antlers, and covered in red ochre, a type of mineral.
"This is the oldest burial in North America, and the only known Clovis burial,"study co-author Michael Waters at Texas A&M University in College Station told Live Science.
"Genetic studies tell us these were the remains of a boy," Waters said. "Physical anthropological studies tell us he was 1 to 1.5 years old, and radiocarbon dating tells us this burial took place about 12,600 years ago, at the end of the Clovis era." It remains uncertain how this child died.
The scientists analyzed DNA from the bones. They managed to recover the first complete genome sequence of an ancient North American, despite how badly preserved the DNA in the remains were.
"We found the genome of this boy is closely related to all Native Americans of today than to any other peoples around the world," study co-author Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark told Live Science. "We can also see from the genome study that this Anzick population is the direct ancestor to many Native Americans to date. As such, our study is in agreement with the view that present-day Native Americans are direct descendants of the first peoples in the Americas."
Shane Doyle, study co-author at Montana State University, said, "I feel like this discovery confirms what tribes never really doubted — that we've been here since time immemorial and that all of the artifacts in the ground are remnants of our direct ancestors."
It was surprising that the Anzick lineage "is directly ancestral to so many peoples in the Americas," Willerslev said. "We don't have genetic information by any means from all tribes, but a very, very broad estimate suggests 80 percent derives from the Anzick group, which is an amazing result — almost like a missing link, if you want."
The first Clovis
The origin of the Clovis was uncertain. Although it was generally believed the Clovis ultimately derived from Asia, others suggested the ancestors of the Clovis actually may have come from southwestern Europe between 21,000 and 17,000 years ago, the so-called "Solutrean hypothesis."
This new research "has settled the long-standing debate about the origins of the Clovis," Willerslev said. "We can say the Solutrean theory suggesting Clovis originated from people in Europe doesn't fit our results."
These genetic findings "seem to fit quite nicely with an early occupation of the Americas about 2,000 years before the onset of Clovis," Waters said. "If you look at credible evidence for the peopling of the Americas, most date from a period 15,000 to 14,500 years ago," although "there are claims of occupation 20,000 to 30,000 years ago."
The scientists also discovered evidence of a deep genetic divergence that occurred between northern Native American groups and those from Central and South America that happened before the Clovis era. Specifically, although most South Americans and Mexicans are part of the Anzick lineage and therefore Clovis, northern Canadian groups belong to another lineage.
Intriguingly, while the Anzick skeleton dates back 12,600 years to the twilight of the Clovis era, the antler tools date back about 13,000 years to the dawn of the Clovis era. In addition, "genetic work shows the antler tools were made of elk, a rare animal in the plains at that time," Waters said. The difference in age between the skeleton and the antler tools, as well as the fact that the antlers were from a rare animal, suggest the antler tools were "very special ritual objects passed down for generations."
The remains will be reburied.
"We're excited and honored to work with the tribes and plan a reburial ceremony to lay this child to rest with the respect such an important part of human history deserves," Anzick said. The ceremony is planned for late spring or early summer of this year.
"The genetic information provided by the Anzick boy is part of the larger story of modern humans," Waters said. "We know that modern humans originated in Africa and 50,000 years ago spread rapidly over Europe and Asia. The last continents to be explored and settled by modern humans were the Americas. In essence, the Anzick boy tells us about the epic journey of our species."
The scientists detailed their findings in the Feb. 13 issue of the journal Nature.

What's climate change ruining now?

The Winter Olympics. If emissions of carbon dioxide continue at current levels the resulting warming will quickly start to cut down on the number of places that can host the games — even with expensive snow machines like the ones used in Sochi. By midcentury, nine sites that have previously hosted winter games would be too warm. And by 2080 another four would be out of the cool runnings.

What's climate change improving now?

Glacier archaeology. Researchers are finding all kinds of things in the beds left by retreating glaciers — both ancient artifacts and much more recent remains. A 1979 missing person case was recently solved when the body of a vanished mountain climber turned up on the north face of the Matterhorn.

Ancient settlements and modern cities follow same rules of development



Recently derived equations that describe development patterns in modern urban […]

How evolution enables humans to live in the mountains

Tibetans are physiologically adapted to living at high altitudes and those adaptations are probably 30,000 years old.

Dizzy earthlings

Just a friendly reminder: Right now, you are spinning at a rate of 1,040 miles/hour. (At the equator. You spin a bit slower the closer you get to a pole.)

Daily Comic Relief

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A tender hug goodbye between Jane Goodall and a chimp she helped save

by Mike Krumboltz
If you love something, let it go. A cliche, sure, but one that sums up this incredible video of legendary animal activist Jane Goodall saying goodbye to Wounda, a chimp she help save and return to health, just before sending the beast back into the wild.
The moment was captured on video, and even the most cynical are likely to be moved by the footage. When Goodall, who turns 80 in April, and her co-workers open the door of Wounda's cage, the chimp quickly exits and then looks around at her surroundings with what seems like an awed expression.
Before setting off for new adventures, Wounda (whose name means "close to death") reached out to  Goodall and they share a tender hug. The final goodbye took place in June of 2013, but the footage is now going viral.
The pair have a long history, according to an explainer on the Goodall Institute's site. Wounda was found when she was near death in the Congo. She was taken to the institute's Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center.
Goodall and her team worked with Wounda for years, getting the chimp back to full health. And then, finally, Wounda was released onto Tchindzoulou Island, one of three islands that are part of the chimpanzee sanctuary.
In a recent speech, Goodall, who first began studying chimpanzees in 1960, said, "There's no really sharp line dividing us from the rest of the animal kingdom."

Identifying Bats By Sound



Following White-Nose Syndrome, Acoustic Method Best for Sampling Bats Recording […]

Why do moths head towards the light?

The standard answer is that moths aren't attracted to bright lights, they're confused by them. Many species of moths migrate and they use the Moon as a navigational cue. Then, humans come along with artificial lights, which appear brighter than the Moon and those become the moths' point of reference, instead. By this theory, the moths don't even mean to end up at the light. They're just trying to maintain a constant angle of flight relative to it. But, because they keep getting closer, that angle keeps changing until, BAM!, they run into their artificial moon.
Trouble is, there are a lot of holes in that theory. Not all the moths that are attracted to lights are migratory, for one thing. For another, there are studies showing moths beelining for the light, rather than spiraling towards it, as you'd expect if the effect could be explained by navigational error. So why head towards the light? Other theories include: An attempt to get a better look at the surrounding area for places to hide from predators; a case of mistaken identity where male moths confuse the spectrum of light for that produced by female moth pheromones; and a different case of mistaken identity where the moths confuse artificial light for night-blooming flowers. All those theories have holes, though. So the ultimate answer seems to be that we still don't know why moths head towards the light. Maybe you can do the research and figure it out.

Animal News

Wildlife attacks have been on the rise in some parts of the world.
Our quest for cute dogs has resulted in an unimaginably painful condition that changes how the brains of tiny dogs grow.
A fossil freezes in time the moment when a reptile that lived before dinosaurs gave birth.

Animal Pictures