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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.


Sunday, September 27, 2015

The Daily Drift

Welcome to the Sunday Edition of  Carolina Naturally.
Our latest comment: 
Different in a good way.
~ Xinwen Po
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Today in History

1540 The society of jesus, a religious order under Ignatius Loyola, is approved by the pope.
1669 The island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea falls to the Ottoman Turks after a 21-year siege.
1791 Jews in France are granted French citizenship.
1864 Confederate guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson and his henchmen, including a teenage Jesse James, massacre 20 unarmed Union soldiers at Centralia, Missouri. The event becomes known as the Centralia Massacre.
1869 Wild Bill Hickok, sheriff of Hays City, Kan., shoots down Samuel Strawhim, a drunken teamster causing trouble.
1916 Constance of Greece declares war on Bulgaria.
1918 President Woodrow Wilson opens his fourth Liberty Loan campaign to support men and machines for World War I.
1920 Eight Chicago White Sox players are charged with fixing the 1919 World Series.
1939 Germany occupies Warsaw as Poland falls to Germany and the Soviet Union.
1942 Australian forces defeat the Japanese on New Guinea in the South Pacific.
1944 Thousands of British troops are killed as German forces rebuff their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.
1950 U.S. Army and Marine troops liberate Seoul, South Korea.
1956 The U.S. Air Force Bell X-2, the world’s fastest and highest-flying plane, crashes, killing the test pilot.
1964 The Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, issues its report, stating its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.
1979 US Congress approves Department of Education as the 13th agency in the US Cabinet.
1983 Sukhumi massacre: Abkhaz separatist forces and their allies commit widespread atrocities against the civilian population in the USSR state of Georgia.
1996 The Taliban capture Afghanistan’s capital city, Kabul.
2003 European Space Agency launches SMART-1 satellite to orbit the moon.
2007 NASA launches Dawn probe to explore and study the two larges objects of the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres.
2008 Shai Shigang becomes the first Chinese to walk in space; he was part of the Shenzhou 7 crew.

The Federal Government Can Now Punish Cities That Criminalize Homelessness

People From These 5 States Will Soon Need Passports to Fly Within the U.S.

No reason was given for why these states and regions were singled out.
Thanks to provisions in the little-known Real ID Act – passed in 2005 – five states will soon require a passport to fly even within the continental United States.
The Department of Homeland Security has named New York, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, American Samoa, and New Hampshire as locations where the residents will be required to use their passports to fly on commercial airplanes. Although there is no reason given for why these states and regions were singled out, it could possibly be because driver's licenses – the traditional form of identification used at airports – have to be compatible with Real ID requirements, and it's possible that the licenses in these states are not.
As an alternative, the Transportation Security Agency will accept Enhanced Driver's Licenses, which are used in some border states to allow travel to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean, but few Americans have them.

Microbe Cloud

At this very minute, you are emitting a personal microbial cloud that is uniquely yours and can exist in a room even after you leave.

Talking in your sleep ...

Ever hear someone talk in their sleep, or been told you do it yourself? Whether it's coherent sentences or babbling, it can be a bit nuts. What's going on? Wouldn't conversations be a lot better if you could be awake to have them?

The Beauty of Ugly Food

How Baltimore Plans To Fix Its Food Deserts

The Divestment Movement Has Grown 50-Fold In Just One Year

Privatizing the Apocalypse

Hopeful signs across the country as several corrupt and brutal officers get fired, forced to retire

Crumbs don't make a cake, but across the country some measure of progress is being felt in the fight against police brutality and racial injustice in law enforcement. Brutal and corrupt cops are finally being fired for their actions.This is just a start but it's a departure from the norm, in which officers have almost universally been able to keep their jobs—regardless of their actions. Make no mistake about it: In cities like New York, where the officers who killed Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, and others still have their jobs, progress is slow. But elsewhere, it's being felt.
First off, it needs to be said that losing your job is a ridiculously small price to pay for what many of these officers have done. Many of them should be in jail. Others were forced into retirement and received all of their benefits when they should've been unceremoniously fired, but they were removed from their jobs nonetheless. Ultimately, so much of what police do is done because they can get away with it without consequence. As we begin to see some consequences creep up, our fingers are crossed that it may, just perhaps, have some downstream preventative effect.
Small victories shouldn't be ignored. They build momentum to bigger ones. Here are a few of those small victories.
Years after he shot and killed Rekia Boyd, an unarmed Chicago woman who was committing no crime whatsoever, a Chicago board has finally recommended that Officer Dante Servin be fired. He should be in jail right now, but it was beginning to look like he was going to be able to completely escape all consequences for his awful actions.
The Seattle Police Department finally fired Officer Cynthia Whitlatch for her abusive arrest of an African-American senior citizen, who she falsely claimed swung a golf club at her. He was peacefully using it as a cane.

In Florida, Only 1 In 8 Of The Unemployed Get Benefits

Oklahoma teacher orders ‘evil’ 4-year-old to become a righty

Zayde Sands KFOR
An Oklahoma mother is furious after her son’s preschool teacher forced him to write with his right hand because she believes left-handers are “sinister.”

Pharma Company Forced To Backtrack After Suddenly Raising Drug’s Price 20-Fold

by Sam P.K. Collins
Amid outrage about sudden price hikes of specialty drugs, a company has reneged on its recent acquisition of a tuberculosis medication, a deal that would have increased the cost of the treatment more than 20-fold. Just three weeks after purchasing the rights to the drug, Rodelis Therapeutics has agreed to return the medication to the nonprofit that previously owned it.
The medicine, named Cycloserine, treats a form of tuberculosis that’s resistant to multiple drugs usually used to treat it — in other words, a serious form of the ailment. There are nearly 90 cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis annually in the United States.
Last week, Rodelis Therapeutics, the company at the center of the controversy, defended its decision to increase the price of the tuberculosis drug, saying it needed to invest and ensure the drug maintained its effectiveness. But the Purdue Research Foundation, the Indiana nonprofit that sold the drug to Rodelis, remained unconvinced, taking back Cycloserine on Monday.
“We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been undertaken [by Rodelis],” Dan Hasler, president of the Purdue Research Foundation, told the New York Times. “We said this was not what we had intended.”

This gun-toting anti-choice protester perfectly illustrates the fundamental defect in the anti-choice delusion

Dozens of panicked Tennesseans took to the streets carrying placards and handguns amid fears that Common Core is promoting islamic principles in public schools, but the wide-ranging nature of wingnut 'grievances' on display called to mind a famous exchange from the 1953 film, “The Wild Ones.”

‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli gouged kids with kidney disease before ripping off AIDS patients

Martin Shkreli at Key Biscayne, March 2015 (Twitter.com)
The former hedge funder who bought the rights to a lifesaving anti-toxoplasmosis drug, then jacked the price up 5,500 percent has executed this money-making maneuver before with a medicine for adults and children with kidney disease.

Alabama pastor facing charges for raping 9-year-old girl on father’s grave

Mack Charles Andrews, a pastor at the heavily wingnut united pentecostal cult is accused of raping “Jane,” a pseudonym to conceal the identity of the victim, along with multiple other minors.

This Will Probably Be The Biggest Supreme Court Term For Reproductive Rights Since Roe v. Wade

Transgender Woman Thrown Out Of Orlando Airport, Live Tweets Whole Experience

Transgender Woman Thrown Out Of Orlando Airport, Live Tweets Whole Experience (TWEETS)
This is despicable. Luckily, the victim of this humiliation and discrimination made sure the whole internet knows what the TSA did to her.

Misogynist Asshole Says Women Are Why We Get Human Flesh Steaks In Restaurants

Image via screen capture
This guy has a lot more than one single screw loose.
Read more 

It would be great if sex robots would take misogynists off the dating market, but it will never happen

FORBES-1-obit-articleLargeIt would be great if sex robots would take misogynists off the dating market, but it will never happen

Ohio man fired for pestering lesbian co-workers wants to ride the GoFundMe gravy train

Ohio man fired for pestering lesbian co-workers wants to ride the GoFundMe gravy train

U.S. Military Letting Afghan Allies Rape Boys On American Bases, So That’s Gross

Truly.Here’s a nice and horrifying story for you. The New York Times reports that in our completely necessary Freedom War in Afghanistan, the United States military has told soldiers and Marines to please ignore the fact that American-trained Afghan military and police leaders are forcibly fucking children on our military bases. Pay no attention to the sounds you’re hearing and don’t tell anybody, no way Jose. We’re a bit at a loss as to whether this is just one of those ...

Under-counted Methane

The volume of waste in landfills, a major source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, was grossly underestimated in the United States in 2012.

Earth Shots

Smoke from wildfires billows over Crater Lake, Arctic sea ice isn't up to years past and fall colors pop in Siberia.

Alaskan Duck-Bill

The world's northernmost dinosaur has just been found in Alaska, where the dino likely experienced snow and months without sunshine.

Starfish Wasting Disease

Once packed onto the rocks and on the ocean floor, the key predators are simply missing from some locations, their numbers cut by 95 percent or more.

Surfer Rescues Baby Deer


Last month, Tyler Balak was a few hundred feet out into the water at Buxton, North Carolina. He was enjoying a pleasant day surfing when he saw something moving in the water. At first, he thought it was a shark. Then, when he saw that it was a deer--a baby deer.
Balak picked up the fawn and carried her to shore. He and other people on the beach located a wildlife rescue center nearby and took the deer--which was clearly in shock--there. The Virginia Beach Pilot reports:
On the Internet, they discovered Hatteras Island Wildlife Rehabilitation, an animal rescue shelter 6 miles away in Frisco.
Lou Browning, president of the nonprofit, put the fawn in a padded room.
"It was coming out of its ocean shock at that point and ready to go ballistic," Browning said, adding that fawns can hurt themselves in captivity.
So Browning watched, and all signs pointed to a happy ending. The fawn had good muscle tone and no ticks around its eyes and ears. It moved well, could see and had no obvious injuries. A few hours after the deer arrived, Browning sedated it, took it back to Buxton and released it.
No one knows how it ended up so far out into the ocean.

Cocker Spaniel learned basic Gaelic in 3 weeks

A clever Cocker Spaniel has stunned members of a conversational Gaelic speaking class by mastering the necessary basics, for a dog, of the notoriously difficult-to-learn language in three weeks. Four-year-old Ginger responds to “suidh” (sit) “fuirich” (stay) and “trobhad” (come here) and understands when his owner, retired Neil Smith, praises him with “cu math” - good boy. Mr Smith, 67, who is profoundly deaf, said he was amazed by how quickly Ginger, a hearing dog, learned to understand the native tongue of Mr Smith’s great-grandmother. It can take months or even years for people to grasp the tongue.
He credits Ginger, who is an English Cocker Spaniel (working breed), with encouraging him to continue going to weekly Gaelic speaking class classes at Strone Cult of Scotland near Dunoon in Argyll. Mr Smith, who lives in Strone, attends the group every Friday along with 23 other people. He said: “”Ginger learned Gaelic because he has been coming with me to the drop-in center and I thought it would be good fun. He has picked it up really quickly - it only took him about three weeks. It is great because I can show off that he is a bi-lingual dog - people think it is amazing that he can do that and it is a wee bit of added interest to the class.”
The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Cult of Scotland, the Right Rev Dr Angus Morrison, who has officially announced that the group had changed its name from Strone Gaelic drop-in center to Ionad na Ceilidhe - the meeting place to talk - said he was “very impressed” by Ginger’s grasp of the language that he also speaks. Dr Morrison said: “It is great to see an older person enjoying such a good relationship with his dog where Gaelic is the medium of communication.” Elma McArthur, who grew up in Tiree in the Inner Hebrides but now lives in Dunoon and leads the conversation class, said she, also, was impressed by the speed Ginger had picked up the complex language.

She said: “He is a very, sharp clever dog. I have never heard of a dog learning it as a second language before.” Mr Smith said Ginger’s “unique” ability had encouraged him to continue his studies. He said: “He has given me a lot of confidence because I used to be a very shy person and often felt quite isolated in company, even with family and friends.” Mr Smith said his deafness meant he tended to shy away from conversations but Ginger had “broken down barriers” for him. He said: “Going to the Gaelic class gets me out and about to meet people and I have always wanted to learn the language because my great-grandmother spoke it but it was not passed down through the family. Ginger is helping to lead a family revival.”

Animal Pictures