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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.


Monday, February 1, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.
Yep ..! 
 
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Crusoe ... !
Today is - Robinson Crusoe Day

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Today in History

1327
Edward III is coronated King of England.
1587
Elizabeth I, Queen of England, signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots.
1633
The tobacco laws of Virginia are codified, limiting tobacco production to reduce dependence on a single-crop economy.
1793
France declares war on Britain and the Netherlands.
1861
A furious Governor Sam Houston storms out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas has voted 167-7 to secede from the Union.
1902
U.S. Secretary of State John Hay protests Russian privileges in China as a violation of the “open door policy.”
1905
Germany contests French rule in Morocco.
1909
U.S. troops leave Cuba after installing Jose Miguel Gomez as president.
1930
A Loening Air Yacht of Air Ferries makes its first passenger run between San Francisco and Oakland, California..
1942
Planes of the U.S. Pacific fleet attack Japanese bases in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.
1943
American tanks and infantry are battered at German positions at Fais pass in North Africa.
1944
U.S. Army troops invade two Kwajalein Islands in the Pacific.
1945
U.S. Rangers and Filipino guerrillas rescue 513 American survivors of the Bataan Death March.
1951
Third A-bomb tests are completed in the desert of Nevada.
1960
Four black students stage a sit-in at a segregated Greensboro, N.C. lunch counter.
1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson rejects Charles de Gaulle‘s plan for a neutral Vietnam.
1965
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested in protest against voter discrimination in Alabama.
1968
U.S. troops drive the North Vietnamese out of Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon.
1968
South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu declares martial law.
1986
Two days of anti-government riots in Port-au-Prince result in 14 dead.

Yale team deciphers sugar’s siren song

Yale team deciphers sugar’s siren song
Yale team deciphers sugar’s siren song
Sugar’s sweetness and calorie content combine to give it lethal power to destroy diets, many scientists have assumed.  However, new study by Yale University researchers says the brain responds to taste and calorie counts in fundamentally different ways. And only one...

Florida anti-abortion hearing turns racist ...

Wingnut Van Zant, who sponsored the bill, argued that life began at conception, and that even zygotes were “citizens of Florida.”

Wealthy Teen Gets Homeless Man To Pour Coffee Over Himself For $5, Then Karma Calls

A New Jersey teenager thought it would be funny to pay a homeless man $5 to pour coffee over himself. But after the story went viral, the homeless man...

Phony judge may have illegally impersonated a cop to bring militants’ kids to occupied Oregon refuge

Joaquin Mariano DeMoreta-Folch (Scanned Retina)
Joaquin Mariano DeMoreta-Folch, a teabagger agitator and self-appointed “judge” from Florida, has been chosen by the militants to oversee an extralegal “common law grand jury” to investigate and intimidate elected officials.

Kansas Wingnuts Try To Add ‘Gun Dealers’ To List Of Protected Classes Like Race And Gender

Really, Kansas? You have a huge problem with reality don't you!
Thanks to a repeal of a long-standing law in 2015, Kansas currently doesn’t have discrimination protection on the basis of sexual orientation, but...

Judge Orders State To Give Millions In Subsidies To Creationist Amusement Park

Black Germans were also victims of the Nazis

Black Germans were also victims of the Nazis -- but their story is mostly forgotten

This Hitler-loving, gay-hating Oregon judge is so unethical that he might be a criminal, state panel finds

The Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability filed a 48-page report urging the state Supreme Court to remove Judge Vance Day from the bench.

Alabama deputies fired after recording sheriff demanding confiscated weed for his sick aunt

Winston County Sheriff Hobby Walker -- (WBRC screenshot)Alabama deputies fired after recording sheriff demanding confiscated weed for his sick aunt

Court has ruled that bribes of €100 are not big enough to be deemed as corruption

Italy’s top court has ruled that a drunk driver did absolutely nothing wrong when he tried to bribe a police officer. The Court of Cassation acquitted the man of corruption – because the €100 (£75, $108) he offered the official to avoid being convicted of drunk driving was too small. Bribes of €100 are not big enough to be deemed as corruption, the court ruled.
The court also said that due to the man’s state of drunkenness, he was not of “sound mind” when he offered the police officer money to turn a blind eye. For a bribery attempt to be classified as corruption, Italian law states: "It is necessary that the offer is made with appropriate seriousness,” and also “that the attempt is able to psychologically unsettle the public official".
In light of the man's inebriated state, and the small sum being offered, the court ruling stated that the case does not constitute corruption and that the "charge should be cancelled without delay". But even though he escaped a bribery conviction, the man has not avoided a conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol, which in Italy carries a fine of between €500 and €6,200, a license ban of between six and 12 months, and six to 12 months in prison – depending on the driver’s level of intoxication.

Naked man found covered in copious amount of sawdust cited for indecent exposure

Police in Lincoln, Nebraska, arrested a man on Thursday night who they said was completely naked and covered in sawdust.
Witnesses said Andrew McNeil, 34, was running around his outside house naked.
Police found him at around 11:30pm in his garage, still naked and covered in a "copious" amount of sawdust.
McNeil was cited for indecent exposure and disturbing the peace. McNeil also faces a second indecent exposure charge from Nov. 29, 2015.

Robbery disrupted when passer-by stole keys from getaway car

A passer-by disrupted an attempted robbery on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, by stealing the keys to the getaway car before chasing the suspects from the scene. James Ross-Munro had stopped outside a service station at Arundel due to a broken flip-flop.
He and his friend Kane Wiblen saw two men jump out of a white Commodore with no numberplates and allegedly break into the restaurant. Mr Wiblen had begun filming the flip-flop when they spotted the car, and continued filming throughout the incident.
Mr Ross-Munro took the car keys then shouted for service station staff to call the police. When the alleged robbers returned to the car, the driver realized the keys had been taken and ran away. The second man got into the front passenger seat and closed the door. Mr Ross-Munro jumped into the car through the driver's door towards the passenger, who then jumped out of the car.

Mr Ross-Munro then chased them both down the road. "I chased them but because I'm fat they got away haha," he posted. Gold Coast police confirmed the incident on Saturday and said they had a 23-year-old man in custody. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk urged civilians to let the police do their job. "I don't want to see any individuals putting their lives, their safety at risk," she said.

Would-be thief's attempt to dispose of stolen safe in lake thwarted by ice

Police in southern Denmark have said that a would-be thief who attempted to dispose of a stolen safe in a lake was foiled due to the lake being frozen over.
South Jutland Police said they are investigating how a safe ended up on a frozen lake in Esbjerg but have a pretty good clue of where to start looking.
“Within the past 24 hours we had a break-in in which a safe similar to that was stolen, but it is still uncertain if the one out on the ice is it,” spokesman Claus Skovgaard said.
The safe was spotted on the frozen lake by a resident on Sunday who tipped off the police. Police wrote on Twitter that whoever attempted to throw the safe into the lake wasn’t able to open it up to get inside. “Ugh, first a struggle to steal the safe, then it can’t be opened and then when it’s dumped in the lake, the water was firm,” police wrote.

Burglar broke several locks, disabled an alarm and climbed fences to steal a bucket

A burglar in New Zealand broke several locks, disabled an alarm and climbed fences to steal a bucket from a dump. Westport police are hunting for the man, who broke into the rubbish dump in the early hours on Monday.

Gunman threatened driver then helped him free car from mud on condition he didn't call police

A 29-year-old man from Cleveland, Ohio, threatened a Westlake man with a gun and then offered to help the Westlake man push his car out of the mud if he agreed not to call police, a report said.
Thomas Eaddie is charged with aggravated menacing. He appeared in court Thursday but did not enter a plea, court records said. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 23.
A 33-year-old Westlake man told police that Eaddie threatened him with a black, semi-automatic pistol in the early morning of Jan. 16 after he pulled his car into the parking lot of his apartment complex. The Westlake man said he tried to drive away but got stuck in a mud patch on the side of the road.
Eaddie helped the man free his car from the mud patch. Eaddie left and the man called police anyway. Officers spotted Eaddie driving by the scene as they spoke with the Westlake man and arrested him. Investigators are unsure why Eaddie threatened the Westlake man in the first place. Both men said they had never met one another before that day.

$50,000 worth of bull semen stolen from truck could be trouble in the wrong hands

Tanks filled with thousands of dollars worth of bull semen were stolen out of a truck in Turlock, California, and it could cause trouble in the wrong hands. The bulls are the cream of the crop and have been selected for their genetic value.
The bulls’ highly valued semen is collected two to three times a week and shipped to farms in California and across the world for the purpose of impregnating cattle. Turlock resident Anthony Reis spent months of his time and labor collecting top of the line bull semen for distribution only to have half it stolen.
“You get to your first dairy and you’re missing half your inventory,” he said. Three tanks and a transfer tank with nearly 3,500 units of sperm were stolen from the back of his work truck late on Sunday night, enough to potentially impregnate more than 1,000 cattle. “You’re trying to make a living - the loss of all those units of semen, and probably taken by someone who had no idea what they were stealing, is very frustrating,” he said.

The semen was worth nearly $50,000, with one of the bulls being the fifth best in the world now. “To have a bull that’s that high in the list and to have that seen stolen from an allocated bull that’s hard to replace,” he said. The tanks that store the semen are filled with liquid nitrogen. At about -320 degrees Fahrenheit to keep the sperm frozen, they need to be handled by professionals. Otherwise, it can be dangerous. Reis also says the thieves stole gas out of his truck and most likely have no clue what else they took.

'Behemoth' Daddy Longlegs Discovered in Oregon

by Tia Ghose
Scientists have discovered a new species of daddy longlegs (shown in b and d), Cryptomaster behemoth, lurking in the leaf litter of southwest Oregon forests. The species joins its close cousin, C. leviathan (shown in a and c), in
Scientists have unearthed a monstrous new arachnid lurking in the woods of southwest Oregon — and it's a beast.
The new daddy longlegs species, dubbed Cryptomaster behemoth, towers over other creatures of its kind. And like its cousin, the equally elusive Cryptomaster leviathan, the new species is incredibly difficult to find, because it hides out beneath the logs and leafy debris that blanket the forest floor.
The Cryptomaster leviathan was discovered in 1969 at one location in the coastal town of Gold Beach, Oregon. The mysterious creature belonged to one of the most diverse suborders, called Laniatores, which contains at least 4,100 species. (Daddy longlegs belong to the arachnid order commonly known as harvestmen, so-called because they often emerge during the fall months during the harvest.) [In Images: 4-Eyed Daddy Longlegs Helps Explain Arachnid Evolution]
Though the 0.15-inch-wide (4 millimeters) body of the creature is relatively small compared to that of tarantulas or other arachnids, the daddy longlegs towers over other creatures in its Laniatores suborder. As a result, its discoverers gave it the species name leviathan, after the serpentlike sea creature that prowls the deep in the Bible. The genus name Cryptomaster is a nod to the creature's elusive and reclusive nature.
For 40 years, little else was known about C. leviathan. But in recent years, researchers have found more of these elusive creatures at multiple locations, including some as far off as the Cascade Mountains in southwest Oregon.
That led James Starrett, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, and his colleagues to suspect there may be other undiscovered species in the Cryptomaster genus. The researchers set out on an expedition to the region, on a hunt for new Cryptomaster species.
New monster lurking
This hunt led them to the discovery of a completely new daddy longlegs species, also relatively huge, called Cryptomaster behemoth. (The behemoth, like the leviathan, is a biblical beast.) Both have the unusually short legs characteristic of arachnids of the Laniatores order.
One of the main differences between the two species is that C. leviathan sports two teensy, fully erect spines pointing upward on its penis. The purpose of those spines isn't clear.
Interestingly, both the C. leviathan and C. behemoth speciescome in two forms: a larger and a smaller one.
But exactly why remains a mystery.
"The basis for these two forms is unknown — the different forms can be found in both sexes, in both species and from the same localities. Additionally, the two forms are not genetically divergent," the researchers wrote in the paper, which was published online Jan. 20 in the journal Zookeys.
The team also extracted DNA from the legs of multiple animals from each species. Interestingly, the C. leviathan has relatively little genetic diversity, though the creature shows up in a wide range of habitats. By contrast, C. behemoth seems to have a more restricted range, yet has much more genetic diversity than does C. leviathan. The genetic analysis also revealed that the big and small versions of each species don't differ genetically, so some other factor must explain the size difference.
The new species reveal how much genetic diversity can be found within a relatively tiny area, the scientists wrote.
"This research highlights the importance of short-range endemic arachnids for understanding biodiversity, and further reveals mountainous southern Oregon as a hot spot for endemic animal species," the researchers wrote.

Animal Pictures