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.


Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.
Torture in Paradise ...! 
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 205 countries around the world daily.   
  
The Art of Reading ... !
Today is - Dr. Seuss Day

You want the unvarnished truth?
Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Argentina - Brazil - Canada - Colombia - Cuba - El Salvador - Mexico - Nicaragua - Paraguay  Puerto Rico - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines - United States - Venezuela
Europe
Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Croatia - Czech Republic - England - Estonia - Finland 
France - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Italy - Latvia - Netherlands - Poland  Portugal - Russia - San Marino - Scotland - Serbia - Slovenia - Spain - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
Bangladesh - China - Hong Kong - India - Indonesia - Iran - Japan - Kazakhstan - Malaysia  Singapore - Sri Lanka - Vietnam
The Pacific
Australia - New Zealand - Philippines
Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1776
Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.
1781
Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.
1797
The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.
1815
To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.
1836
Texas declares independence from Mexico on Sam Houston’s 43rd birthday.
1853
The Territory of Washington is organized.
1865
Lincoln rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee‘s plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.
1867
The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.
1877
Rutherford B. Hayes is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.
1889
Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.
1896
Bone Mizell, the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.
1901
Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.
1908
An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.
1908
Gabriel Lippman introduces the new three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.
1917
Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.
1923
In Italy, Mussolini admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.
1930
Novelist D.H. Lawrence dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.
1943
The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.
1945
MacArthur raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.
1946
Ho Chi Minh is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1951
The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.
1955
Claudette Colvin refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks‘ famous arrest for the same offense.
1956
France grants independence to Morocco.
1965
More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the “Rolling Thunder” raids.
1968
The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.
1973
Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.
1974
A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that President Nixon was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.
1978
Czech pilot Vladimir Remek becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.
1981
The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.

Here are 11 things other countries do way better than America

S-F / Shutterstock.com
America! Land of the free, home of the brave, and the greatest country on the face of the planet, right? A country with seemingly limitless natural resources, and according to many politicians, anointed by dog herself to lead the world out of the wilderness and into a bright new age of liberty and justice for all. Too bad the road to that vision is pockmarked with so many potholes, because we haven’t raised enough taxes.

All Brains

If you think your brain already has all the space it needs for memories and other info, you're right. It has that with room to spare. But file this nugget in your high-capacity noggin: We may have been low-balling it all these years.

How Islamophobia Spread Through the Media Is Emboldening Racist, Violent Extremists

You know of course that pointing out the Haters hate speech is considered by the Haters to be hate speech - they must be allowed unfettered  spewing of their hate speech but you can never point out that it is hate speech.

Birmingham Tells Alabama Wingnuts To Go Fuck Themselves, Passes Highest Minimum Wage In The South

Image via Reddit
Alabama Republicans were quickly trying to ban all cities and counties from raising the minimum wage, but one city gave the wingnuts the finger and beat them...

Big Banks Fleeced The Working Poor Out Of $11.16 Billion In 2015

Big Banks Fleeced The Working Poor Out Of $11.16 Billion In 2015
When you find out how they made this money you will be infuriated.

Illinois wingnut bill attacks single moms

A bill sponsored by Republicans in Illinois would deny birth certificates to the children of single mothers who do not name a father.

Bristol Palin Loses Full Custody Of Son In Humiliating Court Defeat

Image via InquistrBristol Palin Loses Full Custody Of Son In Humiliating Court Defeat
If she had practiced abstinence, she wouldn’t have these kinds of court battles.

Fox News mocks woman on minimum wage who can’t afford food

Fox News host Sandra Smith speaks to Stefanie Williams (screen grab)Fox News mocks woman on minimum wage who can’t afford food: It’s the ‘lifestyle you chose’

Fox News hacks insanely argue students should have access to guns, not condoms in school

Fox News hosts Harris Faulkner and Geraldo Rivera (screen grab)
Fox News hacks insanely argue students should have access to guns, not condoms in school

Woman dies of thirst after she was dragged out of SC hospital to jail over unpaid court fines

Joyce Curnell was found dead in her cell one day after she was arrested at Roper Hospital, where she had been treated for a stomach illness, and taken to the Charleston County Jail.

Police request public's help with locating serial squirter

Michael Kevin Morris of Easton, Pennsylvania, has been identified by Bethlehem police as the man who has been squirting his semen on women. Police are asking for the public's help to locate him. Police issued an arrest warrant on Tuesday for 57-year-old Morris on indecent assault and other charges for allegedly squirting semen from a container onto a woman on Monday morning in a grocery store.
Police said they were called shortly after 11am by a woman who said a man, later identified as Morris, approached her in the Valley Farm Market store. The woman said Morris walked up to her with some sort of container and "squirted semen on her buttocks." She told police the liquid was semen and she followed Morris out of the store. As he walked away, the woman used her cellphone to take several photos of him and told Morris she was going to call police. She said he replied, "Please don't."
Morris is also wanted by police in connection with a 2014 assault in Bethlehem where he allegedly followed a woman off a bus and squirted seminal fluid on her. In the earlier case, police said the woman was getting off a bus when Morris followed her and squirted semen on her buttocks. Morris was identified as the suspect in that case through DNA evidence collected from the woman's clothing, police said. When police showed a photo line-up to the woman in Monday's assault, she identified Morris as the man who assaulted her.
Bethlehem police Chief Mark DiLuzio described Morris as a 'serial squirter', calling his actions alarming for women. "This isn't just an isolated incident because it's been going on for years," DiLuzio said. "It's time we put a stop to it and get this guy off the streets. This is a public health issue and a serious crime." In 1988, Morris was charged with squirting semen from a condom on two female clerks at a pharmacy, but charges of indecent assault were dismissed because both clerks testified Morris did not touch them. Morris was found guilty of disorderly conduct and ordered to pay a fine.

Naked man found in car on train tracks charged with DWI

An intoxicated man from College Station, Texas, was found naked in a car that was stuck on train tracks, according to police reports. Police were called to the area of College Station at around 2:20am on Monday for an intoxicated driver.
According to a Probable Cause Statement, an officer found a vehicle on the train tracks and the driver still inside without any clothes. Police say the driver, Connor James Bond, attempted to start the car with scissors after seeing the officer and then ran away from the scene when an ambulance arrived.
Police chased the 19-year-old and wrestled him to the ground to get him into custody. Bond tried to physically assault the arresting officer before he was put into handcuffs. Bond was taken to the Brazos County jail and is facing several charges including resisting arrest, evading arrest and DWI.
Prior to the officer arriving, a witness called 911 and said the Bond's vehicle was driving erratically in the area and weaving into opposing traffic. Police say they found a half-empty bottle of Everclear liquor in the back of Bond's vehicle. Bond told the officer that he had been drinking prior to this incident.

Archaeology News

A woman and child were buried more than 2,500 years ago with several previously slaughtered and butchered turtles.

Mysterious burst of radio waves traced to galaxy billions of light-years away

by Miriam Kramer
For the first time, a mysterious blast of energy known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) has been precisely traced to a distant galaxy, bringing scientists even closer to figuring out the origins of these odd cosmic flashes. On April 18, 2015, a telescope caught sight of the FRB, and mere hours later, other telescopes found its location, tracing the source of the burst to a galaxy about 6 billion light-years away, according to a new study published in the journal Nature this week.
This marks the first time the distance to an FRB has been measured.
FRBs send out as much energy in a fraction of a second as the sun puts out in 10,000 years, but they are exceedingly difficult to find. 
Plus, no one is sure exactly what creates them.
“Our discovery opens the way to working out what makes these bursts,” Simon Johnston, one of the team members who made the FRB discovery, said in a statement.
The authors of the Nature study suggest that the April FRB — which took six days to fade — may have been produced by the merger of two compact stars, which sent out the radio burst.
It's also possible that more than one kind of cataclysmic event in the universe can create an FRB. For instance, some models suggest that a supernova explosion or a pulsar — a rotating neutron star — pulse could create an FRB.
"I've been pretty skeptical of the 'compact object merger' hypothesis, but the authors' observations are just beautifully consistent with what you'd expect," astronomer Peter K.G. Williams, who is unaffiliated with the study, told Mashable via email.
"But I've also heard rumors about other results that other teams that are working on that are totally inconsistent with this hypothesis, so the theorists still have a lot of work left to do! It's an exciting time."
Astronomer Duncan Lorimer, the author of a News and Views companion piece in Nature, gets a little more specific and suggests that this FRB may have been produced when two neutron stars merged. 
That possibility could present even more exciting options for follow up studies during future events. 
"Such a system would emit a large fraction of its energy in the form of gravitational waves, which are produced by accelerating bodies, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity," Lorimer wrote.
If FRBs can be produced by neutron star combinations, and if gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time — can be detected with them, it could have serious implications for the future of astronomy.
A zoom-in of an elliptical galaxy showing the FRB pulse detection.
"This is getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but a simultaneous detection of an FRB and a gravitational wave event would be — this is a technical term — totally bananas," Williams said.
Astronomers recently detected gravitational waves for the first time, opening up a new door into the universe. Now, scientists can learn more about the most cataclysmic crashes between massive objects like black holes. 
If FRBs are also associated with these extreme collisions, scientists will have another data point that can be used in investigating these major and mysterious events. 
All the stuff in the cosmos
The FRB observed in April is also being used as a cosmic scale for the universe. 
Because scientists know the distance to the FRB galaxy, they were able to measure the material between the Milky Way and the elliptical galaxy that played host to the burst.
"By also having a distance we can now measure how dense the material is between the point of origin and Earth, and compare that with the current model of the distribution of matter in the universe," Johnston said. “Essentially this lets us weigh the universe, or at least the normal matter it contains."
The results of the study appear to confirm the model currently in use: The universe is about 70 percent dark energy, 5 percent regular matter and 25 percent dark matter. 
Until now, scientists weren't able to find half of the regular matter, so researchers referred to it as "missing," but the new measurement seems to find that matter, according to the study's authors.
"It’s the first time a fast radio burst has been used to conduct a cosmological measurement," Evan Keane, co-author of the new study, said in the statement.
At the moment scientists have only observed 17 FRBs, and most of them have been found by going back through old data; however, the future of this research is looking bright.
"There are good reasons to think that our understanding of FRBs will increase dramatically in the near future," Lorimer said. "New telescopes,including the Canadian HydrogenIntensity Mapping Experiment and the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope in China, should discover many FRBs."

Loyal dog waited outside apartment for two weeks hoping murdered owner would return

A loyal dog has been waiting patiently at his owner's door step in Houston, Texas, for over two weeks, not realizing he's never coming back. "You could just tell that he was a lost dog," said Cassandra Eubanks who lives at an apartment complex near Hobby Airport. Eubanks said every day, she would see the German Shepherd at the front gates of the apartment complex, looking and searching for his owner to drive in.
"He would follow the cars and when he would realize that it was not his owner's car, he would just stand there and look helpless," said Eubanks. Neighbors said they would also see the dog waiting outside of an apartment door. Not long after, they understood why the dog was waiting for so long. His owner, and convenience store clerk, 54-year-old Hatem Abuharbid, was killed this past month during an armed robbery.
How do you explain that to a dog? "Of course he's confused because he doesn't know what's going on. He hadn't seen his owner in two weeks," said Eubanks. The dog would not come close to anyone. Residents left behind food and water. Finally, after a plea on social media for help, Maranda Perez responded with her dog. "As a German shepherd, he didn't stand a chance," said Perez. "It just broke my heart to hear that the poor animal lost his owner, his best friend."

For nearly an hour, Perez slowly gained the dog's trust. The dog ran up three flights of stairs before it finally was able to trust Perez enough to put a leash around his neck. "He was still very shaken-up whenever I touched him," added Perez. The next hurdle was putting the dog in her car. It was a struggle, but the pup finally had to let go. Perez said she can keep the dog for a week. The victim's brother said he would like to keep the dog after that.

Man sold neighbor's pet bull because it kept fraternizing with his cows

A man sold a bull that didn't belong to him because it kept "fraternizing" with his heifers, a judge in New Zealand heard on Wednesday. Tony Michael Zonneveld, 54, of Edendale, in eastern Southland, was convicted and ordered to pay $1,200 to the owner of the bull within one month when he appeared before Judge Christina Cook in the Gore District Court. Zonneveld's defense lawyer Jono Ross said the bull got through the fence running between Zonneveld's paddock and the paddock housing the bull and was "fraternizing" with Zonneveld's herd of 30 heifers. Ross said Zonneveld moved the bull back onto the owner's property. The next day the bull was "fraternizing" with Zonneveld's stock again.
He again removed the bull from his property and spoke to the owner, asking her to fix the fence or put up a hot wire to keep the bull contained, Ross said. On the third day there was no hot wire put up and the bull again got into Zonneveld's heifers. He was concerned the bull could impregnate them at the wrong time of the year, which could result in a loss of projected income and a loss of stock progeny. The heifers were valued at $700 each. Ross said at that point Zonneveld "took things into his own hands" and transported the bull to a paddock on his own farm, where he set it up with a hot wire, which he was entitled to do under the Impounding Act. He did not tell the owner he had moved the bull and then sold it at the sale yards. When the heifers were scanned, two were found to be pregnant.
The proceeds from the sale of the bull were used to pay for the scanning, which cost $104.35, and the remainder of $878 was paid to the owner of the bull, Ross said. Judge Cook asked whether Zonneveld had fraudulently filled out forms at the sale yards to sell the bull, to which Ross replied that he had and could be the subject of a further prosecution from the Ministry of Primary Industries. Judge Cook said Zonneveld was repeatedly asked about the location of the bull but would not say where it was. "Your activities have had a high level of emotional stress for the victim," Cook said. "While I can accept there was was a level of frustration and financial loss by the bull going into your property and impregnating your heifers, you have handled this in an inappropriate manner."
Following court, the bull's owner, Jenny Sheridan, said the bull was a hand-reared pet named Harry, who was used to impregnate her cows. When Sheridan went to check on him she found he was missing. She said she approached Zonneveld and called him for four or five days asking if he knew about Harry's whereabouts, to which Zonneveld continued to say he had not seen him, she said. In the meantime, Sheridan called local home kill operators to find out if they had seen the bull. One told her they had seen the bull in the same paddock as a steer they went to kill, she said. Sheridan said she believed Harry was taken to the Lorneville saleyards two days after disappearing from her family member's paddock and then sent to Silver Fern Farms' Finegand meat plant to be processed a day later.

Animal News

A partly volcanic stretch in Papua New Guinea’s St. Matthias chain, has been harboring for up to 2 million years a previously unknown species.

Animal Pictures