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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, April 18, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.
You bet it was ...! 
 
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Today in History

310
St. Eusebius of Vercelli begins his reign as catholic pope.
1521
Martin Luther confronts the emperor Charles V, refusing to retract the views which led to his excommunication.
1676
Sudbury, Massachusetts is attacked by Indians.
1775
American revolutionaries Paul Revere and William Dawes ride though the towns of Massachusetts warning that “the British are coming.”
1791
National Guardsmen prevent Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.
1818
A regiment of Indians and blacks is defeated at the Battle of Suwannee, in Florida, ending the First Seminole War.
1834
William Lamb becomes prime minister of England.
1838
The Wilkes’ expedition to the South Pole sets sail.
1847
U.S. forces defeat Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the war.
1853
The first train in Asia begins running from Bombay to Tanna.
1861
Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down an offer to command the Union armies.
1895
The First Sino-Japanese War ends.
1906
A massive earthquake hits San Francisco, measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale.
1923
Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a three-run homer as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1.
1937
Leon Trotsky calls for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
1942
James H. Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
1943
Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is shot down by American P-38 fighters.
1946
The League of Nations dissolves.
1949
The Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth.
1950
The first transatlantic jet passenger trip is completed.
1954
Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.
1978
The U.S. Senate approves the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.
1980
Zimbabwe’s (Rhodesia) formal independence from Britain is proclaimed.
1983
A suicide bomber kills U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.

Naked: The Fitness App That Scans Your Entire Body, Critiquing You from Every Angle

How good do you look in a mirror? Well, you can always check for yourself. But Naked, a new 3d fitness tracker, goes much, much further. It does a complete scan of your body to create a 3d model of what you look like. It tracks precisely how your body is changing under your fitness regimen.
Physically, Naked looks like a full length mirror. It's programmed to give you constructive feedback about your measurements, body fat, and weight. It won't just tell you that you're flabby. It'll tell you where you're flabby so that you can be more self-conscious about it.
I suspect this app could be useful for competitive bodybuilders who need to target specific areas of their bodies for improvement.

Here's why it's so easy for a baby's brain to learn two languages at once

Here's why it's so easy for a baby's brain to learn two languages at once

The World's Most Impressive Bathrooms

In the words of a Charmin ad campaign, "we all go, why not enjoy the go?" And this incredible Lonely Planet list shows some of the best places in the world where you could really enjoy the go. From this eco-friendly toilet in British Columbia that will surely get you back in touch with nature to the Swiss outhouse offering unparalleled views of the Engadine Valley and the alps behind it, these are anything but your typical toilets.
Sure, some of the destinations ask you to sacrifice a little privacy in exchange for the scenery, but when you get a once-in-a-lifetime bathroom experience like that, is it really asking too much?

Before They Were "The Flintstones", They Were "The Flagstones"

The Flintstones debuted in 1960. The series went through a lot of preliminary development. For example, the titular family was originally the Flagstones. In this selection from an early pilot episode, we can see Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty. But they all, except for Wilma, look different from their later form. Fred in particular looks more like a caveman and is voiced by a different actor.

The Tragic History of RC Cola

Royal Crown Cola, or RC, is over eighty years old. It was an innovative brand that paired well with deep-dish pizza in Chicago and Moon Pies in the South. And RC Cola was still eclipsed by both Coca Cola and Pepsi. Yeah, it’s still around, yet the brand doesn’t spend all that much on promotion, relatively, and it stays out of the “cola wars.”
But the number of RC drinkers could have been much, much higher. In an alternate—and completely plausible—universe, it would have given Coke and Pepsi a run for their money. At one point, it did. Believe it or not, Royal Crown Cola used to be one of the most innovative companies in the beverage industry. It came out with the first canned soda, the first caffeine-free soda, and the first 16-ounce soda. It was the first to take diet cola mainstream, and the first to stage nationwide taste tests.
Given its long and pioneering history, RC deserved to be more than the middling soda brand it is today. In an industry that lives and dies by marketing, RC didn’t do nearly enough. But its failure wasn’t just due to lack of initiative. It was also a case of supremely bad luck, bad judgment, and a fateful ingredient known as cyclamate.
Baby Boomers might remember what happened next, but you probably don’t know all the details. Today RC Cola and its sister brands like Nehi and Diet Rite are still sold, although you may have to look for them. Read about the rise and spectacular fall of RC Cola at mental_floss.

10 Reasons Why Homelessness Is More Common Now Than Just 20 Years Ago

Is "The Hum" a mass delusion ?

Sue Taylor first started hearing it at night in 2009. A retired psychiatric nurse, Taylor lives in Roslin, Scotland, a small village seven miles outside of Edinburgh. “A thick, low hum,” is how she described it, something “permeating the entire house,” keeping her awake. At first she thought it was from a nearby factory, or perhaps a generator of some kind. She began spending her evenings looking for the source, listening outside her neighbors’ homes in the early hours of the morning. She couldn’t find anything definitive. She had her hearing checked and was told it was perfect, but the noise persisted. She became dizzy and nauseous, overcome, she says, by a crushing sense of despair and hopelessness at her inability to locate or escape the sound. When things got bad, it felt to Taylor like the bed—and the whole house—was vibrating. Like her head was going to explode. Her husband, who had tinnitus, didn’t hear a thing. “People looked at me like I was mad,” she said.
 Lori Steinborn lives in Tavares, Florida, outside of Orlando, and in 2006 she had started hearing a noise similar to the one Taylor was hearing. Steinborn thought it was her neighbors at first: some nearby stereo blasting, the bass coming through the walls. It would start most nights between 7 and 8 p.m. and last until the early hours of the morning. Like Taylor, she began searching for the sound; leaving town helped her get away from it, but it was waiting when she returned...
The experience described by Steinborn and Taylor, and many others, is what’s come to be known as “the Hum,” a mysterious auditory phenomenon that, by some estimates, 2 percent of the population can hear...
After it was first reported in Bristol, it emerged in Taos, New Mexico; Kokomo, Indiana; Largs, Scotland. A small city newspaper would publish a report of a local person suffering from an unidentified noise, followed by a torrent of letters to the editor with similar complaints...
Hum sufferers have been consistently written off as either delusional or simply suffering from tinnitus...
Further confusing matters is the fact that some reports of the Hum have been definitively traced to specific sources and corrected. The Hum was heard in Sausalito, California, in the mid-1980s, but was eventually found to be the result of the mating sounds of a fish called the plainfin midshipman, whose call could penetrate the steel hulls of the houseboats in the marina. The Windsor Hum was investigated by the Canadian government and ultimately traced to factories on Zug Island, across the Detroit River in Michigan. After an extensive study of the Hum in Kokomo, Indiana, researchers determined that it was caused by two nearby manufacturing plants whose production facilities were emitting specific low frequencies...
Crucially, Deming was able to distinguish the Hum from tinnitus. Tinnitus, usually a ringing in the ear, can take a number of forms, but while its intensity may wax and wane, it is more or less omnipresent, and those who suffer from it tend to hear it in any environment. The Hum, which is constant but only under certain circumstances (indoors, rural areas, etc.), defies a simple correlation with tinnitus. Additionally, Deming notes that if the Hum were related to tinnitus, one would expect a fairly normal geographic distribution rather than clusters in small towns. For a long read on the subject, see the source article at The New Republic.  The embedded image is a screencap from the World Hum Map (zoomable at the source).

A majority of Norwegians don't believe in "Dog"

A new survey from the annual social-cultural study Norwegian Monitor (Norsk Monitor) shows an historic level of Norwegians who don’t believe in the existence of a supreme being, VÃ¥rt Land reported. 
The survey, which was sent to 4,000 Norwegians by post, marks the first time that non-believers outnumber the religious. Two years ago, the number of believers and non-believers was equal. When the question was first asked in 1985, a full 50 percent said they believed in Dog while just 20 percent did not...
Jan-Paul Brekke of Ipsos Norway, who led the survey, said the question did not define who ‘Dog’ is. “It could be the 'christian' dog, an independent dog  or one from other faiths... “There are quite a few immigrants included [in the survey] but the majority of them come from Western religious delusions.
***
Way to go Norway!

Death and Taxes

Ben Franklin may have thought the only thing that was certain was death and taxes; speaking as a scientist, he was right.

Striking Verizon Workers Hit By Company Attorney Driving a Porsche

North Carolina's business meltdown on overload with international backlash and more ...

When PayPal pulled out of North Carolina last week due to the state’s new sweeping anti-LGBT law, the 400 jobs the tech company took with it were just the tip of the iceberg. Deutsche Bank announced Tuesday it was halting plans to add 250 jobs in Cary, NC, reports Reuters.
"We take our commitment to building inclusive work environments seriously," John Cryan, the chief executive of Germany's largest lender, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Tar Heel State also took multiple blows over the weekend in its usually robust convention sector. Here’s the latest from the leading convention and visitors bureau in Wake County, the second most populous county in the state:
A report released by Wake County’s leading tourism agency on Monday says that the county has lost more than $700,000 in response to the controversial House Bill 2 – and could lose millions more.
The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau reported that four groups have canceled plans to hold events in Wake because of HB2...
But based on sourcing from one local Charlotte reporter, the damage appears to go far beyond those four groups, potentially including 29 groups overall.

Trans student says wingnuts threatened her

A transgender female student at the University of North Carolina said she was threatened by the university’s Republican students.

Pennsylvania cop threatens child on school bus

Police officer on bus (Screenshot/Facebook)Pennsylvania cop threatens child on school bus: Don’t smile or I’ll drag you to the fucking police car

California inmate casually admits he stabbed his grandfather to death ‘because I wanted to’

Richard Robinson (Screenshot/Fox40)California inmate casually admits he stabbed his grandfather to death ‘because I wanted to’

Mystery of Volcano Lightning Explained

A violent eruption and ice particles are key ingredients of this bizarre phenomenon.

Guy Takes Sleeping Pills for the First Time, Accidentally Buys Live Yak

Imgur member carefreedude has a friend who recently took sleeping pills for the first time. Before they put him to sleep, they lowered his inhibitions. He got online and bought a live yak.
That's a $3,075.99 accidental purchase. But when he recovered and realized his mistake, he managed to cancel it. Distractify has an update:
I have an update on the Yak.
He managed to stop the payment at the credit card company. He also posted this on Facebook:
Oh I’m sure you would’ve all liked for me to just let them deliver it, but a) My apartment complex would boot my ass on to the street. The only thing worse than being homeless is being a homeless yak owner. b) My beagle Lucy would lose her motherf*cking mind. c) I’m an astrophysicist, not Baron Moneybags Von Richf*ck so I can’t just spend $3,000 on a yak to amuse the Internet.

This Alligator Eating Another Alligator May Give You Nightmares

Nothing like a big bucket full of nope to get you going in the morning and this video of a giant alligator eating another alligator is about as "nope" as it gets.
Alex Figueroa was taking a relaxing morning stroll at the Circle B Bar Reserve when he happened to stumble across this beautiful nature scene that looks more like it belongs in the movie Lake Placid than in a real nature video.
****3

Animal Pictures