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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.


Friday, May 20, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.
True ...! 
 
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Today in History

325
The Ecumenical council is inaugurated by Emperor Constantine in Nicea.
1303
A peace treaty is signed between England and France.
1347
Cola di Rienzo takes the title of tribune in Rome.
1520
Hernando Cortes defeats Spanish troops sent against him in Mexico.
1690
England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1674
John Sobieski becomes Poland’s first king.
1774
Parliament passes the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts close the port of Boston.
1775
North Carolina becomes the first colony to declare its independence.
1784
The Peace of Versailles ends a war between France, England, and Holland.
1799
Napoleon Bonaparte orders a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d’Acre in Egypt.
1859
A force of Austrians collide with Piedmontese cavalry at the village of Montebello, in northern Italy.
1861
North Carolina becomes the last state to secede from the Union.
1862
Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, providing 250 million acres of free land to settlers in the West.
1874
Levi Strauss begins marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.
1902
The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ends.
1927
Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York for Paris.
1930
The first airplane is catapulted from a dirigible.
1932
Amelia Earhart lands near Londonderry, Ireland, to become the first woman fly solo across the Atlantic.
1939
Pan American Airways starts the first regular passenger service across the Atlantic.
1941
Germany invades Crete by air.
1942
Japan completes the conquest of Burma.
1951
During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Captain James Jabara becomes the first jet air ace in history.
1961
A white mob attacks civil rights activists in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969
In South Vietnam, troops of the 101st Airborne Division reach the top of Hill 937 after nine days of fighting entrenched North Vietnamese forces.
1970
100,000 people march in New York, supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.

How Many Friends Is Ideal for Your Social Network?

A new model shows the average minimum number of relationships that need to be maintained by individuals to form cooperative group

The other opioid crisis ...

The other opioid crisis – people in poor countries can’t get the pain medication they need

'Christian' charity boss admits to embezzling $475,000 in donations to pay for his sex addiction

What’s the best way to fund your sex addiction in a way that no one will suspect? There aren’t a lot of better ways than setting up a 'christian' charity and embezzling the money.

Mississippi neighborhood rejects KKK offer to ‘protect’ whites from Latinos and African-Americans

Is it a “neighborhood watch” or “we’re watching your neighborhood?”

3 GIANT Lies Wingnuts Want You To Believe (So Transpeople Can't Pee)

girl in the bathroom
by Julian Klein
Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.
Anyone even slightly aware of LGBT politics has heard of HB2 — the Anti-Transgender Bathroom Law in North Carolina. You know ... the one that forces trans and genderqueer people to use the bathroom that matches the sex on their birth certificate.
Because everyone carries that around … NOT.
While this law is completely ludicrous, it is also extremely dangerous for transpeople.
But what if you’re not trans? Why should you care about something that doesn’t affect you? Except that it does.
Here are some of the (REALLY harmful) myths associated with this law:
1. "Men will go in the women’s bathroom to look at/attack girls."
Every time gender is mentioned, this argument pops up, and it applies directly to controlling people with this bathroom law. Many argue that this law will prevent perverts and pedophiles from using the “wrong” bathroom — but this law isn’t directed at those groups. It’s directed at TRANSpeople.
Honestly, if you'd ever had any issues with convicted sexual predators and pedophiles using bathrooms before, you didn't seem too concerned having those SAME sexual predators in the bathroom with your just-as-vulnerable sons.
Anti-transgender groups are counting on this fear SO much, they are actually sending sexual predators into ladies’ rooms at Target, to scare people into agreeing with them.
2. "If you’re a normal person, you’ll be fine."
But what defines a "normal" person? In the parameters of HB2, that would be someone cis.
But what if you’re a short haired, flannel and denim-wearing cis girl? There are people willing to follow (who they think are) transpeople into the bathroom and harass them, but if you’re like this girl — you’ll be arrested and thrown off the premises. All because you don’t “look like a girl” in their eyes.
Just take a look at what happened with Aimee Toms — a 22-year-old Connecticut woman who was confronted and antagonized by a stranger in the bathroom because they (mistakenly) thought she was transgender.
3. "Bathrooms are dangerous because no one can save you."
This idea that bathroom safety is tied to the law is a myth. In most public bathrooms, there are so many people going in and out, there is almost NO way for the predator to be alone with a potential victim.
But what about low volume bathrooms, where almost no one is coming in and out? Then I respond, “Was a law going to save you anyway?”
All this law does is foster paranoia against trans people and takes pressure off pedophiles and sexual predators. Think on that before you decide who should have the right to pee.

How North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom Law’ Is Invigorating The Push For Criminal Justice Reform

Florida woman stole sex toys from Walmart because she was ‘too lazy’ to pay

A Florida woman was arrested after police said the tried to steal two sex toys and some personal lubricant from a Walmart store.

Sexual harassment affects 3 out of 10 female physicians

Sexual harassment affects 3 out of 10 female physicians

The Life And Times Of Oney Judge

George and Martha Washington owned hundreds of slaves over the course of their lives. The names of many are known, but most of the details of their lives have been lost to history. Here's the story of one woman who hasn't been forgotten.

The History of Constipation

People have been concerned about constipation for ages, at least as long as medical writing goes back, and probably further. The strange thing is that the condition is blamed on “modern living,” meaning diet, activity, and stress that was different from the eras that came before. And they’ve been saying that for thousands of years. Then and now, folks worry about constipation even if they don’t clinically suffer from it, according to medical standards.
That’s because constipation was, itself, a theory of disease. The ideas documented in the Ebers Papyrus, which dates to the 16th century B.C., persisted all the way through the 1930s, in the guise of “autointoxication” — accidental self-poisoning that begins in the bowels. Constipation, then, could literally cause any disease, from cancer to schizophrenia. And this emphasis on constipation as the cause of all disease got stronger in the late 19th century, after scientists began to understand the germ theory of disease, Whorton said. Suddenly, there was a scientific explanation for what everybody already thought to be true. Bacteria lived in your poop. Bacteria caused disease. Clearly, the longer your poop sat in your body, the more at risk you were of getting sick.
We know better now, but that doesn’t mean the worry is gone. Each era of history had its cure-alls and fads, from patent medicine to laxatives to a high-fiber diet to probiotics. Maggie Koerth-Baker traces the history of constipation at FiveThirtyEight.

8 Words You Might Not Know Were Named For Scientists

Many English words have relatively obvious etymological backgrounds. But the paths to their origins aren't always so clear when words are eponyms - coined from people's names - and scientists are very often the culprits in these cases.
Here are some words you might not know were eponyms, and whose scientific namesakes have been hiding in plain sight.

Want More Bang For Your Buck When You Skip Stones?

Use Sodium Instead
Skipping stones across a body of water is the kind of activity that's generally categorized as “not much bang for your buck”, meaning it's not very thrilling to watch or participate in.
But that's because the flat stones that wash up on the banks are low in sodium, so if you really want to see some flash you've gotta "skip" a block of pure sodium.
YouTuber EatsTooMuchJam picked up a pound of sodium and headed down to the river, using basic science to liven up the lackadaisical act of skipping stones. I like his version better!

48 Million Americans Suffer From Food Insecurity

J-Shaped Ice Cream Cones

Play J is an independently-owned ice cream truck in New York City. It offers a novel product: soft-service ice cream in hollow J-shaped tubes made of corn meal. When Jamie Stall tried it last year, you could get either chocolate, vanilla, or half and half.

Would You Eat Liquid-Silk-Dipped Strawberries?

Yum, silk-dipped strawberries. How decadent.

Mystery of Bizarre Radar Echoes Solved, 50 Years Later

The mysterious phenomenon would show up only during daylight hours, vanishing at night.

Animal News

With only 97 left in the wild, every new birth counts for the critically endangered species.
Environmentalists warned that the population of Mexico’s vaquita marina, the world’s smallest porpoise, has dramatically dropped.

Animal Pictures