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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.


Thursday, August 4, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally
Family Reunions ...! 
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   
  
Let the chips fall as they may ... !
Today is - National Chocolate Chip Day

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Today in History

1265
King Henry III puts down a revolt of English barons lead by Simon de Montfort.
1578
A crusade against the Moors of Morocco is routed at the Battle of Alcazar-el-Kebir. King Sebastian of Portugal and 8,000 of his soldiers are killed.
1717
A friendship treaty is signed between France and Russia.
1789
The Constituent Assembly in France abolishes the privileges of nobility.
1790
The Revenue Cutter service, the parent service of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, is organized.
1864
Federal troops fail to capture Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island, one of the Confederate forts defending Mobile Bay.
1875
The first Convention of Colored Newspapermen is held in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1879
A law is passed in Germany making Alsace Lorraine a territory of the empire.
1914
Germany invades Belgium causing Great Britain to declare war on Germany.
1942
The British government charges that Mohandas Gandhi and his All-Indian Congress Party favor “appeasement” with Japan.
1944
RAF pilot T. D. Dean becomes the first pilot to destroy a V-1 buzz bomb when he tips the pilotless craft’s wing, sending it off course.
1952
Helicopters from the U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service land in Germany, completing the first transatlantic flight by helicopter in 51 hours and 55 minutes of flight time.
1964
The bodies of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman & James E Chaney, discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam.
1964
The U.S.S. Maddox and Turner Joy exchange fire with North Vietnamese patrol boats.
1971
The U.S. launches the first satellite into lunar orbit from a manned spacecraft (Apollo 15).
1972
Arthur Bremer sentenced to 63 years for shooting Alabama governor George Wallace, later reduced to 53 years.
1979
President Jimmy Carter establishes the Department of Energy.
1988
US Senate votes to give each Japanese-American who was interned during WWII $20,000 compensation and an apology.
2007
NASA launches Phoenix spacecraft on a mission to Mars.

The Number of Black Farmers in U.S. Is Growing

5 Creepy Things You Never Knew About Your Nightmares

creepy nightmare

6 Parenting Tips from Around the World That Only Sound Crazy to Americans

parenting tips from around the world
6 Parenting Tips from Around the World That Only Sound Crazy to Americans
Diaper-free babies and nipple-offering dads are just a few.

Celebs Are Hitting Up Sweat Lodges for Better Skin—but Does It Work?

selena gomez
Celebs Are Hitting Up Sweat Lodges for Better Skin—but Does It Work?
Are there really any benefits to dripping buckets?

Slave Leia Sailor Moon

Knockie Cosplay offers this beautifully executed mashup of Princess Leia in her slave outfit from Return of the Jedi and Usagi from Sailor Moon. She is accompanied by her cat Luna, now transformed into a fully operational Death Star.
You can see more cosplay photos of Knockie at her Instagram page, including pictures of her with a Jedi Sailor Moon cosplayer.

Meanwhile, at a high school reunion…

A guy takes his wife to her high school reunion.
After meeting several of her friends and former school mates, they are sitting at a table where he is yawning and overly bored.
The band cranks up and people are beginning to dance. There’s a guy on the dance floor living it large, break dancing, moon walking, back flips, buying drinks for people… the works!
Wife turns to her husband and says, “See that guy? 25 years ago he proposed to me & I turned him down.”
Husband says: “Looks like he’s still celebrating!!!

Just Thinking About Marriage Can Make People Less Likely to Commit Crimes

marriage
Just Thinking About Marriage Can Make People Less Likely to Commit Crimes
So don’t feel bad about dreaming about your wedding day.

5 Surprising Facts About Happy Couples, According to Science

Man hospitalized after waiting 10 days in airport for online girlfriend who never arrived

A Dutch man flew to China to meet a woman he met online and refused to leave the airport after she did not turn up for 10 days, before ending up in hospital suffering from exhaustion.
Alexander Pieter Cirk, 41, recently flew from the Netherlands to Hunan province in the hope of meeting his online girlfriend, a Chinese woman known only as Ms Zhang. But he ended up spending 10 days waiting at Changsha airport, after she failed to show up. Mr Cirk said that he met Ms Zhang, 26, in an app two months ago and romance blossomed.
He decided to fly to visit her, but when he got to Hunan found no-one had come to meet him. He refused to leave the airport for the next 10 days, and was eventually taken to hospital suffering from physical exhaustion. Ms Zhang later said that she had thought it had all been a joke. "We had advanced our romantic relationship but later he seemed a little callous towards me," Ms Zhang said.
"One day he sent me a photo of air tickets abruptly and I thought it was a joke. He didn't contact me later." Ms Zhang also added that by the time Mr Cirk arrived at the airport, she was away having plastic surgery in another province and had turned off her phone. Ms Zhang said that she would like to meet Mr Cirk when he is feeling better and is still interested in maintaining their relationship, but it's understood that he flew back to the Netherlands on Monday.

Archaeology News

Is Earthly Life Premature from a Cosmic Perspective?

“If you ask, ‘When is life most likely to emerge?’ you might naively say, ‘Now,'” says lead author Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “But we find that the chance of life grows much higher in the distant future.”
Life as we know it first became possible about 30 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars seeded the cosmos with the necessary elements like carbon and oxygen. Life will end 10 trillion years from now when the last stars fade away and die. Loeb and his colleagues considered the relative likelihood of life between those two boundaries.
The dominant factor proved to be the lifetimes of stars. The higher a star’s mass, the shorter its lifetime. Stars larger than about three times the sun’s mass will expire before life has a chance to evolve.
Conversely, the smallest stars weigh less than 10 percent as much as the Sun. They will glow for 10 trillion years, giving life ample time to emerge on any planets they host. As a result, the probability of life grows over time. In fact, chances of life are 1000 times higher in the distant future than now.
“So then you may ask, why aren’t we living in the future next to a low-mass star?” says Loeb.
“One possibility is we’re premature. Another possibility is that the environment around a low-mass star is hazardous to life.”
Although low-mass, red dwarf stars live for a long time, they also pose unique threats. In their youth they emit strong flares and ultraviolet radiation that could strip the atmosphere from any rocky world in the habitable zone.
To determine which possibility is correct — our premature existence or the hazard of low-mass stars — Loeb recommends studying nearby red dwarf stars and their planets for signs of habitability. Future space missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and James Webb Space Telescope should help to answer these questions.
The paper describing this work has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics and is available online. Its co-authors are Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Rafael Batista and David Sloan (University of Oxford). Loeb simultaneously wrote an extended review on the habitability of the universe as a chapter for a forthcoming book.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.
For more information, contact:
Christine Pulliam
Media Relations Manager
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu

A new leaf: Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into fuel

As scientists and policymakers around the world try to combat the increasing rate of climate change, they have focused on the chief culprit: carbon dioxide.
Produced by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants and car engines, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But trees and other plants do slowly capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to sugars that store energy.
In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago, researchers have found a similar way to convert carbon dioxide into a usable energy source using sunlight.
One of the chief challenges of sequestering carbon dioxide is that it is relatively chemically unreactive. “On its own, it is quite difficult to convert carbon dioxide into something else,” said Argonne chemist Larry Curtiss, an author of the study.
To make carbon dioxide into something that could be a usable fuel, Curtiss and his colleagues needed to find a catalyst – a particular compound that could make carbon dioxide react more readily. When converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into a sugar, plants use an organic catalyst called an enzyme; the researchers used a metal compound called tungsten diselenide, which they fashioned into nanosized flakes to maximize the surface area and to expose its reactive edges.
While plants use their catalysts to make sugar, the Argonne researchers used theirs to convert carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide. Although carbon monoxide is also a greenhouse gas, it is much more reactive than carbon dioxide and scientists already have ways of converting carbon monoxide into usable fuel, such as methanol. “Making fuel from carbon monoxide means travelling ‘downhill’ energetically, while trying to create it directly from carbon dioxide means needing to go ‘uphill,'” said Argonne physicist Peter Zapol, another author of the study.
Although the reaction to transform carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide is different from anything found in nature, it requires the same basic inputs as photosynthesis. “In photosynthesis, trees need energy from light, water and carbon dioxide in order to make their fuel; in our experiment, the ingredients are the same, but the product is different,” said Curtiss.
The setup for the reaction is sufficiently similar to nature that the research team was able to construct an “artificial leaf” that could complete the entire three-step reaction pathway. In the first step, incoming photons – packets of light – are converted to pairs of negatively-charged electrons and corresponding positively-charged “holes” that then separate from each other. In the second step, the holes react with water molecules, creating protons and oxygen molecules. Finally, the protons, electrons and carbon dioxide all react together to create carbon monoxide and water.
“We burn so many different kinds of hydrocarbons – like coal, oil or gasoline – that finding an economical way to make chemical fuels more reusable with the help of sunlight might have a big impact,” Zapol said.
Towards this goal, the study also showed that the reaction occurs with minimal lost energy – the reaction is very efficient. “The less efficient a reaction is, the higher the energy cost to recycle carbon dioxide, so having an efficient reaction is crucial,” Zapol said.
According to Curtiss, the tungsten diselenide catalyst is also quite durable, lasting for more than 100 hours – a high bar for catalysts to meet.
The study, “Nanostructured transition metal dichalcogenide electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction in ionic liquid,” is published in today’s issue of Science. Much of the experimental work was performed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, while the computational work was performed at Argonne.

Man ripped up woman's lawn for posting bad reviews about his wife's business

A Florida man faces charges after police say he used his pick-up truck in a fit of revenge to rip up the front lawn of a person who posted negative reviews about his wife's animal clinic business. Joshua Ryan Fields, 35, from Palm Bay, was charged with criminal mischief after Palm Bay Police were called out last Tuesday to a home to investigate reports of a person rolling into a yard at night in a black Ford truck and spinning out large ruts through the grass. Police estimated the damage to the yard from the late night incident to be at least $300. Fields was taken into custody for questioning and later released with a court date.
The witness told police she was home sleeping when she was awakened by bright light shining through her windows. She then looked outside and saw the pick-up rev up its engine and then spin its rear tires in her grass. The truck’s driver repeated the action several times, rolling in and out of the yard. She told officers that she had recently posted negative reviews on a Palm Bay animal clinic’s website and thought that yard incident might be connected.
Officers located Fields at his home and determined he was the owner of the pick-up truck and the husband of the animal clinic owner. After initially denying the woman’s claim and telling officers to “get … out of my house,” he was arrested. He then told officers that, acting on his own, he sought revenge against the victim because she posted several negative reviews about his wife’s animal clinic. He then admitted that he was wrong.

Reckless endangerment charge for teacher who deflated tire of student's car parked in his space

A teacher has been charged with reckless endangerment after letting the air out of a tire on a student’s car. 52-year-old Edward Kimble IV, of Newtown, Connecticut, turned himself into police custody on Monday morning. Kimble is accused of letting the air out of the front tire of the student’s vehicle back on June 2nd. The student’s vehicle was parked in Kimble’s parking space at at Pomeraug High School in Southbury.
Police say that school security allowed the student to park in the teacher’s space because the student parking area was unavailable. Kimble was released from custody after posting a $500 cash bond. He is due to appear in Waterbury court on August 10th.

Man arrested after argument with wife over three slices of cheese instead of two on sandwich

A man from Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, was arrested after an argument over a grilled cheese sandwich escalated into physical violence, according to police. According to an Athens-Clarke County Police report, officers were called to the Candy Circle home of James DePaola, 55, and his wife on July 27, after he became upset over her using three slices of cheese instead of two when making that sandwich.
The report stated DePaola because “upset and animated,” acting as though he may hit her. Police said when she tried to call 911, he pulled the phone from the wall. The couple’s 12-year-old daughter was eventually able to call for police from a cell phone, according to the report.
DePaola later told police he didn’t want his wife to call 911 for such a "stupid" reason. Two other children, ages 9 and 14, in addition to the girl who called 911, were home at the time of the incident. DePaola was charged with obstruction of a 911 call and criminal trespass/damage to property.

Man arrested for hitting tourist with a shovel after dispute over digging on the beach

An argument about a hole on a beach led to a Florida man striking a teenage tourist with the victim's shovel. 19-year-old Christian Gies had been hanging out at Treasure Island Beach where he'd been vacationing with his family from Lexington, Kentucky, and started digging a big hole in the sand. Police say that enraged 53-year-old Christopher Carosella from Tampa. “I just like to dig holes on the beach it was fun,” says Gies. But Gies’s fun on the beach was interrupted when he says Carosella confronted him. “He said it was illegal to dig holes on the beach. I didn't know who he was and told him if he had a problem he could contact security or police,” says Gies.
“He was not bothering a soul. I don't understand at all why this guy had a problem with that,” says Christian’s dad, Drew Gies. The verbal argument escalated but did not come to blows, according to Drew. The two men then allegedly parted ways. Around 45 minutes later, Drew said that Christian left his shovel unattended and was planning on returning to his hotel room. In that time, Carosella attempted to get hotel security to intervene in the situation. They refused to help Carosella, according to Drew. Carosella picked up the shovel and confronted Christian a second time. During the second confrontation, Carosella and Christian continued to argue when Carosella allegedly began attacking Christian with the shovel. Christian ran from Carosella, who gave chase.
Bystanders on the beach stepped in and stopped Carosella from chasing Christian. “He was swinging at me and was like, ‘When I catch you, I'm going to kill you kid',” says Christian. According to the Treasure Island Police Department, Carosella struck the victim twice, on the abdomen and on the left arm, causing bruising and abrasions. Christian was assessed by paramedics but refused treatment at the scene. His dad returned to the beach to see police and paramedics surrounding his son. “This guy was just causing trouble and Christian asked him to stop and leave him alone,” says Drew Gies. “He was obviously no public official in coming to me shirtless with a beer in his hand,” says Christian Gies. Treasure Island does have an ordinance that makes it illegal to dig a big hole on the beach, if it's not filled in right away, when told to do so by a city official.

Police said that the ordinance is not meant to regulate kids building sand castles, but holes that someone could fall into or be a hazard for emergency vehicles. Christian says he had every intention to fill it in, and offered to do so even after the attack. Investigators say it wasn't Christian who broke the law. Carosella was arrested and transported to Pinellas County Jail. He has since been released on $10,000 bond. He’s facing aggravated battery charges. Carosella later said that Christian threatened to use the hole for his grave. “I said you've got two shovels you're pretty tough, huh? Put the shovels down. He wouldn't, so unfortunately things ensued,” Carosella says. When asked why he hit Gies with a shovel he says, “Because he called me vile names and swung at me first, and my lawyer will handle the rest of it.”

Strapping a Helicopter Camera Rig onto an Elephant

It can be hard enough to get human actors to perform properly on camera. For producers of nature documentaries, there are even greater challenges.
How do they do it? To find out, TechCrunch talked to Huw Cordley, a producer for many of the BBC's nature programs. The task requires a lot of creative problem solving:
“People are always developing new equipment,” Cordey says, half grinning, half sighing, as I imagine him waving at an enormous pile of Peli cases stacked in the corner of his no doubt stacked-to-the-rafters office, “which is perfect for us. If you think about it, wildlife hasn’t really changed what they have been doing since we started filming nature documentaries. Instead, we have to come up with new ways of telling their stories.”
Photographed above is one of those solutions. It's an 85-pound gyroscopically stabilized camera rig known as a helicopter rig because that's what it's commonly attached to. This time, though, Cordley and his team attached it to an elephant.

Animal Pictures