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Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, August 24, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally
Oh, my ...! 
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   
  
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Today in History

   357
Julian Caesar defeats the Alamanni at Strasbourg in Gaul.
1346
Edward III of England defeats Philip VI’s army at the Battle of Crecy in France.
1758
The Prussian army defeats the invading Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf.
1765
In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sack and burn the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson.
1830
The “Tom Thumb” steam locomotive runs its famous race with a horse-drawn car. The horse wins because the engine, which had been ahead, breaks down.
1862
Union and Confederate troops skirmish at Waterloo Bridge, Virginia, during the Second Bull Run Campaign.
1864
Confederate General A.P. Hill pushes back Union General Winfield Scott Hancock from Reams Station where his army has spent several days destroying railroad tracks.
1875
“Captain” Matthew Webb becomes the first man to swim across the English Channel.
1916
The National Park Service is established as part of the Department of the Interior.
1921
The United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signs a peace treaty with Germany.
1925
A. Phillip Randolph organizes the Sleeping Car Porters’ Union.
1940
The first parachute wedding ceremony is performed by Rev. Homer Tomlinson at the New York City World’s Fair for Arno Rudolphi and Ann Hayward. The minister, bride and groom, best man, maid of honor and four musicians were all suspended from parachutes.
1941
British and Soviet forces enter Iran, opening up a route to supply the Soviet Union.
1943
The Allies complete the occupation of New Georgia.
1944
Paris is liberated from German occupation by Free French Forces under General Jacques LeClerc.
1948
The House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing.
1950
President Harry Truman orders the U.S. Army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.
1980
Zimbabwe joins the United Nations.
1981
Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn.
1989
NASA scientists receive stunning photographs of Neptune and its moons from Voyager 2.
1989
Mayumi Moriyama, formerly head of Japan’s Environmental Agency, becomes Japan’s first female cabinet secretary
1991
The Airbus A340 makes its first flight.
1991
Belarus gains independence from the USSR.
1991
Croatian War of Independence: Battle of Vukovar begins, an 87-day siege of a Croatian city by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces.
2012
Severe flooding in Burma.

Pokeball Flower

This Pokémon Go craze has even invaded the flower garden! Redditor space_wyrm found a zinnia in the garden that aspires to be a Pokeball. You know what they say, dress not for the job you have, but for the job you want.

Unmanned Boat Reaches Hawaii; New Zealand Next

Damon McMillan and friends spent three years designing, building, and perfecting a solar-powered boat called the SeaCharger. The vessel is eight feet long and weighs 60 pounds, and is powered by two plastic solar panels. How far can a boat like this travel on autopilot? On June 11, McMillan launched it into the surf off the coast of Half Moon Bay, California.
An older man who has been watching the entire time approaches me and tells me that he’s sorry that I lost control of my boat and that he’s sure it’ll wash up on the beach somewhere. I assure him that the boat is on autopilot, going exactly where it’s supposed to be going. “And where is that?” he asks. “Hawaii.” The look on his face is priceless.
Indeed, the idea of this tiny, homemade boat surviving 2,400 miles of open ocean to reach Hawaii seems foolishly unrealistic, and I know that more than anybody else. With help from friends, I built the eight-foot-long, autonomous, foam-and-fiberglass, solar-powered SeaCharger in my garage – not to make money or to win a contest, but simply as a challenge.
McMillan tracked the SeaCharger by satellite when it checked in every two hours (or didn’t). On July 22, he was there at Mahukona Harbor in Hawaii when his boat arrived. That’s some accomplishment! But the SeaCharger is still going. After five days of maintenance, it was launched again from Hawaii on July 27, bound for New Zealand. McMillan writes about building the boat and the experience of tracking it at Make. You can keep track of the SeaCharger as it makes its way to New Zealand at the project’s website.

10 Things To Do In Las Vegas With An Unlimited Budget

The conventional wisdom for a trip to Las Vegas is to not take more money than you are prepared to lose at the casinos. But if you have the bucks, there are plenty of luxury accommodations, side trips, sports, fine dining, and shopping to do. Like a private skiing expedition to the secluded Ruby Mountains via helicopter.
If you have the money and enjoy adventure, you can escape from your Las Vegas trip to the nearby Ruby Mountains. Joe Royer has led Helicopter Skiing adventures in the snow covered mountains since 1977. The Ruby Mountains are a little known area of Nevada with 10 peaks above 10,000 feet. The secluded spot features powdered slopes and alpine lakes.
Royer offers a 3 day package. This includes helicopter lifts up the mountain for at least 20 ski runs. The package includes fine dining, luxury lodging and hiking tours. The company also offers private guide service.
That trip will cost you $4,650 for three days. But there’s plenty of things you can spend even more serious money on in this list from Housely.

The King’s Letters

Before the 15th century, Korean existed as a spoken language only. Korean writing used Chinese characters, which limited literacy to the elite class who could spend years learning the thousands of pictograms. Then in the 1430s, a scholar came up with an idea to develop a Korean alphabet based on the sounds of the spoken language. Once the alphabet was learned, writing would become accessible to the masses. It was an idea that scared the wits out of the ruling elite class. 
“What do you know of language and linguistics?” the bold scholar asked of several high-ranking officials who objected to his idea. “This project is for the people, and if I don’t do it, who will?” The scholar was none other than Sejong, the king of Korea, who had held the throne since 1418. His profoundly democratic conviction that literacy ought to be accessible to everyone was revolutionary in every sense. When King Sejong unveiled Hangul—his new alphabet for the Korean language—it was met with vehement opposition from Sejong’s advisors, from the literary elite, and from subsequent monarchs. For these objectors, Hangul was barbaric, it was primitive, it was unnecessary, it was an insult, and it needed to be eliminated.
Nevertheless, Sejong was the king, and his alphabet was developed. Still, the powerful bureaucrats of Korea fought its adoption for centuries. The history of Hangul is a fascinating story told at Damn Interesting.

10 Facts About Ancient Roman Life

by Mark Oliver
Ancient Rome holds a mythic place in our imaginations. It’s the land of historical epics like Ben-Hur and Gladiator, where men in golden armor ride chariots and emperors are fed grapes in reclining chairs.
Real life in Rome, though, was quite a bit less glamorous. In a time before modern sanitation and medicine, getting through an average day was a difficult task—and far more disgusting than you could ever imagine.
10 People Washed Their Mouths Out With Urine
10-urinal-mouthwash
In ancient Rome, pee was such big business that the government had special taxes in place just for urine sales. There were people who made their living just from collecting urine. Some would gather it at public urinals. Others went door-to-door with a big vat and asked people to fill it up.
The ways they used it are the last ones you’d expect. For example, they’d clean their clothes in pee. Workers would fill a tub full of clothing and pee, and then one poor soul would be sent in to stomp all over the clothing to wash it out.
Which is nothing compared to how they cleaned their teeth. In some areas, people used urine as a mouthwash, which they claimed kept their teeth shining white. In fact, there’s a Roman poem that survives today in which a poet mocks his clean-toothed enemy by saying, “The fact that your teeth are so polished just shows you’re the more full of piss.”
9 You Shared a Sponge After Pooping
9a-romans-sharing-poo-stick
Rome has been praised for its advances in plumbing. Their cities had public toilets and full sewage systems, something that later societies wouldn’t share for centuries. That might sound like a tragic loss of an advanced technology, but as it turns out, there was a pretty good reason nobody else used Roman plumbing.
The public toilets were disgusting. Archaeologists believe they were rarely, if ever, cleaned because they have been found to be filled with parasites. In fact, Romans going to the bathroom would carry special combs designed to shave out lice.
The worst part came when you finished. Each public toilet, which was shared with dozens of other people, would have a single sponge on a stick that you used to wipe yourself. The sponge would never get cleaned—and you shared it with everybody else there.
8 Toilets Regularly Exploded
8-roman-bathroom-fortuna
When you entered a Roman toilet, there was a very real risk you would die.
The first problem was that creatures living in the sewage system would crawl up and bite people while they did their business. Worse than that, though, was the methane buildup—which sometimes got so bad that it would ignite and explode underneath you.
Toilets were so dangerous that people resorted to magic to try to stay alive. Magical spells meant to keep demons at bay have been found on the walls of bathrooms. Some, though, came pre-equipped with statues of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, guarding them. People would pray to Fortuna before stepping inside.
7 Gladiator Blood Was Used As Medicine
7-gladiator-blood
Roman medicine also had its fair share of eccentricities.
Several Roman authors report people gathering the blood of dead gladiators and selling it as a medicine. The Romans apparently believed that gladiator blood had the power to cure epilepsy and would drink it as a cure. And that was just the civilized approach—others would pull out the gladiators’ livers and eat them raw.
This was so popular that when Rome banned gladiatorial combat, people kept the treatment going by drinking the blood of decapitated prisoners. Strangely, some Roman physicians actually report that this treatment worked. They claim to have seen people who drank human blood recover from their epileptic fits.
6 Women Rubbed Dead Skin Cells Of Gladiators On Their Faces
6-roman-face-cream
The gladiators who lost became medicine for epileptics while the winners became aphrodisiacs. In Roman times, soap was hard to come by, so athletes cleaned themselves by covering their bodies in oil and scraping the dead skin cells off with a tool called a strigil.
Usually, the dead skin cells were just discarded—but not if you were a gladiator. Their sweat and skin scrapings were put into a bottle and sold to women as an aphrodisiac. Often, this was worked into a facial cream. Women would rub the cream all over their faces, hoping the dead skin cells of a gladiator would make them irresistible to men.
5 Pompeii Was Filled With Obscene Art
5-roadway-marked-by-penis
The volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii left it wonderfully preserved for archaeologists. When they got their first look at it, though, the archaeologists found things that were so obscene that they hid them from public view.
Pompeii was filled with art that was so filthy that it was locked in a secret room for hundreds of years before anyone was allowed to look at it. The town was full of the craziest erotic artwork you’ll ever see—for example, the statue of Pan sexually assaulting a goat.
On top of that, the town was filled with prostitutes, which gave even the street tiles their own special little touch of obscenity. To this day, you can walk through Pompeii and see a sight Romans would enjoy every day—a penis carved into the road with the tip pointing the way to the nearest brothel.
4 Dangerous Places Had Drawings Of Penises For Good Luck
4-roman-penis-amulets
Penises were pretty popular in Rome. They didn’t share our skittishness toward the male member. Instead, they displayed them proudly. Sometimes, they even wore them around their necks.
It was a fairly common Roman fashion choice for boys to walk around wearing copper penises on necklaces. This was about more than looking good. According to Roman writings, these would “prevent harm from coming” to the people who wore them.
They didn’t stop there, either. Good luck penises were also drawn on dangerous places to keep travelers safe. Sharp curves and rickety bridges in Rome often had a penis drawn on them to grant good luck to every passerby.
3 Romans Hold The First Recorded Mooning
3-roman-soldiers-jerusalem
Rome holds the unique distinction of recording the first mooning in history. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest, wrote the first description of a mooning while describing a riot in Jerusalem.
During Passover, Roman soldiers were sent to stand outside of Jerusalem to keep watch in case the people revolted. They were meant to keep the peace, but one soldier did a little bit more. In Josephus’s own words, the soldier lifted “up the back of his garments, turned his face away, and with his bottom to them, crouched in a shameless way and released at them a foul-smelling sound where they were offering sacrifice.”
The Jews were furious. First, they demanded that the soldier be punished, and then they started hurtling rocks at the Roman soldiers. Soon a full-on riot broke out in Jerusalem—and a gesture that would live on for thousands of years was born.
2 Romans Vomited So They Could Keep Eating
2-roman-feast
Romans took excess to new levels. According to Seneca, Romans at banquets would eat until they couldn’t anymore—and then vomit so that they could keep eating.
Some people threw up into bowls that they kept around the table, but others didn’t let themselves get so caught up in the formalities. In some homes, people would just throw up right there on the floor and go back to eating.
The slaves are the people you really need to feel sorry for, though. Their jobs were terrible. In the words of Seneca: “When we recline at a banquet, one [slave] wipes up the spittle; another, situated beneath, collects the leavings [vomit] of the drunks.”
1 Charioteers Drank An Energy Drink Made Of Goat Dung
1-goat-dung_26918222_SMALL
Romans didn’t have Band-Aids, so they found another way to patch up wounds. According to Pliny the Elder, people in Rome patched up their scrapes and wounds with goat dung. Pliny wrote that the best goat dung was collected during the spring and dried but that fresh goat dung would do the trick “in an emergency.”
That’s an attractive image, but it’s hardly the worst way Romans used goat dung. Charioteers drank it for energy. They either boiled goat dung in vinegar or ground it into a power and mixed it into their drinks. They drank it for a little boost when they were exhausted.
This wasn’t even a poor man’s solution. According to Pliny, nobody loved to drink goat dung more than Emperor Nero himself.

Why a Single-Payer Health-Care System Is Inevitable

Having Memory Problems?

Marketing Can Change Kids' Brain Activity

Woman Calls Topless Maid Van, Gets Waaaay More Than Clean Windows

Let's just say ... there wasn't very much "cleaning" done.

Former Fox Employee Says Ailes and O'Reilly Contributed to Network Being a 'Playboy Mansion-Like Cult'

Fox 'News' Is Collapsing Like A House Of Cards As Andrea Tantaros Names O’Reilly In Lawsuit

Fox 'News' Is Collapsing Like A House Of Cards As Andrea Tantaros Names O’Reilly In Lawsuit
Another sexual harassment lawsuit was just filed against Fox 'News' by another female anchor and it’s DAMNING.

Ex-Cons Remember Their Worst Jobs After Being Released From Prison

People who wind up in prison often learn skills while they're locked up to help them get a job when they finish their sentence, but a felony on your record reduces your job options to virtually nil.
So ex-cons are often forced to take whichever job they can get, and all that training on the inside ironically ends up being worthless on the outside due to their criminal record.
Writer and ex-con Seth Ferranti spoke with other ex-cons about the worst jobs they've had since they got out, and their answers were bad but not quite as bad as you'd expect.
Seth thought being a sauté cook sucked, but after talking to a guy who worked eleven hours a day cleaning cow crap, a guy who picked up trash at the city dump and, worst of all, a telemarketer he discovered cooking ain't so bad after all!

Colombian grandma visiting US killed by drunken 23-year-old woman with 3 prior DUIs

The family of a 79-year-old grandmother visiting from Bogota is in mourning after the woman was killed early Saturday by a drunk driver with three previous DUIs.

Men being held in custody for forgery walked free from court after faking documents

Two men, who worked in tandem faking government documents and scamming people, used their duplicitous talent to secure bail from a court in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of Thane, India, last month. The duo, Bashir Mulla, 62, and Mohammed Lukman Shaikh, 48, managed to fool the court by securing bail through fake documents signed by non-existent police officers and guarantors. It is suspected that the lawyer who represented them in the court too was an impostor. Both Shaikh and Mulla were behind bars for making false passports and other government documents. In fact, at the hearings, the court had warned the police to recheck the documents submitted during the trials as both were known to fabricate the papers and cheat the authorities. The court's apprehensions, it turns out, were correct.
According to Thane police, there is no trace of the two. Though both were 'released' on bail a month back it is only two days back that the police even got wind of it. The alarm was raised by Vijay Sanap, a constable attached to Srinagar police station in Thane. Sanap was deputed at the Thane Sessions Court, and his job is to keep a record of the cases filed. "I have to maintain a record of the accused granted bail by the court, do verification of witnesses by the police station and keep track of the dates of the cases. I knew the court had issued a bail order for the two accused last month but they could not be released as the verification of the guarantors was pending. There is a procedure where the witnesses' record is checked and only then can the accused be released. This (the bail hearing) was on July 20," said Sanap. He said, "After that, there was no mention of the case. Three days back, when I was going through the case diary.
"I saw a paper which said that both the accused had been released. The document was signed by senior inspector Kaarkar of Srinagar police station and submitted by one constable RS Patil. As I myself am attached to the same police station I know that there is no one called Patil there and also the name of the senior inspector was different. I inquired with the Srinagar police station and found out that the verification order had not yet reached them, and hence they had not yet approved the release order. They had no idea of the accused having been released." Sanap then asked the police station to check the papers and then it dawned on all that the two guarantors who had signed the document were fake. The guarantors, Santosh Dongre and Sakharam Khude, were as non-existent as were the constable and the senior inspector who signed their release documents. Also the rubber stamps of the police station were fake.

Senior inspector Sarkar of Srinagar police station said, "The verification order or the original bail order never reached us. We had no idea that he was being released as he was in judicial custody." Then a hunt was launched for the lawyer who represented the two accused and had applied for the bail. Surprisingly, even the lawyer could not be identified. Sanap then informed the court about the issue and the judge asked him to file an First Information Report in the Thane Nagar police station under whose jurisdiction the crime had taken place. Senior inspector Mandar Dharmadhikari of Nagar police station said, "We have booked both the accused, the unidentified lawyer for cheating and forgery and investigations are on. We have also called for the case papers." The police suspect that an insider from the court may have been part of the duo's plans and helped in the court order not reaching the police station.

New Jersey cops chase black boy with guns drawn after mistaking him for adult suspect

Police chased a 10-year-old black boy with guns drawn after mistaking him for an adult armed robbery suspect.

Homeowner calls police after robbery — and Indianapolis cops shoot him on arrival

“I think that’s really crazy,” said resident Angela Parrott, who has lived in the neighborhood for about a year. “What do we have, trigger-happy police officers out here now?”

Dog re-elected as town's mayor for third time in landslide victory

The town of Cormorant, Minnesota, re-elected Duke the dog as mayor for the third time on Saturday.

Animal Pictures