CAROLINA NATURALLY: Mar 11, 2017

Saturday, March 11, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

What she said ...!

Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.

Here comes Johnny ... !

Today is - Johnny Appleseed Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told

It is also International Fanny Pack Day.

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

537		The Goths lay siege to Rome.
1649		The peace of Rueil is signed between the Frondeurs (rebels) and the French government.
1665		A new legal code is approved for the Dutch and English towns, guaranteeing religious observances unhindered.
1702		The Daily Courant, the first regular English newspaper is published.
1810		The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise.
1811		Ned Ludd leads a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization.
1824		The U.S. War Department creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seneca Indian Ely Parker becomes the first Indian to lead the Bureau.
1845		Seven hundred Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burn the small town of Kororareka in protest at the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, in breach with the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.
1861		A Confederate Convention is held in Montgomery, Ala., where the new constitution is adopted.
1863		Union troops under General Ulysess S. Grant give up their preparations to take Vicksburg after failing to pass Fort Pemberton, north of Vicksburg.
1865		Union General William Sherman and his forces occupy Fayetteville, N.C.
1888		A disastrous blizzard hits the northeastern United States. Some 400 people die, mainly from exposure.
1900		British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejects the peace overtures offered from Boer leader Paul Kruger.
1905		The Parisian subway is officially inaugurated.
1907		President Teddy Roosevelt induces California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation.
1930		President Howard Taft becomes the first U.S. president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, Va.
1935		The German Air Force becomes an official organ of the Reich.
1941		President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the Lend-Lease Act which authorizes the act of giving war supplies to the Allies.
1942		General Douglas MacArthur leaves Bataan for Australia.
1965		The American navy begins inspecting Vietnamese junks in hopes of ending arms smuggling to the South.
1966		Three men are convicted of the murder of Malcolm X.
1969		Levi-Strauss starts to sell bell-bottomed jeans.
1973		An FBI agent is shot at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
1985		Mikhail Gorbachev is named the new Soviet leader.
1990		Lithuania declares its independence from the Soviet Union.

Americans oppose bathroom laws limiting transgender rights

Americans oppose bathroom laws limiting transgender rights: poll

But, of course the religio-wingnut perverts are still demanding the rest of us be perverts like them and distract us from seeing them doing the exact thing(s) they accuse everyone else of doing.
Hey, religio-wingnuts - it ain't working. We are not distracted nor do we care where anyone goes to the restroom ... JUST WASH YOUR HANDS.

10 Things We’ll See in 10 Years

Some people at NASA think we’ll discover alien life by 2025. What will life on Earth be like then?

1. WE’LL FINALLY DISCOVER WHO THE MONA LISA WAS.

The identity of Mona Lisa has long been a mystery. Some think Leonardo da Vinci modeled his masterpiece on his mother; others, on a secret male lover. In fact, one art historian identified her just a few decades after the painting was completed as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the wife of a wealthy cloth merchant who commissioned the piece to a then-broke da Vinci. (The fact that the artist named his work La Gioconda was a big clue.) Now, thanks to radiocarbon dating, this hunch may finally be confirmed. Researchers believe they may have found Gherardini’s remains in a convent in Florence. If the carbon-14 tests confirm that it’s her, scientists will also do DNA tests to determine the color of her eyes, skin, and hair. With that information, they’ll be able to confirm if she is the world’s most famous half-smiler.
2. GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT LINES? ANCIENT HISTORY.
The question “Paper or plastic?” will be a distant memory in the not-so-distant future. The Food Marketing Institute predicts that by 2025, customers will no longer wait in lines to check out at grocery stores. Just like a car zipping through an electronic tollbooth, shoppers will walk out the door and a “frictionless checkout” will automatically account for products in their carts. Also coming soon: stores with moving walls. With a flick of a switch, businesses will be able to change their floor plans and turn into restaurants in the evenings or farmers’ markets on Saturday mornings.

3. THE STRONGEST ROBOTS WILL BE MADE FROM...ONIONS.

Here’s the thing about today’s robots: They’re wimps. Even the most powerful can lift only half their weight. Worse, they’re inflexible and their movements are herky-jerky. But that wouldn’t be the case if we could outfit them with lightweight, smooth-moving, and super-strong artificial muscles. In fact, a machine equipped with robo-biceps could lift 80 times its own weight! The problem is, artificial muscles are expensive. For years, scientists have been trying to make them with costly polymers. But in May 2015, researchers at the National Taiwan University discovered a material so cheap, it literally made them tear up: onions. When they coated onion cells with gold and zapped them with electricity, the cells, like human muscles, bent and contracted. Is it too soon to imagine this sort of technology someday powering robots that will carry us piggyback to work while reading us the news and serving us milkshakes?
4. THE INTERNET MAY HAVE MET ITS DOOM.

5. WE’LL FIGURE OUT IF SHAKESPEARE WAS A STONER ...

In 2012, archaeologists dug up the remains of King Richard III. Laser scans and analysis taught scientists and historians more about the 15th-century ruler than they ever imagined, revealing how he died as well as clues about his lifestyle and diet (he enjoyed peacock and swan). Academics like Francis Thackeray of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg are hoping to perform the same techniques on Shakespeare’s bones. An analysis could unearth secrets about the Bard’s own death, diet, and health—and whether he smoked weed. In 2001, fragments of clay pipes containing traces of cannabis were discovered in Shakespeare’s garden. (Hemp was used for rope and clothing in the Elizabethan era, so it follows that some of the plant was used for medicine and pleasure.) Of course, researchers may have trouble digging him up. Shakespeare’s epitaph reads: "Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, and curst be he that moves my bones."
6. ...AND POT COULD BECOME A LEGAL, LUCRATIVE CAREER.

By 2020, legal marijuana could be a $35 billion industry in the U.S. A study by ArcView Market Research suggests that as many as 18 states could legalize recreational pot use, while nearly twice that may legalize it for medical use. And that means jobs! The current medical and leisure industry—worth about $3 billion—employs between 46,000 and 60,000 people. That number is only going to get, well, higher. From horticulturalists to procurement officers to dispensary owners, the number of positions that could grow out of a prospering pot industry could make marijuana one of the hottest job prospects for college grads (at least the ones who can muster the will to get off their beanbag chairs).
7. WE’LL BE FLYING ON FUNGUS.
Those leaves you rake every fall may fuel your vacation. Researchers at Washington State University have discovered that under certain conditions, a black fungus named Aspergillus carbonarius ITEM 5010—which thrives in decaying leaves, soil, and fruit—can be used to create hydrocarbons that could help make jet fuel, which is a blend of petroleum products. (Intriguingly, the fungus creates the most hydrocarbons when it munches on oatmeal.) Not only would this be cost-effective, it would also eliminate the need for complex chemical processes used to make fuels, since the fungus does the work itself. Researchers hope Aspergillus carbonarius will start to fuel flights within the next five years.
8. WE WILL HAVE SURVIVED YET ANOTHER CICADA PLAGUE.

Since biblical times, we’ve been periodically visited by swarms of winged creatures emerging like zombies from the ground. In modern America, the most loathsome of these is a gang of cicadas known as Brood X. Its members are living underground right now sucking on tasty tree roots, but in 2021, after 17 years underfoot, the critters will claw out of the dirt to breed. Brood X will be so big that, in the Northeast, there could be 1.5 million cicadas for every acre—and they will be singing love songs for weeks. The invasion won’t be a threat to crops, but stock up on earplugs: A treeful of buzzing cicadas can top 100 decibels.
9. ART’S MOST TRAGICOMIC MEME WILL BE ERASED.

In 2012, 81-year-old Cecilia Gimenez tried to restore Ecce Homo, a 19th-century fresco in her church in Borja, Spain. The result was less than seamless. “Beast Jesus,” as it’s now called, looked more like “a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic” than Jesus wearing a crown of thorns, said the BBC’s Christian Fraser. But the mistake was a blessing in disguise, bringing in more than 150,000 tourists, who each paid a euro to view the Beast. Art historians want to restore it, and one conservator says solvents could remove the paint job in minutes, but the church may let the tourist dollars continue to roll in. Nevertheless, once the meme becomes a thing of the past (perhaps when the Internet collapses?), Ecce Homo will live again.
10. DARK MATTER WILL BE EXPOSED.

Being an astrophysicist is a bit of a grind: Folks studying the cosmos are absorbed by a universe of equations and formulas, but they don’t often get a chance to test them out—the universe is too darn vast. But that’s going to change. By 2024, a powerful radio telescope (basically, a field of dishes and antennas) will help answer the biggest questions plaguing Earth’s biggest brains. The Square Kilometre Array, located in South Africa and Western Australia, will be the world’s fastest, largest radio telescope—and the closest thing we have to a time machine. With it, scientists will peer back billions of years to observe the first black holes, stars, and galaxies. But that’s not all: It will become our greatest tool in the search for alien life, and test Einstein’s general theory of relativity—that is, our understanding of how time and gravity work. We’ll map billions of galaxies extending to the edge of the observable universe. Most exciting, it will help scientists identify dark matter, the enigmatic material composing 85 percent of our universe.

Magic May Not Be Real, But This School of Witchcraft Sure Is

Do you feel like you would have made a great witch or wizard if you just got that damned Hogwarts acceptance letter? Well good news! The Bothwell School of Witchcraft is now enrolling for a short, weekend-long course in August. Classes will take place in the Herstmoncuex castle in East Sussex and aside from teaching guests potions and necromancy, the school will also help students solve a murder mystery -which they obviously know about in advance thanks to the ancient art of divination.You can learn more about the program on their website.

'Logan' Is a Superhero Saga for Our Times

Why Blockbuster Movie 'Logan' Is a Superhero Saga for Our Times

Smithsonian Scientists Retrace the Mysterious Circumstances of an 1866 Death

Robert Kennicott was a well-liked and respected young naturalist for the Smithsonian Institution in its early days, when naturalists actually lived in the museum together. He was dedicated to collecting specimens for the institute, up until his untimely death at age 30. Kennicott's bones will be put on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History on March 10 as part of an exhibit called “Objects of Wonder.” For Kennicott, that might be the ultimate honor. But his story did not end with his death. Over a hundred years after burial, Kennicott's coffin was exhumed for examination to determine the exact cause of death.

The mystery begins with Kennicott’s death on May 13, 1866. He had been on another long mission to the Yukon—this time for the Western Union Telegraph. He was the only person who had lived in Russian America, and was to help that company find a route to lay a cable connecting the United States with Europe via the Bering Strait. Kennicott and two fellow naturalists also planned to collect rare specimens, but they arrived just below the Arctic Circle as winter began in 1865. They made a grueling trip to Fort Nulato on the Yukon River, 500 miles from any other fort, in temperatures as low as 60 below zero.
By spring, Kennicott intended to begin his own work as a naturalist. But he didn’t show up for breakfast that day, and his men found him dead by the bank of the river near the fort. Rumors began that he had committed suicide by swallowing the strychnine he often carried to preserve specimens. His friends spent eight months on a journey to bring Kennicott’s body back. He was buried in January 1867 at The Grove, in an airtight metal coffin.

Kennicott's family never really bought the idea that he had committed suicide. In 2001, forensic anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide and the museum’s division head for physical anthropology Doug Owsley performed a thorough examination and a chemical analysis to find out why he died. In analyzing Kennicott's remains, they also got a glimpse at the chemicals that 19th century people were exposed to, both accidentally and medicinally (such as lead, strychnine, and mercury), and the effects of diseases that were common at the time. Read the story of Robert Kennicott at Smithsonian.

The Men Who Volunteered to Be Poisoned by the Government

Harvey Washington Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry was concerned about the unrestricted contents of food that Americans were buying. So when he sent out a call for volunteers, 12 young men, mostly poorly-paid clerks, answered the call. They must have been hungry, because they didn't run for the hills as soon as they found out what kind of six-month experiment they'd signed up for.

Wiley’s staff would put borax in their butter, milk, or coffee. Formaldehyde would lurk in their meats, copper sulfate and saltpeter in their fruit pies. Wiley would begin at low doses and then ratchet up the amount until one or more of the men complained of debilitating symptoms, like vomiting or dizziness. Those people would then be excused from the program until they felt well enough to resume. In the event a subject died or became seriously ill, he would waive the right to pursue legal remedy against the government.
The year was 1902. With funding and consent from Congress, Wiley was about to embark on an experiment he dubbed the “hygienic table trials,” but it was the Washington news media that came up with the nickname that would stick: They called his volunteers "the Poison Squad."

The results of those experiments led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. The experiments lasted for five years, although the squad of volunteers changed. Read what those young men went through in the name of science and safety at mental_floss.

The Candy Thief

Futility Closet gives us a crime scene and a logic puzzle to solve it. Five children go into a candy store, and one of them steals a box of candy. Let's assume that none of them have chocolate on their faces, and the stolen box is not in their possession at the moment. Each of the five children gives a statement of three sentences.

Ivan:

1. I didn’t take the box of candy.
2. I have never stolen anything.
3. Dennis did it.

Sylvia:

4. I didn’t take the box of candy.
5. I’m rich and I can buy my own candy.
6. Linda knows who the crook is.

Ernie:

7. I didn’t take the box of candy.
8. I didn’t know Linda until this year.
9. Dennis did it.

Dennis:

10. I didn’t take the box of candy.
11. Linda did it.
12. Ivan is lying when he says I stole the candy.

Linda:

13. I didn’t take the box of candy.
14. Sylvia is guilty.
15. Ernie can vouch for me, because he has known me since I was a baby eight years ago.

Okay, the clue is that each child told the truth in two sentences and lied in one sentence. Who stole the candy? Don't let the fact that there are 15 sentences deter you; it's not that difficult when you get into it. When you come to an answer or give up, see the explanation at Futility Closet.