Welcome to ...

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.


Wednesday, June 21, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Today is Litha, otherwise known as the Summer Solstice ...!
 
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily. 
  
The sound of music is in the air ... !
Today is - World Music Day 

 You want the unvarnished truth?
Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
It also happens to be Go Skateboarding Day!

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

Today in History

1667
The Peace of Breda ends the Second Anglo-Dutch War as the Dutch cede New Amsterdam to the English.
1675
Christopher Wren begins work on rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral in London after the Great Fire.
1791
The French royal family is arrested in Varennes.
1834
C. H. McCormick patents the first practical reaper.
1862
Union and Confederate forces skirmish at the Chickahominy Creek.
1863
In the second day of fighting, Confederate troops fail to dislodge a Union force at the Battle of LaFourche Crossing.
1887
Britain celebrates the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria.
1900
General Douglas MacArthur offers amnesty to Filipinos rebelling against American rule.
1908
Mulai Hafid again proclaims himself the true sultan of Morocco.
1911
Porforio Diaz, the ex-president of Mexico, exiles himself to Paris.
1915
Germany uses poison gas for the first time in warfare in the Argonne Forest.
1919
Germans scuttle their own fleet at Scapa Flow, Scotland.
1939
Baseball legend Lou Gehrig is forced to quit baseball because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis–a disease which wastes muscles.
1942
German General Erwin Rommel captures the port city of Tobruk in North Africa.
1945
Japanese forces on Okinawa surrender to American troops.
1948
Dr. Peter Goldmark demonstrates his “long-playing” record.
1958
A federal judge allows Little Rock, Arkansas to delay school integration.
1963
France announces it will withdraw from the NATO fleet in the North Atlantic.
1964
Three civil rights workers disappear in Meridian, Mississippi.
1982
John Hinckley Jr. is found not guilty by reason of insanity for attempting to assassinate Reagan.
1995
The U.S. Senate votes against the nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster for Surgeon General.

The Summer of Love Had the Right Idea

When – and why – did people first start using money?

Sometimes you run across a grimy, tattered dollar bill that seems like it’s been around since the beginning of time. Assuredly it hasn’t, but the history of human beings using cash currency does go back a long time – 40,000 years.
Scientists have tracked exchange and trade through the archaeological record, starting in Upper Paleolithic when groups of hunters traded for the best flint weapons and other tools. First, people bartered, making direct deals between two parties of desirable objects.
Money came a bit later. Its form has evolved over the millennia – from natural objects to coins to paper to digital versions. But whatever the format, human beings have long used currency as a means of exchange, a method of payment, a standard of value, a store of wealth and a unit of account.

Psst, the human genome was never completely sequenced

Contrary to popular belief, the human genome was never completely sequenced. Some scientists say those gaps may play a role in diseases such as cancer.
The feat made headlines around the world: "Scientists Say Human Genome is Complete," the New York Times announced in 2003. "The Human Genome," the journals Science and Nature said in identical ta-dah cover lines unveiling the historic achievement.
There was one little problem.
"As a matter of truth in advertising, the 'finished' sequence isn't finished," said Eric Lander, who led the lab at the Whitehead Institute that deciphered more of the genome for the government-funded Human Genome Project than any other. "I always say 'finished' is a term of art."
"It's very fair to say the human genome was never fully sequenced," Craig Venter, another genomics luminary, told STAT.
"The human genome has not been completely sequenced and neither has any other mammalian genome as far as I'm aware," said Harvard Medical School bioengineer George Church, who made key early advances in sequencing technology.

Plasma Jet Engines

Is Flying At 20Km Per Second Possible?
Those who watched The Space Between Us would surely have a fresh memory of the plane that Gary Oldman’s character flew from the ground into space. The plane probably used plasma jet engines and they are being developed on...

Godzilla Amazon

The Great American Fallout

The Stories Behind Ding Dong and Other Small Town Names

Have you ever been to Ding Dong, Texas? The town was named after a family called Bell. I am not making this up. Bert and Zulis Bell opened a store in the 1930s, and hired a sign painter, C.C. Hoover, to make it attractive.
Up the way a bit, in Florence, was a man by the name of Fred Foster. Fred had a bit of a sense of humor and when he saw Hoover walk into his hardware company, he urged Hoover to take a little creative license with the sign he was painting for the Bells. He told Hoover he should paint two bells on the sign and label them Bert and Zulis. Then, underneath the bells, Hoover should paint the words ‘Ding Dong’. Hoover took Fred’s advice and painted the sign. From then on the community was forever known as Ding Dong. Pretty funny, huh?
You'll learn the origins of other small town names, like Two Egg, Florida, Possum Grape, Arkansas, and George, Washington, in a a list at Buzzfeed.

Teammates rally around gay Texas high football school player after his parents shun him

"My mom was screaming as well, saying it was ‘my choice’ to be that way. As she saying this, she grabbed my hand and said just as it would also be my choice to not let her burn my hand on the hot stove as she was pressing it closer and closer.”

Assistance to the Poor Is Negatively Skewed to Race and Location

Lead Poisoning Is Linked to School Suspensions and Lower Student Test Scores

Colorado could soon ban kids from buying smartphones

If a Colorado dad gets his way, teenagers with smartphones may have to BRB and TTYL.
Tim Farnum, a Denver doctor, is leading a push to prevent retailers from selling smartphones to customers younger than 13, The Coloradoan reported Friday. Farnum, in conjunction with his nonprofit group Parents Against Underage Smartphones, has recently begun collecting the roughly 300,000 signatures needed for the issue to appear on the ballot next fall.

Lunatic Exorciser Arrested

A Northern California mother who claimed she was trying to exorcise demons from her daughter has been booked on suspicion of biting, choking and shoving handfuls of sand into the girl's mouth and eyes on a crowded beach, authorities said.
Kimberly Felder, a 45-year-old Ferndale resident, was arrested Friday morning on suspicion of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, felony child abuse and aggravated mayhem.
Ever notice every one of these "exorcisers" is insane and the look in their eyes leaves no doubt about it.

Airlines refuse to pay ‘astronomical’ cost of surveilling foreign travelers with cameras

Known as “exit-tracking,” the system would include cameras that biometrically track the faces of passengers boarding international flights.

Senior Military Intelligence Officer Schools Fox 'News'

Islamophobia spreads from lunatic fringe wingnuts to the media

Let us be clear: The person who carries prime responsibility for the attack outside a mosque in Finsbury Park is the man who chose to drive a van into a crowd of people. But just as we should ask what ideas, ideologies, and events motivated Khalid Masood to drive his car into a crowd on Westminster Bridge, or Salman Ramadan Abedi to blow up children at a concert in Manchester, or Khuram Butt and his associates to carry out their disgusting attack on London Bridge, we should also ask what may have contributed to last night’s attack in Finsbury Park.
The key here is that the attacker is said to have shouted: “I want to kill all Muslims.” He didn’t shout: “I want to kill Muslim terrorists,” nor did he want to kill the perpetrators of the recent spate of Islamist terrorist attacks. He said he wanted to kill “all” Muslims. This is what happens when we foster a climate of collective responsibility, when a whole community is held responsible for the actions of an individual.
Despite Britain’s Muslim community being best understood as a hugely diverse “community of communities,” all too-often anti-Muslim activists and even mainstream media outlets homogenize the community into a single monolithic block, often characterized by its most extreme and violent elements.
Just as Islamists rationalize their murder by homogenizing “the West” or non-Muslims as “the enemy,” anti-Muslim activists legitimize their Islamophobia by holding a fictionalized and caricatured Muslim “community” collectively responsible for the actions of a tiny minority of Muslims.

Sex Offenders Can’t Be Banned From Social Media Sites

The Supreme Court has struck down a North Carolina law that bars convicted sex offenders from , Twitter and other popular sites. The justices ruled unanimously Monday in favor of North Carolina resident Lester Packingham Jr...
***
That would explain why so many wingnuts are still lurking around. 

Yellowstone supervolcano hit by a swarm of earthquakes

Yellowstone supervolcano has been hit by a series of earthquakes, with more 30 recorded since June 12.

Animal Pictures