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


Sunday, October 15, 2017

The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally
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Today in History

1529 Ottoman armies under Suleiman end their siege of Vienna and head back to Belgrade.
1582 The Gregorian (or New World) calendar is adopted in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal; and the preceding ten days are lost to history.
1783 Francois Pilatre de Rozier makes the first manned flight in a hot air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
1813 During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), is killed.
1863 For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sinks during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
1878 Thomas A. Edison founds the Edison Electric Light Co.
1880 Victorio, feared leader of the Minbreno Apache, is killed by Mexican troops in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico.
1892 An attempt to rob two banks in Coffeyville, Kan., ends in disaster for the Dalton gang as four of the five outlaws are killed and Emmet Dalton is seriously wounded.
1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer, is arrested for betraying military secrets to Germany.
1914 Congress passes the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, which labor leader Samuel Gompers calls “labor’s charter of freedom.” The act exempts unions from anti-trust laws; strikes, picketing and boycotting become legal; corporate interlocking directorates become illegal, as does setting prices which would effect a monopoly.
1917
Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan Mata Hari is executed by firing squad at Vincennes, outside Paris, on charges of spying for the German Empire during World War I.
1924 A German ZR-3 flies 5000 miles, the furthest Zeppelin flight to date.
1941 Odessa, a Russian port on the Black Sea which has been surrounded by German troops for several weeks, is evacuated by Russian troops.
1945 Vichy French Premier Pierre Laval is executed by a firing squad for his wartime collaboration with the Germans.
1950 President Harry Truman meets with General Douglas MacArthur at Wake Island to discuss U.N. progress in the Korean War.
1964 Nikita Khrushchev is replaced by Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale establish the Black Panther Party, an African-American revolutionary socialist political group, in the US.
1969 Rallies for The Moratorium to End the War  in Vietnam draw over 2 million demonstrators across the US, a quarter million of them in the nation’s capital.
1987 The Great Storm of 1987 strikes the UK and Europe during the night of Oct 15-16, killing over 20 people and causing widespread damage.
1989 Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky makes his 1,851st goal, breaking the all-time scoring record in the National Hockey League.
1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the USSR, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in making his country more open and reducing Cold War tensions.
1997 Andy Green of the UK becomes the first person to break the sound barrier in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving the ThrustSSC supersonic car to a record 763 mph (1,228 km/h).
2003 China launches its first manned space mission, Shenzhou I.
2007 New Zealand police arrest 17 people believed to be part of a paramilitary training camp.
2008 The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets 733.08 points, the second-largest percentage drop in the Dow’s history.
2011 Protests break out in countries around the globe, under the slogan “United for Global Democracy.”

A Brief History of the Danse Macabre

The Dance Macabre, or Dance of Death, is an idea that's been handed down for centuries. The image is of skeletons escorting people through death and to their final fate in the afterlife. The message is that no matter who you are in life, you will face death one day. While the dance has evolved over time, the message remains.
Though a few earlier examples exist in literature, the first known visual Dance of Death comes from around 1424. It was a large fresco painted in the open arcade of the charnel house in Paris’s Cemetery of the Holy Innocents. Stretched across a long section of wall and visible from the open courtyard of the cemetery, the fresco depicted human figures (all male) accompanied by cavorting skeletons in a long procession. A verse inscribed on the wall below each of the living figures explained the person’s station in life, arranged in order of social status from pope and emperor to shepherd and farmer. Clothing and accessories, like the pope’s cross-shaped staff and robes, or the farmer’s hoe and simple tunic, also helped identify each person.
Located in a busy part of Paris near the main markets, the cemetery wouldn’t have been a quiet, peaceful place of repose like the burial grounds we’re used to today, nor would it have been frequented only by members of the clergy. Instead, it was a public space used for gatherings and celebrations attended by all sorts of different people. These cemetery visitors, on seeing the Dance of Death, would certainly have been reminded of their own impending doom, but would also have likely appreciated the image for its humorous and satirical aspects as well. The grinning, dancing skeletons mocked the living by poking fun at their dismay and, for those in positions of power, by making light of their high status. Enjoy it now, the skeletons implied, because it’s not going to last.
From there, the images spread all over Europe. Atlas Obscura traces the evolution of the Dance Macabre from the Paris fresco to David S. Pumpkins.

The Spookiest Ghost Stories From All 50 States

Every state has places that are said to be haunted by the spirits of those who met an untimely death. Some are legends that grow in the telling while others are enhanced by a historical record of the tragic and violent deaths. And we imagine that some were just made up out of whole cloth. But they are fun to tell people who visit your area. Here's one from Mississippi:
At the center of the historic section of Glenwood Cemetery, Yazoo City’s public burial grounds, there’s a grave surrounded by a chain link fence. Local lore claims that the grave belonged to a witch who lived along the Yazoo River, who used to lure fishermen to the shore to torture them. When the Yazoo County sheriff came to arrest her, she fled into the swamp and fell into quicksand. The sheriff found her half sunk. Before she drowned, she swore to take revenge on Yazoo City. No one thought much of her threat, but they fenced in her grave just in case. Then, on May 25, 1904, a fire nearly wiped out the entire city, spreading quickly on unusually fierce winds. After the fire, Yazoo City residents found the chain link around the witch’s grave cut open.
How does your state's scariest ghost story stack up against that one? Read a ghost tale from each of the 50 states at Mental Floss.

The Ancient Origins of Both Light and Dark Skin

For a long time, both scientists and the general public assumed that skin color evolved to adapt to local conditions. While that idea hasn't been completely debunked, genetic research tells us skin color is a lot more complicated. Until recently just about all genetic research on skin color came from studies done on people of European descent. A new study, led by geneticist Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania, studied the genomes of over a thousand volunteers from ten ethnic groups in Africa, the most genetically diverse continent. The results upend the traditional idea that dark skin evolved to protect a person from the sun near the equator, while light skin evolved further north to let in scarce sunlight for vitamin D production.
But most of the variants that Tishkoff’s team identified, for both light and dark skin, have an ancient African origin. They likely arose in hominids like Homo erectus long before the dawn of our own species, and have coexisted in balance for hundreds and thousands of years. In many cases, the older variant is responsible for lighter skin, not darker. That’s consistent with an idea from Nina Jablonski, an anthropologist from Pennsylvania State University, who thinks that the ancient ancestors of humans—much like other primates—had pale skin. “As our ancestors moved out of the forest and into the savannah, they lost their hair and evolved darker skin,” says Nick Crawford, a researcher in Tishkoff’s lab.
The study doesn't pretend to answer all questions about skin color, but it opens some doors for further research. Read more details about the genetic study at The Atlantic.   

An Aurora borealis named "Steve"

You might wonder what Steve means. At first it didn't mean anything. It was just a name. Steve comes from the animated movie Over The Hedge. In the movie, the main characters were watching bushes rustle. Out came an animal that they didn't know. So they named it Steve.
That's how Steve, the new type of northern lights, got its name. Citizen scientists took a few photos of Steve and showed the photos to NASA scientists. NASA scientists initially couldn't explain the newly discovered aurora type, so they all decided on naming it Steve for now. NASA scientists have now created a "backronym" - Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
NASA has set up a project called Aurorasaurus. At Aurorasaurus, you can see where the northern lights are predicted to be located in the near future, and actual reports of the northern lights from people around the world.

Can magic mushrooms help to cure depression?

A recreational drug beloved by Deadheads and Burning Man attendees could one day become a first-line treatment for clinical depression and a viable replacement for antidepressants such as SSRIs.
Researchers from Imperial College London suggest that magic mushrooms, also known as psilocybin, may help ease symptoms of the mental condition. Their study, published Friday in Scientific Reports, found that magic mushrooms are effective for depression as a way to “reset” the brain.
Magic Mushrooms can help reset the brain and stop depression: scientists
Magic mushrooms are illegal in most countries but the hallucinogen has been used by humans for thousands of years. A new controlled study by Imperial College London has found the active ingredient in them — psilocybin — may help cure depression.

I Have Tasted the Future of Fake Meat

Women Inmates Are Fighting California's Raging Wildfires for as Little as $1 Per Hour

Melissa Etheridge busted for medical marijuana at US/Canadian border

Etheridge was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in 2004 and has undergone surgery and five rounds of chemotherapy and radiation with no indication of a relapse.

Arizona day care workers arrested for playing with sex toy while on duty

Two Arizona daycare workers seen in a Snapchat video were arrested Wednesday for playing with a sex toy while on duty. One employee featured in the video reportedly passed off the sex toy to a child to play with.
Gabriella Del Carmen Garcia, 25, was featured committing the acts in the video with a sex toy. Fatina Saywer, 24, was responsible for shooting and publishing the video. A third woman, Janae Peterson, 21, was identified in the video as having watched the incident unfold. The Chandler Police Department (CPD) was notified of the video's existence Monday. An unidentified person who reported the video discovered it on Snapchat, police said.

‘Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law’

A new book by James Whitman will leave you as startled as this respected legal scholar was when he came upon a meticulous record of a meeting of top lawyers in Nazi Germany after Hitler’s rise to power.

Arizona restaurant closes after pro-Dumbass Trump Facebook post infuriates customers

Arizona restaurant closes indefinitely after pro-Dumbass Trump Facebook post infuriates customers

Bundy-backing Las Vegas councilwoman used cops as ‘private Gestapo’ to silence critics

Bundy-backing Las Vegas councilwoman used cops as ‘private Gestapo’ to silence critics at HOA meeting

Sheriff's deputy caught using racial slurs about a local attorney loses his job

A sheriff’s deputy in Sandusky, Ohio was given two choices when he was discovered to have used racial slurs against a local attorney — resign, or be fired

White supremacists fly into white-hot rage at news some Vikings may have been Muslim

Last Friday, word of an Uppsala University study suggesting that some ancient Vikings were Muslim converts went rocketing around the Internet and hit Twitter like a bomb.
Uppsala researchers found Vikings buried in Sweden with cloth inscribed with the word “Allah,” the Muslim word for “Dog,” suggesting that as they roamed the world, Vikings encountered adherents to Islam and perhaps some of them converted.
Vikings are one of white supremacists’ most favorite things, embodying the “racial purity” and ferocity in war that thousands of 4chan keyboard warriors aspire to. Nazi websites like The Daily Stormer regularly truck in Viking imagery and Norse myth when appealing to disaffected whites, so the news that some Vikings could be Muslim was bound to hit some racists pretty hard.

KKK ‘imperial wizard’ who shot at Charlottesville counter-protesters denied bail

Richard Wilson Preston, a Ku Klux Klan “imperial wizard” who was caught on video was denied bail. The judge wasn't buying his defense.

A Lot of Women Don’t Think Consent Can Be Withdrawn During Sex

Teacher ‘used Dog and christianity’ to lure teen into sex

An Alabama teacher used religion to prey on a sex abuse victim, according to a new lawsuit that accuses school officials of covering up the case.
The victim filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing Tuscaloosa County School System officials of failing to stop the sexual abuse by teacher Joe Bradley Petrey, reported AL.com.
Petrey taught the victim twice, when she was a freshman and then again as a junior at Brookwood High School.

Animal Pictures