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


Monday, January 1, 2018

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
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Today in History

1500
The Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral reaches the coast of Brazil and claims the region for Portugal.
1586
Sir Francis Drake launches a surprise attack on the heavily fortified city of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola.
1698
The Abenaki Indians and the Massachusetts colonists sign a treaty halting hostilities between the two.
1766
The Old Pretender, son of James III, dies.
1788
The Times, London’s oldest running newspaper, publishes its first edition.
1808
A U.S. law banning the import of slaves comes into effect, but is widely ignored.
1824
The Camp Street Theatre opens as the first English-language playhouse in New Orleans.
1830
William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first edition of a journal entitled The Liberator, calling for the complete and immediate emancipation of all slaves in the United States.
1863
Confederate General Braxton Bragg and Union General William Rosecrans readjust their troops as the Battle of Murfreesboro continues.
1863
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in the Confederacy.
1891
Facilities open on Ellis Island, New York, to cope with the vast flood of immigrants coming into the United States.
1907
The Pure Food and Drug Act becomes law in the United States.
1915
The German submarine U-24 sinks the British battleship Formidable in the English Channel.
1918
The first gasoline pipeline begins operation along the 40 miles and three inches of pipe from Salt Creek to Casper, Wyoming.
1923
Sadi Lecointe sets a new aviation speed record flying an average of 208 mph at Istres.
1937
At a party at the Hormel Mansion in Minnesota, a guest wins $100 for naming a new canned meat–Spam.
1945
In Operation Bodenplatte, German planes attack American forward air bases in Europe. This is the last major offensive of the Luftwaffe.
1959
Fidel Castro seizes power in Cuba as General Fulgencio Batista flees.
1986
As the United States builds its strength in the Mediterranean, Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi threatens to retaliate if attacked.

Simple Tips That Will Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet


best tips for 20185 Simple Tips That Will Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet
From getting a date to choosing the perfect avocado, we've got you covered

Five things that actually didn't suck in 2017

Let’s face it: 2017 sucked.
And it’s not just me saying that; a cursory look through Twitter verifies that 2017 was, in fact, the worst one yet. In fact, I can say with a great degree of certainty that the only people who actually enjoyed it are Dumbass Trump sycophants and that kid who got a free year of nuggets.

Icons we lost

If 2016 felt like a celebrity death epidemic, including the shocking losses of the relatively young Prince, Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher, 2017 was filled with less surprising, if still bittersweet, farewells: in comedy, three foundational legends passed away: Mary Tyler Moore, Don Rickles and Jerry Lewis; in music, rock and roll legends Chuck Berry and Fats Domino.

The 10 Best and Worst Fitness Trends We Saw In 2017

best and worst fitness trends of 2017The 10 Best and Worst Fitness Trends We Saw In 2017
Some will get you ripped. The others will get you nowhere

It Didn’t Take Very Long For Anesthesia to Change Childbirth

Scottish physician James Y. Simpson is credited with developing the use of anesthesia in childbirth. It's true that Simpson popularized the use of chloroform for childbirth, which he first used in 1847. Earlier that year, he'd used ether in a difficult delivery. But even before that, Dr. Crawford W. Long was using ether as an anesthetic. In fact, it was on this date in history, December 27, 1845, that Long gave his wife ether to help her through the birth of their second child.
When Long did this, he had already used ether on a friend, writes anesthesiologist Almiro dos Reis Júnior, to remove infected cysts from his neck. Long had experience with the substance from so-called “ether parties” where young people would knock each other out for fun. However, the public was skeptical of knocking people unconscious during surgery, so Long stopped using ether in his clinic. “But Long still believed in the importance of anesthesia and administered ether to his wife during the birth of his second child in 1845 and other subsequent deliveries, thus undoubtedly becoming the pioneer of obstetric analgesia,” writes dos Reis Júnior.
Both ether and chloroform had been used recreationally, and both are dangerous if the amount isn't just right. But the relief from the pain of childbirth caught on rapidly, especially after Queen Victoria gave birth using anesthesia. Read about the early days of anesthesia at Smithsonian.

When Whimsical Anti-Theft Tea Caddies Protected the World's Most Precious Leaf

When American Colonists threw boxes of tea into Boston Harbor in 1773, they were protesting taxation without representation. But you might be surprised to learn that the tea they dumped would have been worth about $2 million in 2017 dollars! It's hard to believe how expensive tea once was, considering a teabag now costs about a penny, if you aren't too picky about the flavor. But because tea was so expensive in the 18th and 19th centuries, people kept special boxes to store it, many of them with locks. These tea caddies, made of porcelain, silver, or wood, were ornately designed to signify the value of the tea they held. Marnie Bramble collected more than 400 tea caddies, and her son Mark Bramble inherited the collection and wrote a book called A Tea Caddy Collection. He talked with Ben Marks about tea caddies.
Now, in addition porcelain from China, glazed in blue and iron-red floral and figurative designs, tea caddies were made out of German porcelain, stoneware, Jasperware, creamware, and cauliflower ware, which was a type of creamware that was molded and glazed to resemble the vegetable. Tea caddies were made of Japanned papier-mâché and also wood, from chests to fanciful fruit forms—pears, apples, pineapples, and pumpkins were popular shapes. “They are my favorites,” Mark says. “I think the fruit forms are just the best. They’re totally charming, and when you hold them, they have a warmth that porcelain does not.”
The fruit forms also lack the provenance that most ceramic tea caddies enjoy. “There’s a real mystery to those pieces,” he says. “There’s no evidence of a manufacturer’s mark on them, which gives credence to the notion that they were homemade.” Less charming is the lead-lining inside the fruit form. “Using lead seems astonishing to us, but lead protected the tea from moisture.”
Read more about tea caddies and the global tea trade that made them necessary at Collectors Weekly.

Amazon ordered not to pull in customers who can't spell 'Birkenstock'

Did you mean Birkenstock?
A German court has ordered Amazon not to lure internet shoppers to its online marketplace when they mistakenly search for “Brikenstock”, “Birkenstok”, “Bierkenstock” and other variations in Google.
The ruling is a victory for the German sandal maker, whose relationship with Amazon has grown increasingly antagonistic. It convinced a district court in Duesseldorf that Amazon booked variations of “Birkenstock” as keywords through Google AdWords.
Any of those variations would produce search results for Birkenstock shoes sold on Amazon.com, the court said in a ruling dated Dec. 20. Birkenstock sought the injunction because it feared unsuspecting shoppers might buy low-quality counterfeits through Amazon that would erode its reputation.

Frozen Niagara

Photos of frozen Niagara Falls emerge as tourists brave sub-zero temperatures

People doing incredibly stupid things in the freezing cold weather

With dangerously cold weather blanketing much of the United States for the New Year’s weekend, Americans have been injuring themselves trying to throw boiling water into the frigid air.
Injuries caused by attempts at instantly crystalizing water into ice are not the only examples of winter tomfoolery.

Citizens Begin Reclaiming Coal Country After Decades of Corporate Land Grabs

Legal Pot Begins in California

Judge Won't Tolerate 'Game-Playing' By Neo-Nazi Site Founder

Alaska Airlines faces suit after passenger dies

A family from Spokane, Washington, sued Alaska Airlines and a contractor of the airline Wednesday for neglecting their duties in taking proper care of a disabled 75-year-old woman, who fell down from an escalator in Portland International Airport in June. The woman later died of her injuries.

NYC crime rates at record lows, mirroring national trends

NYC crime rates at record lows, mirroring national trends

Can the Community Rights Movement Fix Capitalism?

The Wingnut 'Tax Cut' Will Also Shrink Your Paycheck

Slow federal response in Puerto Rico is causing urgent shortage of IV bags

"My wife's nurse had to stand for 30 mins & administer a drug slowly through a syringe because there are almost no IV bags in the continental U.S. anymore. See, they were all manufactured in a Puerto Rican factory which still isn't fixed," wrote Ben Boyer. "Meanwhile that stupid swollen prick golfs."

Soccer coach arrested for pimping minors

A California high school soccer coach was arrested Monday on charges of trafficking and pimping of a minor, the Sacramento Bee reported. Elan Seagraves, 34, was accused of forcing a 17-year-old girl into sex trafficking and was booked on Xmas day in Sacramento, California.

Old white guy is the latest ‘Nigerian Prince’

Police in Slidell, Louisiana say an elderly white man posed as African royalty online in attempts to scam hundreds of people out of thousands of dollars.

Woman busted calling Dollar Tree employee a ‘black whore’ in viral video insists she’s ‘too educated’ to be racist

A dollar store customer caught on video in a racist tirade now claims that she is the real victim.

Unemployed man forced to pay Muslim security guard

A court ruled that a man who hurled racist abuse at a Muslim security guard shortly after losing his job must compensate the man he accused of “taking our jobs.”

DOJ trying to add citizenship question to census

The Justice Department is pushing for a question on citizenship to be added to the 2020 census, a move that observers say could depress participation by immigrants who fear that the government could use the information against them. That, in turn, could have potentially large ripple effects for everything the once-a-decade census determines — from how congressional seats are distributed around the country to where hundreds of billions of federal dollars are spent.

Gamer behind Kansas ‘swatting’ call resulting in innocent man’s death taken into custody

Tyler Raj Barriss, 25, was booked in Glendale, California the day after a police killing that started with an argument over video games became national news.

Suspects charged in throat-slashing murders of lesbian couple and two children

Two men have been charged in the gruesome murder of a lesbian couple and two children, ages 5 and 11, in Troy, NY, said the New York Daily News on Saturday.

Florida 'hot cop' resigns as Internal Affairs probes his anti-Semitic Facebook posts

A Florida law enforcement officer, whose fame derived from a “hot cop” selfie during Hurricane Irma, has quit his job after the attention resulted in an Internal Affairs board investigation into racist social media posts he made, USA Today reports.
Gainesville Police Department Officer Michael Hamill was suspended for the social media posts and then resigned the day he was to be interviewed by investigators.

Nervous Reporter Reluctantly Picks Up Brain-Shaped Blob From A Vancouver Lagoon

Watching The Blob made me wary of picking up anything that reminds me of a blob, but the reporter in this video obviously doesn't have these horror movie-related phobias imprinted on her brain.And although she is a bit nervous as she scoops a massive, slimy brown brain blob thing out of the Lost Lagoon of Stanley Park she's not as nervous as I would be about the slimy encounter.
Her name is Martha Perkins of the Vancouver Courier, and although Celina Stames of the Stanley Park Ecological Society watched over Martha as she scooped up the blobby mass (which was a colony of single-celled animals called bryozoans) there may still be blobby repercussions.

If you should hear about Martha's "disappearance", and the authorities discover a puddle of slime in her empty apartment, remember Martha for her bravery and her curiosity in the face of blech-inducing blobbery.

The Animals That Went Extinct in 2017

Wildlife ecologist David Steen publishes an annual list of animals that probably went extinct in the past year. Some of them are only locally extinct, and some are extinct in the wild but have examples in zoos or laboratories. The list for 2017 includes bats, skinks, geckos, and the fishing cat.
The Fishing Cat is in big trouble in Southeast Asia. After extensive camera trap surveys in Java failed to turn any up there is a fear that they have gone extinct in all of Indonesia (they persist in low numbers elsewhere).
The fishing cat pictured above lives in a zoo. Read this year's list, and the methodology and philosophy behind the list at Living Alongside Wildlife.

Animal Pictures