The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally is read in 194 countries around the world daily.
 

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Today in History

1244		The Sixth Crusade ends when an Egyptian-Khwarismian force almost annihilates the Frankish army at Gaza.
1529		Henry VIII of England strips Thomas Wolsey of his office for failing to secure an annulment of his marriage.
1346		English forces defeat the Scots under David II during the Battle of Neville's Cross, Scotland.
1691		Maine and Plymouth are incorporated in Massachusetts.
1777		British Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne surrenders 5,000 men at Saratoga, N.Y.
1815		Napoleon Bonaparte arrives at the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he has been banished by the Allies.
1849		Composer and pianist Frederic Chopin dies in Paris of tuberculosis at the age of 39.
1863		General Ulysses S. Grant is named overall Union Commander of the West.
1877		Brigadier General Alfred Terry meets with Sitting Bull in Canada to discuss the Indians' return to the United States.
1913		Zeppelin LII explodes over London, killing 28.
1933		Due to rising anti-Semitism and anti-intellectualism in Hitler's Germany, Albert Einstein immigrates to the United States. He makes his new home in Princeton, N.J.
1941		The U.S. destroyer Kearney is damaged by a German U-boat torpedo off Iceland; 11 Americans are killed.
1956		The nuclear power station Calder Hall is opened in Britain. Calder Hall is the first nuclear station to feed an appreciable amount of power into a civilian network.
1972		Peace talks between Pathet Lao and Royal Lao government begin in Vietnam.
1989		The worst earthquake in 82 years strikes San Francisco bay area minutes before the start of a World Series game there. The earthquake registers 6.9 on the Richter scale–67 are killed and damage is estimated at $10 billion.
1994		Dmitry Kholodov, a Russian journalist, assassinated while investigating corruption in the armed forces; his murkier began a series of killings of journalists in Russia.
2001		Rehavam Ze'evi, Israeli tourism minister and founder of the right-wing Moledet party, assassinated by a member of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); he was the first Israeli minister ever assassinated.
2003		Taipei 101 is completed in Taipei, becoming the world's tallest high-rise.

Non Sequitur

Did you know ...

The 5 depressing ways the 1% have broken the back of America

Robert Reich to tea party: America doesn't like traitors to our system of government

That 74% of Americans disapprove of how the repugican cabal is handling the shut down

That a woman wins $18 m lawsuit because of credit report errors

The tea party Adds the repugican cabal to its List of Enemies to be Destroyed

The Heritage Foundation's Tim Chapman says, "We have an opportunity to take over the party and it will be in the next election."…

 

At the same time we are seeing speakers at the Values Voters Summit dump on “establishment repugicans” like John McCain, Peter King, and Lindsey Graham for failing to stand strong alongside Ted Cruz for conservative principles, Sean Handjob appeared in a video on mofopolitics.com – the “official arbiter of wingnuttery” – yesterday to call for a wingnut third party. Everyone is taking sides. Handjob wants this new party separate from what he sees as the establishment-controlled repugican cabal, which is apparently full of Obama enablers. On the other side of the equation we have one of those “establishment repugicans” (identified as such by his opposition to Ted Cruz), Peter King, who says, “We cannot allow our cabal to be taken over by the likes of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. I mean, these people are isolationists. I consider them RINOs…” Meanwhile a poll at mofopolitics.com lists Paul Ryan as a “RINO wimp.”
S.E. Cupp, a Ryan defender, laments that “once again, repugicans have decided to cannibalize themselves viciously and needlessly instead of uniting over common goals.” To say there is a struggle right now to determine what it means to be a repugican hardly does justice to the battle that is brewing for the soul of wingnut non-America.
Take a listen to Handjob:

So you have two different groups here and at best, you’ve got the establishment and they kinda want to pick around the edges. They’re not really up for a big fight. I think they themselves, a lot of them – I’m speaking broadly – I’ll get specific in a minute – they kinda like the bureaucracy. they don’t want to have bit fights. They want to work things out. They want to negotiate. they want to compromise. Not that those things are necessarily always bad. They’re not. They’re not leftists but they’re bureaucrats and bureaucrats tend to want to protect the bureaucracy. They argue they want to fight against healthcare, they campaigned against Obamacare, said they would do everything in their power to repeal Obamacare, but I would argue that the more establishment types don’t really have the stomach to fight for this. I think if they have their way they’ll get little victories here and there, negotiate whatever crumbs Obama and the Democrats are willing to feed them and in the end America’s gonna be more in a state of managed decline. That will be best result because I think there’s a point where compromise hurts in the long run. There’s a time to stand up and there’s a time to compromise, You have to have the wisdom to distinguish between them.

Yes, you just heard Sean Handjob speaking of wisdom as though he has any, let alone knows what it is. A myth he busts a moment later by attacking what he sees as moderate repugicans, including Bob Dole and John McCain. “The argument has always been,” he complains, “that the more moderate candidate has the greater appeal in presidential elections and you always hear that from the establishment wing every election.”
Gosh, ya think they might say this because it’s true?
But Handjob, refusing to see this, goes on to object to the establishment repugicans telling wingnuts “they have to suck it up when they lose” and because they lost the primaries, must support the moderate who won because the Democrat is far worse. Handjob doesn’t like that establishment repugicans tell wingnuts, “We need a more electable moderate.”
You would think “losing the primaries” would be a clue to Handjob that all is not as it seems to the extremist base, that they do not speak for all repugicans, let alone all Americans, as they would have us believe. No, for Handjob, the solution is to dig in their heels and not only refuse to give another inch but to demand the unconditional surrender of their opponents.
“Now as a wingnut myself,” he says, “I think…this is the moment where wingnut solutions need to prevail”:

There problem here is the more establishment wing of the repugican cabal they didn’t stick together with these guys (Cruz, Paul, etc),” he accuses, speaking of people like John McCain, who has also been attacked at the Values Voter Summit. “And Instead the establishment has been out there trashing principled wingnuts.” He complained that the establishment is attacking the tea party and that establishment repugicans “have declared war on unprincipled wingnuts like Ted Cruz, doing the bidding of the Democrats and the leftist media. Now you’ve got the establishment repugicans trashing the wingnut base of their own cabal.
I don’t think this country is gonna survive with half measures,” he said, meaning, in other words, compromise. “Either you believe that we need radical positive oriented solutions for this country and you’re willing to fight for them or you’re not. Is it a third party we need? I’ve often argued no. I’m not so sure anymore. It may be time for a new wingnut cabal in America. I’m sick of these guys.

The Heritage Foundation’s Tim Chapman, their Heritage Action Chief Operating Officer, seems to be thinking along lines similar to Handjob but of a takeover of the repugican cabal by the base rather than the establishment of a third party. And according to Chapman, the wingnut base isn’t planning on half measures and they’re not planning on sucking it up. Speaking to all those valueless voters, he issued a clarion call to arms:

As we speak, repugican leaders are speaking to the White House and they are cutting a deal and I promise you the deal is going to be total garbage.
We are at the point right now where we are seeing a complete cleavage away from the repugican cabal of the wingnut delusion. You are going to see massive upheaval in the next election on all fronts…We have an opportunity to take over the party and it will be in the next election

David Frumm warns in an opinion piece on CNN that a third party would like help Democrats rather than put the tea party in charge. He also opines “that a tea party exit would be a blessing for the repugican cabal” because, basically, the tea party has screwed the repugican cabal over:

Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole repugican brand. It’s a very interesting question whether a tea party bolt from the repugican cabal might not just liberate the cabal to slide back to the political center — and liberate repugicans from identification with the Sarah Palins and the Ted Cruzes who have done so much harm to their hopes over the past three election cycles.
It’s worth repeating over and over again. Add Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska — and you have half a dozen Senate races lost to the repugican cabal by extremist nominations.
Maybe the right answer to the threat, “Shut down the government or we quit” is: “So sad you feel that way. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Words people like Sean Handjob and Ted Cruz and Rand Paul would do well to consider, but which you know they will ignore, because, after all, their time has come, and they’re winning.

The repugicans To Big Business: Guess What? We Don’t Care What You Want

The business community has finally gotten hip: you were pawns. Pawns with a lot of money. The tea party intends to bring you down along with the rest…

 

Once Obama roundly won re-election in November 2012 and after Obamacare became the law of the land, they’d come to accept this as reality and move onto another target? Anyone? Anyone?
But most assuredly I had been led to believe that no matter what intransigent, batty opposition this faction of the repugican cabal had to all things POTUS supported, there was still one group’s authority that brooked no opposition. I speak of course of Big Business, that bastion of free market, deregulated “freedom” that these Tea Party patriots seem to value above all things, starting with the fabric of the social safety net.

It isn’t very often that the views and interests of compassionate liberals and sterile, bottom-line driven business leaders intertwine, but these my friends, are unusual times. Thus we encounter headlines such as Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House repugicans in last week’s New York Times. The piece, from writers Eric Lipton, Nicholas Confessore and Nelson D. Schwartz, opens with the following:
“As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.”
Realizing that they are part and parcel of the tools used to build the 21^st Century edition of Frankenstein’s Monster, the story goes on to observe:
“Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington. ”
Well that is certainly a seismic shift in attitude toward the years of dollar-funneling in support of political campaigns, representing the most conservative “lawmakers.” But I suppose even entities with interests that run counter to the health of the American worker see this indefensible legislative squatting for what it really is: a threat to the collective livelihood of everyone. How democratic.
The Times piece, however, was written a week ago. Since then repugican leaders have flirted with the possibility of a reasonable, balanced solution to the government shutdown/debt ceiling standoff. At the moment when a weekend compromise finally seemed possible, they then pulled the football away, Lucy-style, just as a tentative Democratic caucus (definitely the Charlie Brown of this analogy) was ready to kick it.  What was the result?
Writers Annie Lowrey and Nathaniel Popper write a fresh Times piece, World Leaders Press the U.S. on Fiscal Crisis that widens the net of recorded business community frustration. It represents an area no smaller than, you know, the entire planet.  The article begins:
“Leaders at World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings on Sunday pleaded, warned and cajoled: the United States must raise its debt ceiling and reopen its government or risk ‘massive disruption the world over,’ as Christine Lagarde, the fund’s managing director, put it.”
Let it never be said that the IMF, former superfans of austerity, are in the pocket of liberal, Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman.
But here’s my favorite section of the Lowrey and Popper piece:
“Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, painted a bleak picture of the days ahead if there is no resolution. ‘As you get closer to it, the panic will set in and something will happen,’ Mr. Dimon said …’I don’t personally know when that problem starts.’ He added that JPMorgan had been ‘spending huge amounts of time and money and effort to be prepared.’”
People, when the pleas of the vaunted Jamie Dimon, Wall Street kingpin and “London Whale” trading loss shepherd, go unheeded, we have entered a new era.
An era when a small minority of terrorists (I care not that Democratic leaders have tried to soften their language. It’s getting them nowhere.) stand for nothing, care for no one, above and beyond getting their own way. I’m not sure people on the right know what that even means anymore. Is there anyone left who can articulate and defend the maneuvers of these crackpots?
The business community has finally gotten hip: you were pawns. Pawns with a lot of money. The tea party intends to bring you down along with the rest of us. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Even wingnut economists are recognizing the problem with severe income inequality.

International Monetary Fund strongly suggests countries tax the rich to fix deficit

Tax the rich and better target the multinationals: The IMF has set off shockwaves this week in Washington by suggesting countries fight budget deficits by raising taxes.

Tucked inside a report on public debt, the new tack was mostly eclipsed by worries about the US budget crisis, but did not escape the notice of experts and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

"We had to read it twice to be sure we had really understood it," said Nicolas Mombrial, the head of Oxfam in Washington. "It's rare that IMF proposals are so surprising."

Guardian of financial orthodoxy, the International Monetary Fund, which is holding its annual meetings with the World Bank this week in the US capital, typically calls for nations in difficulty to slash public spending to reduce their deficits.

But in its Fiscal Monitor report, subtitled "Taxing Times", the Fund advanced the idea of taxing the highest-income people and their assets to reinforce the legitimacy of spending cuts and fight against growing income inequalities.

Random Pictures

Human Health and Services

Is Eating Mercury-Laden Fish So Bad?

Despite new evidence that fish is safe for pregnant women, researchers continue to urge caution about the kinds of fish women choose to eat.

DNews: Sprite Cures Hangovers!

Could the ultimate hangover cure already be in your fridge? Quite possibly, yes! Laci Green discusses the science behind hangovers and why a popular soda is so good at fighting them off.

DNews: Can People Really Be Telekinetic?

It's one of the coolest superpowers out there: telekinesis. And if the mind really is as powerful as it's believed to be, is it possible? Trace opens his mind, and goes in search of the answer.

DNews: Why You Shouldn't Self-Diagnose on the Internet

When faced with a possible ailment, do you ever scour the Internet for a diagnosis before going to your doctor and end up certain that you have incurable cancer? If so, you might be a cyberchondriac.

'The Walking Dead' Returns: Know Your Zombies

Arguably the single most popular show on TV, 'The Walking Dead' is the latest zombie story to eat our brains.

It's in His Kiss: How to Tell If He's Mr. Right

Kissing helps us evaluate potential partners, a new study suggests.

11 Diseases That Just Won't Quit

The plague isn't the only resurgent disease humans once thought they had beat.

Could Brain-Eating Amoeba Invade Your Faucet?

Recent infections have been found in several states -- learn how you can be safe from the deadly amoeba.

Eating Popcorn at the Movies Makes people Immune To Advertising

Eating popcorn in the cinema may be irritating not just for fellow movie goers, but for advertisers: a group of researchers from Cologne University has concluded that chewing makes us immune to film advertising.

The reason why adverts manage to imprint brand names on our brains is that our lips and the tongue automatically simulate the pronunciation of a new name when we first hear it. Every time we re-encounter the name, our mouth subconsciously practises its pronunciation. But this 'inner speech' can be disturbed by chewing, rendering the repetition effect redundant.

Spoiler: your nearest pizza joint is probably Pizza Hut

 

Created by Flowing Data, this map reveals exactly what pizza chain dominates in any given 10-mile region of the U.S.

New Moscow restaurant is only employing twins

A restaurant owner in Moscow has decided to only hire sets of twins in a bid to attract new customers.

The Twin Stars diner employs identically-dressed siblings to serve its clients with food and drink.

Twin Stars' owner Alexei Khodorovsky said he wanted to find a way to attract diners in a competitive dining scene.

YouTube link. Original BBC video.

He said he was inspired by a 1960s film in which a schoolgirl crosses into a parallel world and finds her twin. Khodorovsky said finding twins with service experience was tough.

Her Wedding Wish Came True

Branka Delic of Sydney, Australia, has been a Bon Jovi fan most of her life. When she and Gonza became engaged in August, she launched a website called Bon Jovi – Please Walk Me Down The Aisle? They arranged the wedding for October 12th at the Graceland Chapel in Las Vegas, which is where Jon Bon Jovi got married in 1989. As it so happened, Jon Bon Jovi was in Las Vegas that day, playing a show at the MGM Grand as part of his "Because We Can" tour.

Still, Delic had no idea he was going to show up to fulfill her dream on the day of the wedding; Bon Jovi surprised her with his appearance. He posed for some pictures with the grinning bride, then did what he had been asked to do.

A good time was had by all, judging by the updates on Delic's Facebook page.

Ziggy

The NSA collects half a million buddy lists and inboxes a day. Is one of them yours?

At the Washington Post, Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani report on a new finding in the top secret documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden: The NSA is gathering "hundreds of millions of contact lists" from personal e-mail and IM accounts. Many of these accounts belong to Americans. Maybe one of them belongs to you.
The collection program had not previously been publicly revealed. According to the Washington Post story, here's how it works: the NSA intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from IM services as that data transits through the global network, for instance at session log-on and log-off. And all of this is made possible with help from compliant carriers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets. During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million per year.
Each day, the presentation said, the NSA collects contacts from an estimated 500,000 buddy lists on live-chat services as well as from the “in-box” displays of Web-based e-mail accounts.

Frame from leaked NSA presentation, published by the Washington Post.

"NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally"

Read the documents here.

Convictions Reversed By DNA Evidence

In the United States alone, there have been a total of 311 post-conviction DNA exonerations involving innocent people serving sentences for crimes that they did not commit. The average sentence that is served by these wrongfully convicted individuals is 13.6 years.

Commonly, they are the victims of eyewitness misidentification, invalid forensic evidence, overzealous law enforcement officers, and inept defense counsel. Here are ten stories of convictions that have been reversed through DNA evidence, counting down to the longest wrongful sentences served.

Lollipop man resigns after being threatened with suspension for high-fiving children

A Plymouth lollipop man has quit after being threatened with suspension for high-fiving school children as they cross the road. Appalled parents have come out in support of Bob Slade, who helped children from Manadon Vale Primary School. The 65-year-old, who worked at the school for four and a half years, quit his job after being told by Plymouth City Council he would be suspended for four weeks following safety concerns. A spokesperson at the council accepted that school crossing patrols could be friendly but said “their full attention must be on the road and they must watch the traffic closely at all times”.

Mr Slade worked at Devonport Dockyard for 45 years before taking up his position at the school, helping children cross the road. He said: “I really enjoyed the job. I have been doing it for more than four years without a single accident. When I got the job they told me to make contact with the kids and be friendly. But then they changed their minds and I stopped high-fiving them earlier in the year because they told me to stop. They also said I was going out into the road without looking properly.

“They said they would suspend me for four weeks but I said I would rather leave - I was going to retire soon anyway. I appreciate the support of the parents but I won’t be going back again, this is the end of it now.” Parents were told that Mr Slade had resigned for personal reasons. Barbara Laws, who has two children at the school, said: “It’s one of those stories you think is just unbelievable. The parents are now stuck with no patrol on that crossing. At the end of September parents were told through the school's weekly newsletter that Bob had resigned for personal reasons.

“However, in a case of health and safety gone mad, it has now come to light that Plymouth City Council had threatened Mr Slade with four weeks suspension for high-fiving the children as they crossed the road, a practice they felt was dangerous. To my knowledge, not a single parent had expressed any concern over Mr Slade's actions, which amounted to nothing more than the children patting his outstretched hand as they walked past him. Bob also acted as a deterrent against dangerous parking in the vicinity of the crossing. The council have announced that a new lollipop person will be appointed soon, but we were more than happy with Bob Slade.”

Missing plane door found on motel roof

A door from a plane fell from the sky and landed on the roof of a motel in Monterey, California. Monterey Regional Airport Manager Thomas Greer said the door fell from a private plane owned by Beech King Airlines, and it took off from the Monterey Airport at around 3pm on Thursday.

Greer said the plane was about 1000 ft in the air when the pilot heard a noise and noticed that the door was not closed, so he turned around and landed. "When he got back on the ground he discovered the door missing," he said. Airport officials said they searched all around the airport for the door, including the fairgrounds, golf course and even along the coast, but they could not find it. Greer also said the airport did not receive any reports about a plane door falling from the sky.

One place that the airport officials did not check was the roof of the El Castell Motel. The door apparently landed on the roof of the motel, which is near the airport, but nobody noticed until the next day. "A contractor guy stopping by the office says hey, there's a plane door on the roof," said A. J. Panchal, who was working at the motel when the door made a hard landing.

YouTube link.

The fire department came by and took the door. An investigation is underway as to how the door fell off the Beechcraft King Air plane. The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a mechanic to look at the plane, said Greer. "We never heard it. Because if the door fell from the plane, it would be a big noise. Someone would have noticed," said Panchal. Miraculously, nobody was injured by the falling door and all the passengers on board the plane were okay. There were two people on the jet, the pilot and a passenger.

Daily Comic Relief

A Roman Bathhouse Still in Use after 2,000 Years

During the First Century A.D., Rome’s Flavian emperors built up the Roman presence in North Africa. They constructed the city of Mascula, which would become the modern day town of Khenchela in Algeria. Hot springs made the site particularly attractive to settlers, who built a Roman-style bathhouse. Remarkably, it remains in business to this day.
Edward Lewis of the BBC had a chance to visit the large open-air bath. Muddling along in French and Arabic, he was able to learn about the history of the baths from fellow bathers who displayed only warmth and hospitality to him. Like in past centuries, coming to the baths is a daily ritual and opportunity for men to meet, talk and build friendships. So little has changed over the years.

Science News

US Parks Accidentally Fertilized By Air Pollution

America's national parks receive harmful, accidental fertilization from air pollution. A recent study identified how this unwanted dose of nitrogen nutrients harms plants and disrupts aquatic environments in 38 U.S. national parks.

'Cyclops' Sub to Advance Deep Sea Exploration

A manned submersible named Cyclops is being built to dive nearly 2 miles (3 kilometers) below the ocean's surface, deeper than most existing subs.

Top 10 Evolutionary Tricks for Pollinators

Flowers often need reproductive help from birds and bees, not to mention bats, moths, lizards and primates.

An Ancient Strip Mall Is Uncovered in Greece

The origins of Greek porticos have been somewhat of a puzzle, which makes this find important

Unique Ocean Landscapes

When people mention the word 'ocean', many think of the endless blue that touches the sky on the horizon. However, oceanic expanses are not so monotonous.

In addition to the usual islands, peninsulas and coral reefs that we used to see at the ocean expanses, there are some ocean landscapes that are simply unique in the world.

The Annual Horse Roundup At Sauðárkrókúr

Most of Iceland's horses spend their time wild and free in the highlands, instead of on farms. Like sheep, they roam at their own whim, with neither supervision nor control, able to graze wherever they choose. But once a year, toward the end of summer, they’re brought down from the mountains.

In Sauðárkrókúr a group of farmers recruit their friends, neighbors, and even some courageous tourists to hop into the saddle and gallop off into the vast highlands. Their mission: locate and herd every horse in the area to a corral set up outside town.

If The Booger Moved, You May Have ... Nostril Tick!

University of Wisconsin, Madison, Veterinary epidemiologist Tony Goldberg came back from a trip to Uganda to study chimpanzees and how the diseases they carry may jump to another species like humans, when he felt an itch in his nose.
Did Goldberg unwittingly brough home a parasite? Only one way to find out, as Lizzie Wade of Science Now reports:

Goldberg quickly gathered the necessary supplies—a pair of forceps, a flashlight, and a mirror—and steeled his resolve. Using the mirror to steer his hand, he poked the instrument into his irritated nostril, latched onto a suspicious lump, and quickly yanked it out, careful not to snag any nose hairs in the process. There it was: an adolescent tick. At that point, Goldberg knew, it had likely been living in his nostril for several days.

Goldberg's nostril tick is nothing to sneeze at: after sequencing its DNA, Goldberg realized that it could be a whole new species of tick.
So, next time your booger wriggles, you know what it is!
Oh, and how did it feel to have a nostril tick? Goldberg said that on the whole, the experience is "not pleasant but not as bad as you might think.")

The Darth Vader Ant With Superhero Gliding Skills

Their skills eluded observation until early this century, but you can add another animal on to the list of those who have developed the ability to glide. Joining snakes, squirrels, frogs and lizards with those superhero-like gliding skills is a species of ant.

And what an ant! The Darth Vader of the insect world, Cephalotes atratus, inhabits the canopy of the tropical forest systems of Central and South America. That's a long way up and if an ant was to fall it would lead to almost certain death on the floor of the forest. With its long hind legs it looks scary enough, yet it is probably these features which have evolved over time to enable the ant to glide.

Drunk driver hit three goats after swerving to avoid one

An Oklahoma man who swerved to miss a goat in the road ended up hitting three other goats.

Oklahoma Highway Patrol Troopers say the collision took place just after 11pm on Saturday, a few miles outside Nowata. The wreck was blamed on animals in the road, but troopers say the driver had been drinking.

Raymond Pennington from Claremore was driving a Mazda pickup northbound on the county road when he swerved to miss the goat, but his pickup then hit three other goats that were also on the road.

Pennington, 54, was ejected 6 feet from the pickup. His driving ability was impaired by drinking alcohol, according to an OHP collision report. He was not wearing a seatbelt. Pennington was taken to a Tulsa hospital by helicopter. His condition is listed as fair.

Diver’s sea creature find is ‘discovery of a lifetime’

Jasmine Santana finds 18-foot oarfish carcass at Catalina Island; bizarre-looking denizens are rarely seen and once spawned tales of sea serpents

by Pete Thomas

The carcass of a bizarre-looking creature that once spawned tales of sea monsters has been found by a snorkeler in a bay at Santa Catalina Island off Southern California.
The 18-foot-long oarfish was discovered Sunday afternoon by Jasmine Santana, a marine science instructor at the Catalina Island Marine Institute. The oarfish was dead but its slender, snake-like body was intact.
The find was described by CIMI as a “discovery of a lifetime.”
ABC 7 stated Monday on its Facebook page that the carcass required 15 people to carry it up the beach.
The discovery was made in Toyon Bay, not far from Avalon, where CIMI runs a camp for kids. Instructors were unloading gear after a tall ship voyage to nearby Santa Barbara Island when they spotted Santana hauling the oarfish ashore, according to KTLA.

“The craziest thing we saw during our two-day journey at sea happened when we got home; these islands never cease to amaze,” Connor Gallagher said in a news release.
Oarfish, which can reach lengths of 50-plus feet, inhabit depths of 1,500 to 3,000 feet. They feed largely on krill and other tiny organisms and possess large, saucer-shaped eyes.
They’re believed responsible, in the times of ancient mariners, for spawning tales of sea serpents and dragons that would rise like demons to steal crewmen and sink tall ships.
They’re rarely encountered but sometimes when they die or are near-death, they surface and wash ashore.
Only a handful of live specimens have been found. Interestingly, Catalina was the site of at least one such discovery.
In 2006, a 15-foot oarfish was spotted in the island’s Big Fisherman’s Cove. Harbormaster Doug Oudin snorkeled alongside the docile creature before it eventually perished. It was collected for study.
Last year at the Baja California resort city of Cabo San Lucas, a 15-foot barely-live oarfish washed ashore on a popular beach. It also died soon after its discovery.
The modern discovery of oarfish may date to 1808, when a 56-foot serpent-like creature washed ashore in Scotland.
In 1901, a 22-foot oarfish drifted onto the sand in Newport Beach, California, becoming, according to one reference book, “the basis for many sea-serpent stories told by local bar patrons for more than a decade after its discovery.”

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