The Daily Drift

Yep ...!

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 199 countries around the world daily.   

Backward ... !

Today is - Limerick Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our reader today have been in:

The Americas

Issaquah, Fargo, Tallahassee, Canadaiqua, Kennewick and Albequerque, United States

L'ancienne-Lorette, Pikangikum, Saint John's, Britannia and Toronto, Canada

Santiago, Chile

Luquillo, Puerto Rico

Bogota, Colombia

Tipitapa, Nicaragua

Mexico City, Mexico

Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro and Porto Alegre, Brazil

Canaguazu, Paraguay

The Bottom, Sint Eustatius and Saba

San Isidro, Peru

Europe

Ravenna, Treviso and Milan, Italy

London, Kent, Gosport, Slough and Leicester, England

Merida and Madrid, Spain

Ryazan and Vladivostok, Russia

Huddinge, Sweden

Gornja Tuzla and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Den Haag, Netherlands

Bonn, Rothe Erde, Dresden, Widdern and Stuttgart, Germany

Oslo and Stavanger, Norway

Chrzanow and Lodz, Poland

Brno, Czech Republic

Bucharest, Romania

Anakara and Istanbul, Turkey

Stockholm, Sweden

Frederiksberg, Denmark

Novi Sad, Serbia

Palmela, Portugal

Salon-De-Provence, France

Espoo and Nokia, Finland

Bratislava, Slovakia

Dublin, Ireland

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Riga, Latvia

Athens, Greece

Asia

Bankura, Thiruvananthpuram, Chandigarh, Madurai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai, India

Colombo, Ratnapura and Kandy, Sri Lanka

Ahvaz, Iran

Jakarta, Pontianak and Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Singapore, Singapore

Bayt Marran, Yemen

Kuala Terengganu, Kuala Lumpur and Donggongon, Malaysia

Tel Aviv, Israel

Amman, Jordan

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Damascus, Syria

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Bangkok, Thailand

Kathmandu, Nepal

Doha, Qatar

Africa 

Annaba and Algiers, Algeria

Johannesburg, South Africa

The Pacific

Auckland, New Zealand

Sampaloc, Philippines

Sydney, Australia

Today in History

254		St. Stephen I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1588		King Henry III flees Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly enters the city.
1641		The chief advisor to Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, is beheaded in the Tower of London
1780		Charleston, South Carolina falls to British forces.
1851		The Tule River War ends.
1863		With a victory at the Battle of Raymond, Mississippi, Union General Ulysses S. Grant closes in on Vicksburg.
1864		Union General Benjamin Butler attacks Drewry's Bluff on the James River.
1865		The last land battle of the Civil war occurs at Palmito Ranch, Texas. It is a Confederate victory.
1881		Tunisia, in North Africa become a French protectorate.
1885		In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebel against the Canadian government.
1926		The Airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.
1932		The body of Charles Lindbergh's baby is found.
1935		Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio by "Bill W.," a stockbroker, and "Dr. Bob S.," a heart surgeon.
1940		The Nazi conquest of France begins with the crossing Muese River.
1942		The Soviet Army launches its first major offensive of the war, taking Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine.
1943		Axis forces in North Africa surrender.
1949		The Berlin Blockade ends.
1969		Viet Cong sappers try unsuccessfully to overrun Landing Zone Snoopy in Vietnam.
1975		The U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez is seized by Cambodian forces.

Non Sequitur

Good Samaritan Turns Trash Into Mobile Homes For The Homeless

Recycling is a good act in itself, at least as far as the planet is concerned, so when you use recycled materials to construct cute little portable houses for the homeless does that make it the totally best thing ever done with recyclable waste?
Kind-hearted builder Gregory Kloehn definitely thinks so, and his Homeless Homes project is providing cool little mobile domiciles to homeless people in Oakland, California, which he creates using materials gathered while dumpster-diving in industrial neighborhoods.
Gregory’s custom homes are around the size of a sofa, and they all come on wheels with a charming look that often retains the look and texture of the source material.

The Surprising Way People Become Homeless

The Surprising Way People Become Homeless

New research shows that many homeless men aren't lazy, but they have suffered serious brain injuries! Join Tara as she reports on the study. 

L.A.’s House of Davids De-Tackified

The House of Davids is no more. Located in Hancock Park, the nineteen bright white copies of Michelangelo’s David lining the driveway long made the home a notorious L.A. landmark and mecca to gape-mouthed tourists. The interior was adorned in a similarly over-the-top design, with David busts, outsized white furniture and sculptures, clear Lexan dining room chairs suspended from the ceiling, a gold tub, and glossy Greco-Roman marble floors.
R&B singer Norwood Young is the man with the aesthetic, according to a 2011 Curbed Los Angeles post having, “lived, decorated, and pissed off the neighbors on Muirfield Street since the nineties.” Young initially rented the residence, then bought it in 1997 for $1.2 million. He listed it in 2011 for $2.4 million, in April of 2012 accepting a $1.45 million offer from an unidentified real estate investor who then renovated the place, removing all traces of Norwood’s distinctive tastes.
In an updated post last week, Curbed now describes the home as “just one more thing a flipper has Pottery Barned to death.” It’s listed at $2.9 million.

Climate change is clear and present danger

Climate change is clear and present danger, says landmark U.S. report. Climate change has moved from distant threat to present-day danger and no American will be left unscathed, according to a landmark report.

More

Vampire's Delight?

Vampire's Delight? Young Blood Recharges Brains of Old

An unusual (and creepy) experiment reveals that the blood of young mice can revitalize mental capacities in older mice. 

Random Photos

How Walking Can Improve Your Creativity

How Walking Can Improve Your Creativity

Tara takes a look at why walking has such a powerful impact on your ability to think creatively. 

Math Game

You can download a free copy of this new magazine as a PDF. Enjoy!

Brain Injury Turns Man Into Math Genius

Brain Injury Turns Man Into Math Genius

A man with a traumatic brain injury developed the remarkable ability to see the world mathematically. 

Ziggy

New US style laws could put us in danger

When Amy Meyer saw a sick cow being pushed by a bulldozer outside a slaughterhouse, she did what any of us would in this age of iPhones and Instagram – she filmed it.

Meyer, 25, knew it was not only cruel, it was a public safety risk.

Similar video footage had resulted in the largest meat recall in US history, when it was revealed that cows too sick to walk were being fed to school children as part of the national school lunch program.

Instead of being praised for exposing this, Meyer was prosecuted.

Even though she stood on public property, she was charged with violating a new law in Utah that makes it illegal to photograph or videotape factory farms and slaughterhouses.

This was the first prosecution of its kind in the United States, but if the agriculture industry has its way, it won’t be the last.

“Ag-gag” laws have spread rapidly, and today half a dozen states have made it illegal to film factory farms.

Now, the agriculture industry wants to bring ag-gag to Australia.

More

60 Regional Foods You Shouldn't Eat Anywhere Else

(YouTube link)

John Green has a delicious topic for this week’s mental_floss video. He’s talking about regional foods, and if you haven’t lived in those places, you probably don’t know how good they can be. Then again, if you’re talking about chitlins, or what John calls “chitterlings,” you can count me out. Hoppin' John is heaven, but the Garbage Plate is what I call the plate we put all the scraps in -right before it goes in the compost bucket. I might need to try the Spam sushi, however. The comments at YouTube are full of dishes that are left off the list, but this one is priceless:

Also, lutefisk is supposed to be steamed post-lye and served with butter. Theoretically it's flaky and delicious. My family commonly says that the last Minnesotan who knew how to properly make lutefisk died 100 years ago.

I have a bone to pick with the title. Frito Pie may be best if eaten in Texas, but it's good wherever you eat it. Which of these is your favorite?

Is Global Warming Making Food Less Nutritious?

Is Global Warming Making Food Less Nutritious?

By 2050, zinc and iron deficiency could rise with air pollution, a new study reports

Wake up and smell the soaring cost of coffee

Arabica coffee beans – by far the most popular variety of coffee – have been fetching around $2 a pound on the world market, double the price of a year ago. Climate-related events in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee grower, seem to be causing the most froth amongst international market traders - More

Food fight

Scientists are experimenting with ways to reduce the impact of certain food allergies with the help of other foods. For instance, chemicals in cranberry juice might be able to mute the effects of peanut allergies.

Down on the bird's nest soup farm

How do you produce enough hardened bird-spit structures to feed a growing demand for one of the most expensive dishes in the world? Rowan Hooper visits the bird's nest soup farm.

Cool Pictures

How a hospital contributed to the deaths of five children

Spores of Mucor sp. fungus can cause a potentially deadly disease that causes human skin and tissue to rot. Thankfully, it's rare. But mortal fungal infections are on the rise in the United States. At The New York Times, Ian Urbina and Sheri Fink report on an outbreak in a New Orleans hospital that targeted the immune compromised, but could have been avoided with better medical and institutional management practices.

Scientists warn of quake risk from fracking operations

Underground disposal of waste-water from fracking may pose a much greater risk of causing dangerous earthquakes than previously believed, particularly in areas of the U.S. southwest and mid west where earthquake faults have not been mapped extensively, seismology researchers said - More

Neanderthals Weren’t So Bad After All

A study published last Wednesday concludes Neanderthals have been getting a bad rap. Long considered inferior to Homo Sapiens in cognitive, technological, language, and hunting capabilities, Neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago. But the study found they hunted in groups, using cliffs and other landscape features to hunt large animals – a capability that evidences their ability to plan, communicate, and cooperate. Their diet – previously considered limited and as such a contributor to their demise when food sources changed – was found to have been much broader than what has long been believed.
Researchers Paola Villa of the University of Colorado Museum and Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University also noted that previous studies compared Neanderthals not to their contemporaries, but to the Homo Sapiens of today. Says Villa, “It would be like comparing the performance of Model T Fords … to the performance of a modern-day Ferrari and conclud(ing) that Henry Ford was cognitively inferior to Enzo Ferrari.”
While concluding general inferiority to Homo Sapiens wasn’t the reason for Neanderthals’ extinction, the study doesn’t offer a single evidential cause. It does suggest genetic depression due to inbreeding and lower fertility rates in Neanderthal/Homo Sapiens offspring could have been a contributor.

The Brutal Yet Refined Art of Boat Jousting

In Southern France, the medieval art of jousting is still practiced by modern knights, only with a big twist - they use no horses and face each other on water.

The sport is officially called Water Jousting or Marine Jousting and although the practice can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian civilization, the French have embraced it as their own since the Middle Ages. Jousting is still taken seriously today, and is played on rivers and canals all over France.

Daily Comic Relief

Asakusa's Owl And Parakeet Cafe

You may have heard about dog cafes or cat cafes. But what about an owl and parakeet cafe?
At Asakusa's Owl and Parakeet cafe in Tokyo, Japan you can find just that. Plus a huge eagle.

This is one of the more bizarre cafes and it's hard to classify as 'fun.' And it's certainly not a place in which you'd want to drink coffee. How much you enjoy it depends entirely on how much you love birds.

33 First-World Anarchists Who Don't Care About Your Rules

The world relies on rules and regulations to run in an orderly fashion. But there's a few individuals out there who are rebels. They won't follow your rules - they're their own masters.

The Dangers of a Bigger Godzilla

Godzilla has grown larger over the years, as you can see in this graph. In 1954, the movie monster was only 50 meters (164 feet) tall (as if that isn’t tall enough). In the 2014 movie, opening later this month, Godzilla is estimated to be about 150 meters (492 feet) tall! Deep Sea News crunches the numbers to study this size change and speculate on its meaning.

So why is Godzilla obtaining ever larger sizes with time?  Skyscrapers.  Skyscraper height has increased dramatically over the last century.  For Godzilla to continue to plow through buildings in major metropolises, a more formidable size is needed.  Of course this size change can only be evolutionarily adaptive if it changes the fitness of Godzilla, i.e. in the simplest case the number of offspring passed to the next generation.  If Godzilla is able to topple buildings this might allow for greater acquisition of resources in this case food in the form of people. This would increase the lifespan of Godzilla allow for more reproduction or allow for greater amount of energy to be passed to the offspring increasing their rate of survival  Or perhaps toppling buildings is a sexual display that sexual partners cue on.  Sexual selection!

Which is all well and good for the species, I suppose, but then they get into the urine output of such a large creature, and that’s even scarier than the movies!

The science of ever-larger Godzillas

A 55,000-ton, city-destroying lizard beast could pee 151,436,928 gallons per day. They never show you all the people who died, drowned in Godzilla's urine.

Coming Tomorrow

Coming Tomorrow

• Putin's not Post-Communist, he's Post-Fascist
• USA: The world's newest third world nation
• The repugicans freak out as the FEC wants Faux News and wingnut media as PACs
• Corrupt judge tries to protect Scott Walker by ordering incriminating evidence destroyed

And more ...

These macaws are our Animal Picture, for today.