The Daily Drift

The Eleventh of our trees of December ...!

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 200 countries around the world daily.   

 
Everyone Loves Mountains ... !

Today is  - International Mountain Day

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

Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil

Aylmer, Montgomery, Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec, Canada

Santiago, Chile

Bogota and Cali, Colombia

Los Mochis and Mexico City, Mexico 

Managua, Nicaragua

Luquillo, Puerto Rico

Butte, Cary, Hiawassee, Seacaucus and Wausau, United States

Europe

Hadzici and Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Prague, Czech Republic

Stevenage and Whiteley, England

Blagnac, Paris, Roubaix and Rouen, France 

Berlin, Hamburg and Offenbach, Germany

Athens, Greece

Reykjavik, Iceland

Waterford, Ireland

Ivrea, Ravenna and Rome, Italy

Riga, Latvia

Amersfoort, Amsterdam and Woensdrecht, Netherlands

Warsaw, Poland

Lisbon, Portugal

Moscow, Ryazan, Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg, Russia

Barcelona, Madrid, Santa Cruz De Tenerife and Torrent, Spain

Kista, Sweden

Hook, Wales

Asia

Guangzhou, China

Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, Patna, Pune, Shillong and Trichur, India

Jakarta, Indonesia 

Tehran, Iran

Erbil and Halabjah, Iraq

Macau, Macao

Bayan Lepas, George Town, Kuala Lumpur and Kuching, Malaysia

Port Louis, Mauritius

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Al Aya, United Arab Emirates

Africa

Annaba, Algiers

Al Jizah and Al Minya, Egypt

Ogembo, Kenya

Cape Town, Centurion, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria, South Africa

Lusaka, Zambia

The Pacific

Homebush, Kensington, Macguire, Melbourne and North Ryde, Australia

Makati, Philippines

Today in History

1688   James II abdicates the throne because of William of Orange landing in England.  
1816   Indiana is admitted to the Union as the 19th state.  
1861   A raging fire sweeps the business district of Charleston, South Carolina, adding to an already depressed economic state.  
1862   Union General Ambrose Burnside occupies Fredericksburg and prepares to attack the Confederates under Robert E. Lee.  
1863   Union gunboats Restless, Bloomer and Caroline enter St. Andrew's Bay, Fla., and begin bombardment of both Confederate quarters and saltworks.
 1882   A production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe at Boston's Bijou Theater becomes the first performance in a theater lit by incandescent electric lights.  
1927   Nearly 400 world leaders sign a letter to President Calvin Coolidge asking the United States to join the World Court.  
1930   As the economic crisis grows, the Bank of the United States closes its doors.  
1933   Reports say Paraguay has captured 11,000 Bolivians in the war over Chaco.  
1936   Britain's King Edward VIII abdicates the throne to marry American Wallis Warfield Simpson.  
1941   The United States declares war on Italy and Germany.  
1943   U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull demands that Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria withdraw from the war.
1945   A Boeing B-29 Superfortress shatters all records by crossing the United States in five hours and 27 minutes.  
1951   Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball.
 1955   Israel raids Syrian positions on the Sea of Galilee.  
1964   Frank Sinatra, Jr., is returned home to his parents after being kidnapped for the ransom amount of $240,000.  
1967   The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world's first supersonic airliner, is unveiled in Toulouse, France.  
1972   Challenger, the lunar lander for Apollo 17, touches down on the moon's surface, the last time that men visit the moon.  
1978   Massive demonstrations take place in Tehran against the shah.  
1981   Military forces in El Salvador kill over 800 civilians in what is known as the El Mozote massacre during the Salvadoran Civil War.  
1997   The Kyoto Protocol international treaty intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses, opens for signature.
2001   People's Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization.
2005   Cronulla riots begin in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
2006   President of Mexico Felipe Calderon launches a military-led offensive against drug cartel violence in the state of Michoacan.  
2008   Bernard "Bernie" Madoff arrested and charged with securities fraud in what was called a $50-billion Ponzi scheme.

Ten Incredible Acts Of Heroism by Ordinary People

 
Chris Garcia (l) and Temar Boggs (r)

Sometimes news items that make us feel positive about humanity are scarce. Particularly when current events are rife with upsetting situations, it's good to read about people who take great pains, sometimes even endangering their own lives, to help their fellow human beings. The following is one such story.
Temar Boggs and Chris Garcia, at the time 15 and 13 respectively, were at an apartment complex helping their friend move a couch one summer day in 2013 when they saw police cars outside. The policemen told the teens that they were looking for a lttle girl who had been abducted from her front yard earlier that day. Officers and citizens had been searching for 5-year-old Jocelyn Rojas for two hours without success.
At that time, Boggs, Garcia and five other friends, who didn't know Jocelyn, decided to look for her. At first the teens were on foot, but later, Boggs and Garcia began riding bikes to look in the surrounding neighborhoods. After almost an hour, Boggs, who had biked ahead of Garcia, saw a man driving suspiciously in the neighborhood. Boggs noticed that the man turned his car around when a group of policemen were up ahead. Boggs pedaled closer to the car, at which time Garcia caught up with him. The teens could see a little girl in the car. When the driver noticed he was seen, he panicked, stopping the car and pushing little Jocelyn out the door. She had already been assaulted after having been taken to an ice cream shop.
Boggs grabbed the little girl, who ran to him after her trauma. He rode with her on his bike for a while until deciding that wasn't safe. The young man dropped the bike and ran with the girl to find the authorities. Jocelyn clung to Temar, fearful because of her horrible experience. After delivering her safely to authorities, the teens were modest about being referred to as heroes, saying they just did what any person would do.
Boggs said in an interview,

"I had the gut feeling that I was going to find the little girl... It was like fate, it was like meant for me and Chris to be there. If we wouldn't have left (to look for the girl) who knows what would have happened to the little girl?"

The child's abductor, 73-year-old Harold Leroy Herr, was eventually caught. The kidnapper reportedly said "You're pretty, I think I'll keep you" when he grabbed her from in front of her home. Boggs and Garcia may have saved her life that day.
Read about other selfless, courageous people and their heroic acts here.

Obama Is Getting His Veto Pen Fired Up And Ready To Go

President Obama is getting ready for Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner’s repugican led congressional majority by firing up his pen for what could be a barrage of presidential vetoes.

The AP gave a hint of what is to come for the new repugican majority,

Veto brinkmanship between congressional repugicans and President Barack Obama was virtually absent in his first six years in office, but it’s about to unleash itself on Washington.

….

The White House also has promised to veto any bills restricting the president’s major changes to immigration policies, setting up likely showdowns early next year.

Obama’s threats present the type of bind that repugicans will face repeatedly in the next two years. They can agree to many or all of the changes he demands in legislation, or they can let him use his veto and hope Americans will blame him more than them.

The strategy of hoping that the American people will blame the president more than congressional repugicans has backfired on the repugican cabal every time that they have tried it. The repugicans were suffering from a delusional belief that if they stole majority control of the Senate, they could force Obama to carry out their agenda.

Reality has already become evident as Boehner and McConnell have bumbled and blustered their response to Obama’s immigration executive orders and a potential government shutdown. So far, the incoming repugican majority has revealed itself to be woefully incompetent and plagued by internal divisions when trying to respond to President Obama.

Obama’s veto pen is going to fired up and ready to go as soon as the next Congress is sworn in. When the White House worked with congressional liberals to kill a bill giving corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in permanent tax cuts, it was a preview of things to come.

The president is going to vetoing plenty of items on the repugican wish list, and he has enough votes in the Senate to uphold his vetoes. The result of this standoff is that President Obama is going to spend the “lame duck” years of his presidency as a vital figure in American politics.

The first two years of his presidency were about getting things done, and the last two years will be about protecting his accomplishments.

Delusional Mitch McConnell Thinks Democrats Are Happy That He Will Be Running The Senate

In a new interview, a delusional Mitch McConnell implied that Democrats are happy that he is going to be running the Senate.

Roll Call interviewed the incoming Senate Majority Leader,
“The worst experience any majority can have is that you convene and you look around and nothing’s ready to go. So what I said to the members who hoped they would be chairmen [was], ‘Let’s don’t have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably that enjoys some Democratic support, because we certainly didn’t think we were going to have 60 and we don’t,'” the Kentucky repugican said.

McConnell pointed to conversations he’s had with Democrats, whose cooperation will be required to get the Senate functioning as he would like.

“Up to half the calls I got after the election were from Democratic senators. I’m not implying that they were happy I won, but they were awfully curious as to whether I really meant it early last year when I pointed out that we needed to run the Senate in a very different way,” he said. “I think there’s going to be bipartisan gratitude for having a chance to be relevant, to not be marginalized.”

Mitch McConnell said that he wasn’t implying that they were happy that he won, but he was implying that they were happy that he is going to be the Majority Leader, which is the same as being happy that he won.

McConnell is living on some distant planet where he can obstruct Democrats and their president for years and not expect there to be any payback. The nation has already seen what a coalition of liberal Senate Democrats and President Obama was able to do to the plan to cut taxes for corporations.

It is important to point out that McConnell is promising not to marginalize Democrats as long as they go along with his Koch fueled agenda. McConnell isn’t interesting in passing legislation that deals with the top Democratic priorities. He is hoping to pick off enough Democrats so that he can pass anything.

Mitch McConnell demonstrated that he was out of touch with reality during his reelection campaign. As Majority Leader, McConnell seems to be selling himself a fantasy. Democrats have a good chance of taking back the Senate in 2016, so the odds that they will work with McConnell are slim to none.

Democrats may show McConnell how they feel about him running the Senate by sending him back to the minority in two years. In other words, Democrats are the opposite of happy, and they are going to spend the next two years showing Mitch McConnell just how they feel.

St. Louis Motorist Hits Protesters With Minivan Then Threatens Them With Handgun

by Justin Baragona 

During a protest in St. Louis' Central West End neighborhood, a minivan-driving man drove through a crowd of protesters, hitting four people. Protesters gathered in the upscale neighborhood, along with a number of other locations in the St. Louis area, to demonstrate in solidarity with New York City over the death of Eric Garner. When it was announced that Garner's killer, NYPD police officer Daniel Pantaleo, would not be indicted for using an illegal chokehold that caused Garner's death. The city's medical examiner ruled Garner's death a homicide due to the use of a choke-hold..
Around 8 PM local time, 75 or so demonstrators gathered at an intersection in the Central West End to perform a 'die-in.' As members of the crowd began laying down in the street, an older white man in a Town and Country minivan accelerated through the crowd. As he drove through the intersection, four protesters were hit by his vehicle. Pictures from the scene show one activist, having grabbed onto the vehicle, being thrown to the ground as the minivan turned around a curve.
Once the motorist plowed through the crowd, demonstrators gathered around his vehicle, preventing it from moving any further. As protesters surrounded the minivan, the man pulled out a semiautomatic handgun and waved it at the crowd. Shortly after the gun-waving incident, police on the scene had the man leave the vehicle and then took him into custody. It does not appear that anyone was seriously injured by the man's reckless behavior.

More

19 people hospitalized after possibly intentional chlorine leak at furry convention

A chemical spill at the O’Hare Hyatt Regency Hotel in Rosemont, Chicago, hospitalized 19 people at around 1am on Sunday morning. People complained of a strong chlorine-like smell on the 8th and 9th floors of the hotel.

Woman woke up to find mystery baby in her bed

A Michigan woman woke up to find an infant in her bed on Sunday, having no idea where the child came from or whose it was.

Battle Creek Police took custody of the baby pending the arrival of Child Protective Services. Police said the child became “an instant hit” with the officers on duty.
The officers gave the child “matchbox cars, teddy bears and beanie babies” and even changed the baby’s diaper, making the child’s odd experience a little easier to get through. The baby has since been identified and is in the process of being returned to his mother.
It turns out that the original caller’s son had dropped off the child before going out for the night and didn’t notify his sleeping mother. In another twist, the baby was not related to the man. Child Protective Services is in the process of investigating the incident.

How Much Water Do We Need To Drink, According To Our Weight?

By now you should be quite aware of the fact that water is the main compound that will help you get a perfect body and great health condition. The worst mistake some people make when it comes to drinking water is their very own theory that water can be replaced with any other drink.
Some just do not drink water at all, or do not drink as much as the body needs for its vital functions. The amount of water your body needs depends on your weight.
The table above should help you determine the right amount. It will help you get into the routine and drink the proper amount of water every day.

The Placebo Effect

How Placebos Can Help You Run Faster

Runners may benefit from the power of placebos -- even after they know they've been duped. 

The U.S. Grand Jury System

The U.S. Grand Jury System

Recent high-profile cases have Americans wondering about the basics of a grand jury -- how it differs from a regular jury, and what the grand jurors' duties consist of. Trace explains how this part of our legal system works.

An Interesting Fact About Marijuana In US History

Between 1850 and 1942 marijuana was available for purchase at local general stores and pharmacies. At the time, the United States Pharmacopoeia listed marijuana as useful medication in the treatment of nausea, rheumatism, and labor pains.

Viking Women

Viking Women Colonized New Lands, Too

Vikings may have been family men who traveled with their wives to new lands, according to a new study of ancient Viking DNA. 

Ghost Ship

Intact ghost ship discovered off the coast of Oʻahu

Researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Sciences and Technology and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries discovered an […]

Parchment's Hidden Tales

Scientists reveal parchment’s hidden stories

The new technique of analyzing DNA found in ancient parchments can shine a focused light on the development of agriculture across the centuries Millions of documents stored in archives could […]

Got Your Gift List?

Gift List Circa 50,000 B.C.

Are you struggling with your holiday shopping list? Imagine what your options may have been more than 50,000 years ago.

Get ready for abrupt Climate Change

Study finds early warning signals of abrupt climate change

A new study by researchers at the University of Exeter has found early warning signals of a reorganization of the Atlantic oceans’ circulation which could have a profound impact on […]

Snow

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Snow

We have a love/hate relationship with snow. It's beautiful falling from the sky and creates scenes of wonder once on the ground. It can also make our lives a living hell. But Trace accentuates the positive in this close look at winter's white wonder.

Underbelly Scan

Continent-Sized Scan Reveals US Underbelly

With the Earthscope project complete from California to Maine, scientists have sharpened their view of the mysterious mantle structures underneath the United States. 

Rocket fans successfully launched Porta-Potty

A group of rocket enthusiasts in southwestern Michigan successfully launched a portable toilet on Saturday in an event named Thrusting the Throne.

The levitating lavatory roared skywards, made an arc, then, slowed by parachutes, almost landed on a spectator's pick-up truck 2,000 feet away. Michiana Rocketry club members planned the project for more than two years.

YouTube link.

The club is trying to increase awareness of rocketry as a hobby and prove it is possible to turn a porta-potty into a rocket and launch it successfully. The lift-off occurred in a soya bean field near Three Oaks in Berrien County.
About 30 people worked on the rocket, from engineers to sales people who lined up sponsors. Rocket enthusiast Bob Bycraft says it was carefully planned and not "barnyard engineering".

Now, that's some powerful shit ...

Is Human Poop the Ultimate Rocket Fuel?

Human waste has been a hassle for spaceflight since the dawn of the space age -- but now it could transform our push toward the final frontier. 

Martian Crater-Lake

Curiosity's Mars Crater was Once a Vast Lake

The mountain that NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is exploring appears to have once been a lake. 

Martian Selfie

Curiosity Takes a Selfie on Mars

Here I am on Mars! Dozens of images were combined to create this selfie of Curiosity. 

Slumber Awakening

Pluto-Bound Probe Wakes From Electronic Slumber

The spacecraft woke from its 18th hibernation period since its 3-billion-mile voyage began in January 2006.

The Dinosaur Graveyard Of East Berlin

They lie, dead, struck down where they stood by a global event they could neither forecast nor understand. Extinction came quickly: in a matter of years the dinosaurs were no more. Yet this is no reference to the extinction of the majority of dinosaur groups at the end of the Mesozoic era.
The demise of these particular dinosaurs has more to do with the fall of communism than the fall of a giant asteroid. The impact event was the bringing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Kulturpark Plänterwald as it had been called until then was left to the vagaries of the market economy.

Dinosaur Tracks

Secrets of Dinosaur Tracks Revealed in Bird X-Rays

A detailed look at a modern bird's foot is revealing the secrets of dinosaur tracks set down more than 250 million years ago. 

Fossilized Snail Turned to Opal

Redditor Proteon posted this image of a fossilized snail turned to opal recently. Opal forms in cavities inside rocks. If a cavity is created due to a bone, shell or pine cone being buried in the sand or clay that later became the rock, and conditions are right for opal formation, then opal forms a fossilized likeness of the object. A silica-rich environment is required for opal formation.

Deer broke into home before ransacking bathroom

A woman from Galloway in New Jersey was putting sweet potatoes in the oven on Saturday afternoon when she saw a deer running down a hallway in her home.

Curious, she followed the animal as it explored the home and then entered the master bathroom. Seizing the opportunity, she locked the door and quickly called police.
Officials say when they arrived, they found broken glass from the front storm door and damage to the main door frame. There was a short standoff as officers decided how to corral the animal.
Eventually, the deer was captured and taken to the woods, where it was released. Authorities say the animal must have really wanted to get inside. An investigation showed the deer fought its way through two doors to gain access into the home. The homeowner wasn’t hurt, but the bathroom sustained heavy damage.

Sperm Beaching

Six Sperm Whales Die in Rare Mass Beaching

The rare mass stranding on the South Australia coast leaves animal welfare officials struggling over the logistics of handling the huge carcasses.

Animal Pictures