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


Thursday, June 18, 2015

The Daily Drift

Breaking News: The suspect in the murders at a Charleston, SC cult has been apprehended in Shelby, NC. It is being called a hate crime - and while that has been officially established (to be based on an interview with the suspect) - all indicators are most decidedly pointing that way.
Well, somebody had to ...!
 
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Dinner  ... !
Today is - International Sushi Day

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Today in History

1155 German-born Frederick I, Barbarossa, is crowned emperor of Rome.
1667 The Dutch fleet sails up the Thames River and threatens London.
1778 British troops evacuate Philadelphia.
1812 The War of 1812 begins when the United States declares war against Great Britain.
1815 At the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon is defeated by an international army under the Duke of Wellington.
1863 After repeated acts of insubordination, General Ulysses S. Grant relieves General John McClernand during the siege of Vicksburg.
1864 At Petersburg, Union General Ulysses S. Grant realizes the town can no longer be taken by assault and settles into a siege.
1873 Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote for president.
1918 Allied forces on the Western Front begin their largest counter-attack yet against the German army.
1928 Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane.
1936 Mobster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano is found guilty on 62 counts of compulsory prostitution.
1942 The U.S. Navy commissions its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
1944 The U.S. First Army breaks through the German lines on the Cotentin Peninsula and cuts off the German-held port of Cherbourg.
1945 Organized Japanese resistance ends on the island of Mindanao.
1951 General Vo Nguyen Giap ends his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.
1953 South Korean President Syngman Rhee releases Korean non-repatriate POWs against the will of the United Nations.
1959 A Federal Court annuls the Arkansas law allowing school closings to prevent integration.
1966 Samuel Nabrit becomes the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission.
1979 President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the Salt II pact to limit nuclear arms.
1983 Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space.

Breakin’ Up Is Hard To Do: 5 Other American Secession Attempts

The War Between the States was sparked when eleven states tried to secede from the Union. They’re not the only ones. Here are some other lesser-known secessionist movements.
1. THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF ROUGH AND READY

Seceded from: The United States, in April 1850
Details: At least two reasons have been cited for why the tiny mining town of Rough and Ready, in California’s gold country, decided to secede from the Union. One was anger over the imposition of a tax on mining claims, and the other involved a man known as the “Boston Ravine Slicker,” who swindled a popular miner named Joe Swiegart out of $ 200. When a local judge refused to prosecute the Slicker on the grounds that he hadn’t actually broken any laws, Rough and Ready seceded from the United States and “the next morning rescued what was left of Joe’s money and took the Slicker to the edge of town with instructions never to return,” writes Fay Dunbar of the Nevada County Historical Society. (Another version of the story says the Slicker was hanged.)
What Happened: Whatever the case, the Great Republic of Rough and Ready voted to rejoin the Union in time to celebrate the 4th of July, perhaps hurried along by the refusal of saloons in nearby Nevada City and Grass Valley to sell liquor to Rough and Ready’s “foreign miners.”
2. THE FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATE OF SCOTT
Seceded from: Tennessee, in June 1861
Details: Tennessee was divided over whether to secede from the Union and was the last state to do so, about two months after the Civil War started. The citizens of Scott County, in northeastern Tennessee, voted against secession by the greatest margin of any county in the state. When Tennessee left the Union, the Scott County Assembly voted to leave Tennessee. A messenger was sent to Nashville to inform the state that the county was “henceforth to be known as the Free and Independent State of Scott.”

What Happened: Not much— Scott County was of little strategic value to either the Union or the Confederacy. Both sides ignored the secession, and no major Civil War battles were fought there. But Scott County didn’t formally rejoin the state until 1986, when Governor Lamar Alexander signed a resolution declaring the State of Scott “dissolved and disbanded… after 125 years of independence.”
3. THE REPUBLIC OF KINNEY
Seceded from: The United States, in July 1977

Details: When the water system in Kinney, Minnesota, began to fail in the mid-1970s, the village of 325 people couldn’t afford the $186,000 price tag to replace it. And when it applied for funding from various state and federal agencies, the request got bogged down in red tape. So in July 1977, perhaps inspired by the 1959 film The Mouse that Roared, the village council announced their intention to secede from the U.S. and apply for foreign aid. “It is much easier to get assistance as a foreign country, which we need badly, and there is no paperwork to worry about,” the council wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, adding that “if necessary, we will be glad to declare war and lose. However, if this is a requirement, we would appreciate being able to surrender real quick, as our Mayor works as a nurse in a hospital, and most of our council members work in a nearby mine and cannot get much time off from work.”
What Happened: The publicity stunt landed Kinney on the NBC Nightly News and helped it do a brisk business in Republic of Kinney “passports,” T-shirts, bumper stickers, and other items. But it didn’t speed up the bureaucratic process much: The funding for their water system didn’t come through until November 1978.
4. WENDOVER, UTAH
Attempted to Secede from: Utah, in 2002

Details: Wendover makes up half of the metropolitan area that it shares with West Wendover, across the state line in Nevada. The difference between the two cites is stark: West Wendover’s economy is buoyed by Nevada’s legalized gambling and its casinos attract nearly two million visitors each year. Wendover, by comparison, is a veritable ghost town, thanks to no gambling, and some of the strictest state liquor laws in the country. Allowing Wendover to leave Utah and join West Wendover in Nevada would give its struggling economy a boost and allow the cities to combine police and fire departments and other public services that are needlessly duplicated. The citizens of both cities approved the secession/ annexation in a nonbinding referendum in November 2002.
What Happened: In order for a city to leave one state and join another, the U.S. Constitution requires that the legislatures of both states and the U.S. Congress approve the move. The first constitutional hurdle was passed in 2002, when the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously approved a bill permitting succession. But the bill died in the Senate, thanks to opposition from Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who never gave a reason for why he killed the bill.
5. KILLINGTON, VERMONT
Attempted to Secede from: Vermont, in 2004
Details: This upscale resort town is home to the Mt. Killington ski area. When Vermont changed the way it pays for public education in 1997, creating a statewide pool of funds to replace the old system of local funding, towns like Killington with high-priced vacation homes and few schools saw their property taxes quadruple. Property taxes in next-door New Hampshire were lower, and there was no state sales tax or income tax, either. Suddenly being in Vermont didn’t seem very attractive. At packed town meetings in 2004 and ’05, the residents voted overwhelmingly to secede from the state and join New Hampshire.

What Happened: Killington is still part of Vermont, and probably always will be. For one thing, unlike Wendover, Utah, which is right on the border, Killington is smack in the middle of the state, 35 miles from the New Hampshire line. Attempts to create a “corridor” of secessionist towns all the way to the border have failed. And the state of Vermont, which must approve secession, has shown no signs of being willing to do so. In 2005, three state legislators introduced legislation to slap Killington with crippling “exit fees” if it ever did leave the state. So in 2006, the town abandoned its plans for secession… but it’s still lobbying to change the property tax laws.

Amy Schumer Leaves 1,000 Percent Tip For Struggling Student Waiter

Amy Schumer Leaves 1,000 Percent Tip For Struggling Student Waiter (VIDEO)
This tip was amazing, but debt-free college would be a lot better.

"Morning already? Nah, I'll just stay here."


Perfectly Logical Reasons For Not Getting Out of Bed in the Morning
You know this piece was posted simply for the Aww ...Cute Factor, right?

Not Laughing Out Loud?

Genes may be responsible for more than we think, from how we shop to how we sleep.

Vatican Indicts Diplomat On Sexual Abuse Charges

Vatican Indicts Diplomat On Sexual Abuse Charges

Adventurous Woman Films Her Wild Adventures Around Chernobyl

Strange things have been happening around Chernobyl ever since the 1986 disaster, but those things generally involve nature’s reaction and adaptation to irradiation, such as trees that don’t decay and animal populations that are thriving despite being radioactive.
A few adventurous people have made their way into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to study the wildlife and take pictures of the apocalyptic scene, and some Ukranian babushkas still call the area home.
One wild and crazy gal has taken Chernobyl exploration to the next level, a level that would be considered pure madness by many, and thanks to the internet we get to see her madcap adventures on the YouTubes.
She goes by “Bionerd23”, and there's something about the calm and collected way she handles herself while exploring the Chernobyl region that almost makes it look like a fun destination for adventure travel.
And then you hear her Geiger counter start crackling away and you're reminded of just how dangerous those adventures really are...

Cash-strapped Michigan school system uses 1980s home computer to control heating for entire district

Commodore Amiga (Wikimedia Commons) 
Grand Rapids Public Schools Maintenance Supervisor Tim Hopkins told WOOD-TV that the district used the money from an energy bond in the 1980s to purchase a Commodore Amiga, which has been tasked with controlling the heat.

Why the Trip Back Always Feels Shorter

The last two times I drove to Florida, it took two days to get there and one day to get home. That’s because I wanted to be home badly, and I was out of money for a hotel stop. I probably will never go again. But that has nothing to do with the “return trip effect.”
When you go on a road trip, does going to your destination seem to take forever? Yes, most of the time. But the trip home seems somewhat shorter, doesn’t it? This holds up even when you take the exact same route home. A recent study says that the reason behind this phenomena is that we are bad at judging or remembering how long a trip takes. 
The study does support the basic “return trip effect,” but its methods and reasoning are unconvincing. The sample size was woefully small, at 20 participants. The researchers assumed we have to travel the exact same route there and back to feel the effect, which isn’t necessarily true. And their conclusion was flat: even if people recall return trips poorly, the question of why they have this particular memory failure still remains.
For a stronger theory on the “return trip effect” we (re)turn to a clever series of studies reported in a 2011 paper in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. The work was led by social psychologist Niels van de Ven of the Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
Ven and collaborators wanted to explore two possible explanations for the “return trip effect.” One was “familiarity”: just as routine tasks seem to take less effort than new ones, perhaps familiar routes seem to take less time to complete. The other was “expectations”: if the way there takes longer than we thought it would, then perhaps we adjust our time expectations upward on the way back, and find ourselves pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t take as long.
So which is it? Bad memory, novelty vs. familiarity, or revised expectations? A series of experiments reveals the answer, described in an article at Citylab.

Weird Monthly Clubs You Can Join On Etsy

Are you looking for the perfect gift for Father's Day and can't find anything quite right? Then perhaps you should head over to Etsy, where there are an array of unique and wonderful "of the month clubs."
Some of the most surprising of these clubs have been featured in a new TopTenz article, which includes not only a sea urchin of the month club, but also a tampon of the month club. There are also a few clubs with hilariously misleading names -like the sushi and Game of Thrones socks clubs, which have nothing to do with either sushi or Game of Thrones.

Garfield

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'Cannon Earthquakes'

For generations, Bedouin nomads living by the Red Sea, have heard noises that sound like cannon blasts accompanying small quakes in the area. 

Get ready for ‘the new normal’

Neil deGrasse Tyson appears on 'Larry King Now' on June 15, 2015. [Ora.Tv]

Okay, So What's Causing The Flooding In Texas?

Okay, So What's Causing The Flooding In Texas?

Temperature Jump

The International Energy Agency says extreme weather events will become much more frequent as a result.

Thunderstorms on Saturn

Many thunderstorms in Saturn's atmosphere could be driving the gas giant's vast polar cyclones, according to new simulations inspired by observations from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This Chicken Looks Like It Has Never Missed Leg Day!

Actually, the chicken's born that way. It's a rare Vietnamese breed called the Dong Tao chicken, which is prized for its meat and leggy looks. A male adult with big feet could fetch hundreds of dollars.
And yes, they do eat the feet. It's a delicacy:

Miserable Tropical Dinosaurs

Miserable conditions in the tropics 200 million years ago help explain why only a few scrappy species of dinos managed to survive there.

Animal Pictures