The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

So, you think you're a Badass ...! 

 

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Today in History

45 BC		The first Leap Day is recognized by proclamation of Julius Caesar. Under the old Roman calendar, the last day of February was the last day of the year.
1692		Sarah Goode and Tituba are accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, sparking the hysteria that started the Salem Witch Trials.
1784		The Marquis de Sade is transferred from Vincennes fortress to the Bastille.
1856		Hostilities in Russo-Turkish War cease.
1864		Union Brig. Gen. Judson Kilpatrick splits his forces at the Rapidan River ordering Col. Ulric Dahlgren to lead 500 men his men to Goochland Court House, while the remainder followed Kilpatrick in his raid on Richmond.
1864		Lt. William B. Cushing leads a landing party from the USS Monticello to Smithville, NC, in an attempt to capture Confederate Brig. Gen. Louis Hebert, only to discover that Hebert and his men had already moved on Wilmington.
1868		British Prime Minister Benjamin Disreali forms his first cabinet.
1940		Hattie McDaniel is first African American to win an Academy Award–best supporting actress–for her performance in Gone With The Wind.
1944		US forces catch Japanese troops off-guard and easily take control of the Admiralty Islands in Papua New Guinea.
1944		Dorothy Vredenburgh accepts an appointment by the Democratic National Committee becoming the first woman secretary of a national political party in the U.S.
1952		The first pedestrian “Walk/Don’t Walk” signs are installed at 44th Street and Broadway at Times Square.
1956		President Dwight D. Eisenhower announces he will seek second term.
1964		President Lyndon B. Johnson reveals the U.S. secretly developed the Lockheed A-11 jet fighter.
1968		Jocelyn Burnell, of Cambridge University, discovers first pulsar.
1968		The Beatles win a Grammy Award for their album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band.
1972		Henry “Hank” Aaron becomes first baseball player to sign a baseball contract for $200,000 a year.
1988		A Nazi document is discovered that implicates participation of Austrian president and former U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim in WWII deportations.

Romantic Couple Held Elegant Valentine's Day Dinner at Taco Bell

As the movie Demolition Man teaches us, eventually all restaurants will be Taco Bells--even the most luxurious. Cassie and Daniel are just 16 years ahead of schedule.
For their Valentine's Day dinner, they dressed formally and plated their food with china, crystal, custom-printed menus, and fine silverware.
Daniel explained to Obsev how they pulled off this romantic scene in such a non-traditional setting:

“We’ve been together for five years now and we’re always looking for new ways to celebrate being together,” Daniel told Obsev.  “With Valentine’s Day coming up, we did what any couple did and thought up a bunch of ideas that we’d either already done or just didn’t feel right.  She finally threw up her hands and jokingly said, ‘Let’s just go to Taco Bell!’ As soon as she said it, I knew we had to make it happen.”
The Taco Bell night out only came together with the help of the staff, who, Daniel said, were “really accommodating” and even “cleaned off a prime window side table and dimmed the lights a bit to set the mood.”

You can see more photos of their fine dining here.

Man Legally Changes His Name to Double Bacon Cheeseburger

The resident of London was born as Simon Smith, but as Bruce Wayne became Batman, so did Simon Smith become Double Bacon Cheeseburger. That name is more than just a new legal appellation, but an expression of his inner identity, which is presumably greasy and delicious. The Evening Standard reports on him and other recent name changes in the UK:

He told the Sunday People: “A name is the least important part of your personality. It’s given to you by someone else.”
“Bacon Double Cheeseburger was the first name I came up with.”
The 33-year-old is one of a record-breaking 85,000 people who changed their name last year.
Others decided to name themselves over popular footballers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Man Utd star Wayne Rooney.
One couple called themselves Mr and Mrs Amazing, while a man preferred to be referred to as Bruce Wayne, the secret identity of Batman.

So now it will be necessary for the police to get a searchlight for not only the Bat-Signal, but also the Double Bacon Cheeseburger-Signal.

***

And, no, the picture above is not that of the individual - it is just a exemplar photo of generic bacon double cheeseburger. (This disclaimer is provided for the benefit of stupid people i.e., wingnuts)

The Fastest Talkers in America Don't Live Where You Think They Do

The Fastest Talkers in America Don't Live Where You Think They Do 

Former Snyder Aide Blames Flint Crisis On Misguided Wingnut Philosophy

Former Snyder Aide Blames Flint Crisis On Misguided Wingnut Philosophy

Duh!?!

Mount Vernon Says It Owns George Washington's Copy Of Don Quixote, Not Glenn Beck

Mount Vernon Says It Owns George Washington's Copy Of Don Quixote, Not Glenn Beck

TSA Agents Force Sikh Man To Remove Turban, Make Him Walk Across The Terminal To Put It Back On

“It’s a lack of sensitivity and a lack of respect — that’s what I find really concerning.”

America's War on the Border Has Turned Our Backyard into a Graveyard

America's War on the Border Has Turned Our Backyard into a Graveyard

Army of Pharma Lobbyists in Washington Have Locked in One of the Biggest Corporate Ripoff Schemes in America

How an Army of Pharma Lobbyists in Washington Have Locked in One of the Biggest Corporate Ripoff Schemes in America 

Wingnuts Cut Funds For Veterans And Mental Health And Now We Have A Veteran Suicide Epidemic

Wingnuts Cut Funds For Veterans And Mental Health And Now We Have A Veteran Suicide Epidemic

Republicans claim to love our military veterans, but their decisions not only contradict that claim, it’s killing the men and women they sent to...

Missouri man threatens Muslim family ...

Missouri man threatens Muslim family shouting ‘You, your wife and your kids have to die’

Colorado woman convicted of cutting fetus from stranger's womb

Colorado woman convicted of cutting fetus from stranger's womb

97-year-old cancer patient faces eviction from California home of 66 years so ‘greedy’ landlord can cash in

97-year-old cancer patient faces eviction from California home of 66 years so ‘greedy’ landlord can cash in

A 97-year-old cancer patient is being forced out of her home so her new landlord can cash in on the northern California real estate boom.

How Many Nobel Prizes Could Newton Win?

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, while Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727. But if the prizes had been around during his lifetime, he would have won it hands down in multiple years.

Einstein is renowned for his imagination and ability to intuitively lay out new conceptual models of the universe. Newton's talents were different. His unparalleled logical and mathematical genius allowed him to formulate observations into laws and to prove ideas through rigorous mathematics. When the mathematical machinery he needed didn't fully exist, he invented it. That's what largely inspired RealClearScience Editor Alex Berezow to name Newton the smartest person who ever lived.
While Einstein's physics are still being proved today, Newton's is so monumental, so important, so fundamental, so proven within its realm of validity, that scientists of every sort take it for granted every day. The laws of gravity and motion that Einstein reenvisioned were edits of the commandments first called down from the ether by Newton's blinding brilliance.

Newton formulated laws of physics, and worked in optics and astronomy, too. He was also named Warden of the Mint, and introduced monetary safeguards that would have won a Nobel Prize in Economics as well. Tom Hartsfield figures he could have won up to eight Nobels for his life’s work, and that doesn’t even count inventing the cat flap. However, those don't take into account who his competition would have been in those particular years, which would be an extensive project for someone so inclined. Read about each of Newton's possible Nobels at Real Clear Science.

Putting Lithium Into 7UP

What fun is it when you have a laboratory full of different things you can combine to see what happens! It’s even better when you have a professor around to encourage such shenanigans, then offer some questions to explore and ideas for possible explanations. That’s what’s happening here as they add a bar of lithium to a beaker of 7UP. Why? Because 7UP originally had lithium salts in its recipe.

(YouTube link)

We wouldn't bother showing you what happened if it weren't interesting. The University of Nottingham School of Chemistry brings us another Periodic Video with Sir Martyn Poliakoff. 
See more neat videos from The Periodic Table of Videos.

This simple graph shows how long different drugs remain in your blood

This simple graph shows how long different drugs remain in your blood

One of the troubling implications of this disparity is in the context of prison drug-testing regimes.

Strangers Stink More Than Friends

Sheesh, did something die in here? No, but we're more likely to think that strangers rather than friends in close proximity smell badly.
Researchers at St. Andrews University asked students to assess sweaty t-shirts, one of which was labeled with St. Andrews University, another which was labeled with a rival school, and one with no label. The participants tended to rate the shirt from their tribal group--that is, their own university--as less stinky. Tom Jacobs explains in the Pacific Standard:

The key result: Participants whose identity as a St. Andrews student was made salient "went to wash their hands more quickly, and used more soap," after smelling a shirt with either their rival's logo or no logo.
They rushed to the hand sanitizing station after smelling the shirt with the rival school's logo, getting there in three and one-half seconds (on average). In contrast, those who smelled a shirt with their own school's logo ambled over; it took about six seconds. It seems they were significantly less bothered by the stink.
These results make sense from an evolutionary perspective in that members of a prehistoric tribe couldn't collaborate very easily if they found one another revolting. "Groups involve not only a gathering of minds, but also of sweaty, smelly, tactile bodies," the researchers note. "It is impossible to work with people if you cannot stand their physical presence."

What Type of Light Bulbs Should You Use To Combat Insects This Summer?

Mike and Teresa Justice are behavioral ecologists who conducted a study concerning the types of light bulbs that attract the most and least amount of insects. During the study, which took place over an entire summer, the pair set up a bug trap with one light bulb inside. Each night they changed the type of bulb and used controls for variances such as moonlight exposure and weather.

When the summer nights were over, the mornings yielded a grand total of 8,887 bugs. Types of light bulbs used in the study were incandescent, CFL, halogen, LED with cool color, LED with warm color and standard bug lights. To read the conclusions of the study, follow this link to Gizmodo.

Animal Pictures