The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

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Today in History

1789		The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting.
1832		Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.
1864		In the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, Federals are routed by Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor.
1865		General Robert E. Lee‘s retreat is cut off near Appomattox Court House.
1898		British General Horatio Kitchener defeats the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara.
1913		The 17th Amendment is ratified, requiring direct election of senators.
1935		The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is approved by Congress.
1939		Italy invades Albania.
1942		The Soviets open a rail link to the besieged city of Leningrad.
1952		President Truman orders the seizure of U.S. steel mills to prevent a strike.
1962		Bay of Pigs invaders get thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.
1974		Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s record.
1975		Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians becomes first black manager of a major league baseball team.

6 Household Items That Double As Grooming Tools

6 Household Items That Double As Grooming Tools

Use this surprising cooking ingredient to treat your chapped lips!

Vertigo Is All in Your Head

Vertigo Is All in Your Head

If you find yourself feeling dizzy, unbalanced, with a sense of loss of your surroundings, you might be at a place called vertigo. DNews explains why it's all in your head -- specifically, your ears.

Back Pain May Be All In Your Head

If you suffer from chronic low-back pain, mindfulness might be your answer. New research suggests the trifecta of meditation, yoga, and mental body scanning may be a better painkiller than drugs, physical therapy, and other standard treatments.

Back Pain May Be All In Your Head

Why Scars Don't Look Like the Rest of Your Skin

Why Scars Don't Look Like the Rest of Your Skin

If you get a serious enough cut, you're going to carry a scar around with you for the rest of your days, and it's going to behave a bit differently than your normal skin. How do scars heal, and why don't they just disappear?

Was Cinderella a slut?

Apparently so.
After having been recently reminded of the illustrations of Edmund Dulac, I decided to read a book of children's fairy tales illustrated by him.  In a Cinderella story "retold by Edmund Quiller-Couch" (1910, I think) I found this passage when she was being verbally abused by her step-sisters:

"Look at your hands--faugh!  How can you suppose we should allow you to touch a ribbon, or even come near us, with such hands?  Run downstairs, slut, and put yourself under the kitchen pump..."

Moments later the narrator explains:

"When she had done her work she used to creep away to the chimney-corner and seat herself among the cinders, and from this the household name for her came to be Cinder-slut; but the younger sister, who was not so ill-tempered as the elder, called her Cinderella."

Quiller-Couch is obviously using the term in the sense of "slattern."  And that's how the OED defines "slut." The first definition is "A woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance," and the secondary ones include "a kitchen maid" and "a woman of low or loose character; a bold or impudent girl."  That last one comes closest to the sexual connotations of modern usage.
So the next time you encounter a girl who is besmirched from sliding head-first into third base or changing the oil in the car, you can say "you need to clean yourself up, slut" and the OED will back you up.  But make sure she isn't still holding the wrench.

Those hand prints on cave walls? Lizard hands.

Not all hand silhouettes - but apparently some of these...

Wadi Sura II is considered one of the greatest rock art sites of the Sahara, although it lacks the popular fame of nearby Wadi Sura I, the "Cave of the Swimmers," which was discovered by Hungarian count Láslo Almásy in 1933 and popularized in "The English Patient."...
Anthropologist Emmanuelle Honoré of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research describes how she was "shocked" by the shape of the unusually small hand outlines when she saw them at her first visit to Wadi Sura II in 2006. "They were much smaller than human baby hands, and the fingers were too long," she explains....
 Honoré initially suspected monkey paws, but when those proportions were also off, colleagues at the Museum of Natural History in Paris suggested she take a look at reptiles. So far, the examples that have proportions closest to the "baby" hands come from the forelegs of desert monitor lizards or, possibly, the feet of young crocodiles. (The crocodile study is still in progress.) Monitor lizards still live in the region today and are considered protective creatures by nomadic tribes in the area.  
The revelation that the small hand images from Wadi Sura II are not even human is a big surprise for researchers who study Saharan rock art. "Animal stenciling is mostly considered an Australian or South American thing," Honoré explains.   

The story continues at National Geographic,

350-Year-Old Pendulum Clock Mystery Solved

350-Year-Old Pendulum Clock Mystery Solved

Pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall can influence each other and synchronize over time -- and now scientists know why.

9-Year-Old Reporter Just HUMILIATED Critics Who Told Her To Quit And Play With Dolls

9-Year-Old Reporter Just HUMILIATED Critics Who Told Her To Quit And Play With Dolls 

While it’s convenient to stereotype girls as small mishmashes of sugar, spice, and everything nice, as small humans who spend most of their time...

5 Disturbing Facts Big Food Doesn't Want You to Know

5 Disturbing Facts Big Food Doesn't Want You to Know

Utah Wingnut Wants To Sell America’s 4th Most Popular Wildlife Refuge To Private Developers

Utah Wingnut Wants To Sell America’s 4th Most Popular Wildlife Refuge To Private Developers

The US Supreme Court Has Bad News For The American People And The Wingnuts Are To Blame

The US Supreme Court Has Bad News For The American People And The Wingnuts Are To Blame

Republicans have effectively obstructed another branch of our government, and we will all pay a price.

TV show and PayPal projects canceled in North Carolina in response to the wingnuts’ anti-LGBT law

TV show and PayPal projects canceled in North Carolina in response to the wingnuts’ anti-LGBT law

Jobs are now officially being lost in North Carolina as a result of the state’s new law wiping out local protections for the LGBT community and regulating public bathrooms usage by transgender people.

‘#1 in bigotry’: Twitter unleashes its wrath on Mississippi’s ‘dinosaur’ governor over new anti-gay law

‘#1 in bigotry’: Twitter unleashes its wrath on Mississippi’s ‘dinosaur’ governor over new anti-gay law

Mississippi's moron Bryant (R) has signed into the law the bill passed last week by the state legislature, to legalize discrimination by both public employees and private businesses against gay couples, transgender people, and even those who have premarital sex.

Charleston cult massacre trial delayed as prosecutors consider death penalty for Dylann Roof

Charleston cult massacre trial delayed as prosecutors consider death penalty for Dylann Roof

This Is What REAL Christians Do When Their Priest Preaches To Ban Abortion

This Is What REAL Christians Do When Their Priest Preaches To Ban Abortion 

This is how to shut down a renegade Priest!

North Carolina cult harasses former member over her marriage to another woman

North Carolina cult harasses former member over her marriage to another woman

The letter, signed by the pastor and deacons at the first baptist cult in Bostic, called on Kelly Toney to "display repentance and abandonment of this area of open immorality."

Man escaped from vehicle dangling on cliff edge only to be hit by passing bus

A man who was involved in a solo SUV crash was struck by a bus after getting out of the vehicle, which was left dangling on the edge of the road.
The crash was reported on Malibu Canyon Road in Los Angeles, California, at about 4:40pm on Saturday.
The SUV’s front end smashed through a guardrail and was dangling over the edge of the road. The disoriented driver was then struck by a passing bus after he climbed out the vehicle.

YouTube link.

The man hit by the bus was taken to a hospital, but his injuries are not believed to be life-threatening,. Fire units then cleared the scene and the road, which had been closed in both directions, was reopened soon after.

Anti-government crook sold ‘wives’ and 5-year-old daughter into sex slavery from ‘house of horrors’

Anti-government crook sold ‘wives’ and 5-year-old daughter into sex slavery from ‘house of horrors’

Man arrested after letting his two-year-old son drive car

Police have arrested a man for child endangerment, after they say he allowed his two-year-old child drive his car, with him and another five year old child inside.

At around 10:30pm on Saturday, Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Deputies arrested 25-year old Chester Allen. They say they attempted to pull Allen's car over in Monroe, Louisiana, for a broken tail-light.
At the time Allen's two-year-old son was driving the car. Allen admitted when he saw deputies try to pull him over, he put the child on the car's center console.
He then accelerated the vehicle, leading deputies on a high speed chase to his home. Allen was arrested, and is facing four charges, including aggravated flight from an officer. His bond is $650.

Sunlight can be used to produce chemicals and energy

Biotech breakthrough: Sunlight can be used to produce chemicals and energy

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a natural process they describe as reverse photosynthesis. In the process, the energy in solar rays breaks down, rather than builds plant material, as is the case with photosynthesis. The sunlight is...

10 Things You Didn't Know about Tornadoes

10 Things You Didn't Know about Tornadoes

Ever wonder why they’re more frequent in spring? And how fast they actually blow? We have the answers.

White House: Warming Poses Urgent Health Risk

White House: Warming Poses Urgent Health Risk

The White House warns that climate change poses a major threat to human health, with extreme heat likely to kill 27,000 Americans annually by 2100.

Climate Change May Threaten $2.5 Trillion in Assets

Climate Change May Threaten $2.5 Trillion in Assets

Trillions of dollars' worth of financial assets may be under threat from global warming's effects by 2100, climate economists warned on Monday.

NASA Snaps 3-D Pics of Weather From Space

NASA Snaps 3-D Pics of Weather From Space

Satellites capture 3-D pictures of raindrops and snowflakes, to measure their size and understand how storms work.

An atmosphere composed of 99.9% pure oxygen

And it's a star - not a planet:

A newly discovered star is unlike any ever found. With an outermost layer of 99.9 percent pure oxygen, its atmosphere is the most oxygen-rich in the known universe... The strange stellar oddity is a radically new type of white dwarf star, and was discovered by a team of Brazilian astronomers led by Kepler de Souza Oliveira at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The star is unique in the known pool of 32,000 white dwarf stars, and is the only known star of any kind with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere... The discovery was reported today in a paper in the journal Science.

Ancient Animal Carried Its Young Like Tethered Kites

Ancient Animal Carried Its Young Like Tethered Kites

A tiny arthropod from 430 million years ago dubbed “The Kite Runner” had a novel way of hauling around its brood.

Real Moby Dick

Real Moby Dick: Some Whales Ram With Their Heads

The old whaler’s tale that inspired the classic novel Moby Dick may have actually happened.

Animal Pictures