The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of Carolina Naturally.

Yes, it is ...! 

 

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Today in History

1471		The Earl of Warwick, who fought on both sides in the War of the Roses, is killed at the Battle of Barnet with the defeat of the Lancastrians.
1543		Bartoleme Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering a large bay in the New World (San Francisco).
1775		The first abolitionist society in United States is organized in Philadelphia.
1793		A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo is crushed by French republican troops.
1828		The first edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary is published.
1860		The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.
1865		Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth.
1894		Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope is shown to the public for the first time.
1900		The World Exposition opens in Paris.
1912		The passenger liner Titanic–deemed unsinkable–strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and begins to sink. The ship will go under the next day with a loss of 1,500 lives.
1931		King Alfonso XIII of Spain is overthrown.
1945		American B-29 bombers’s damage the Imperial Palace during firebombing raid over Tokyo.
1953		The Viet Minh invade Laos with 40,00 troops in their war against French colonial forces.
1959		The Taft Memorial Bell Tower is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1961		The first live broadcast is televised from the Soviet Union.
1969		The first major league baseball game is played in Montreal, Canada.
1981		America’s first space shuttle, Columbia, returns to Earth.

Meet the People Who Make "Naked and Afraid" Blurry

Naked and Afraid is a reality TV show that drops people into remote wilderness areas and tasks them with surviving for 21 days. They can take in no equipment at all--not even clothes.
So the stars are naked. This might be an obstacle for television broadcast. But the show blurs out all the private parts of contestants.
That's a lot of work and it is essential that no nudity slip by. It's a task for professionals. When you need the best people in the genital blurring industry, you call in the Blur Man Group. The New York Times reports:

That premise is certainly what draws viewers. But the people who make these shows possible are the five full-time visual effects maestros who painstakingly blur all the private parts.
And they admit, it’s a little odd.
“This is a totally weird work environment,” said Shaun O’Steen, the 45-year-old leader of the team, which calls itself the Blur Man Group. “I mean, what job can you say, ‘Oh, my God, look at that penis,’ and not have to worry about H.R.?”

The Blur Man Group is a collection of graphic designers who were having trouble finding work. They saw a niche--obscuring naked people--and filled it. The Times quotes Ilgin Esemenli, a member of the company:

“I’ve seen things that I’ve never seen before,” she said, looking a little pale.
She has learned to set limits, such as spending her lunchtime surfing the web. Lunch and the unvarnished human body do not mix, she said.

It typically takes about 50 hours of work to blur a single episode.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Living Relatives Found

Leonardo Da Vinci's Living Relatives Found

A forensic search identifies direct descendants of the Renaissance genius. And researchers hint there are some surprising names.

Mathematical Ability Revealed in Brain Scans

Mathematical Ability Revealed in Brain Scans

The ways that the brain processes language and complex mathematical concepts are quite different.

Why Do Our Bodies Sometimes Jerk Awake Right As We're Falling Asleep?

Have you ever found yourself drifting off to sleep only to be rudely awakened by your body jerking violently?

You may have felt like you were falling or having a particularly aggressive dream, but it was just your brain causing your body to react to the fact that it moved through the first stage of sleep too quickly.

The hypnic jerk is thought to be caused by a battle between the brain systems concerned with sleep and those that try to help you stay awake:

During this transitional state, the sleeping mechanism usually wins, but the wakeful one sometimes puts up a fight. “One of the things that happens as you fall asleep is your muscles relax, but the awake part may still be stimulating enough that it will temporarily overreact and you get this jerk of muscle activity,” he says. And for reasons that are unclear, it’s sometimes accompanied by an image.

Read more about the hypnic jerk here

Gold-Covered Ice Cream Cones

Soft serve vanilla ice cream in a cone is a true treat on any day. You could even say that it's a common luxury. So why not dress it accordingly? There's an ice cream shop in Kanazawa, Japan that sells its ice cream cones in gold foil. That's not gold-colored foil, mind you, but actually gold.
The gold itself is completely edible, so dig in.

For Sale: The World's Only Amphibious Lamborghini Countach

Strictly speaking, all Lamborghini Countaches are amphibious--for an extremely short period of time. But this one is built to last.
It's actually a replica made to resemble an original Lambo. Mike Ryan, the founder of SeaRoader Amphibious Vehicles, built it for . . . well, why wouldn't you make such a thing, if you could?
It's now up for sale on eBay, priced at £18,995.00 ($27,035 USD). Road and Track describes it:

There's some astonishing engineering going on here. The four-wheel pushrod coilover suspension is fully adjustible, with hydraulics to compress the suspension and pull the wheels into the wheel wells for water travel. Also, it's got a smoke screen button. Yes, just like James Bond's Aston Martin.
As you'd expect with a one-off so delightfully bizarre, the Amphiborghini has led a strange and unusual life. Built as a right-hand drive for U.K. roads, it was at some point shipped to the U.S. and converted to left-hand drive, used in Hollywood, then returned to the U.K. and converted back to right-hand drive, as it sits today.

How Shell Companies Help Hide the Cash

Test Tube News: How Shell Companies Help Hide the Cash

The release of the Panama Papers exposed where and how the world's elite hide their money. What methods do they use to keep their wealth?

Raleigh, NC set to lose $24 million thanks to wingnuts’ anti-trans bathroom

Tourism board: Raleigh, NC set to lose $24 million thanks to wingnuts’ anti-trans bathroom law

After moron McCrory (R) signed the law on March 24 to prevent cities like Charlotte from granting bathroom rights to transgender people, companies like PayPal announced plans to move jobs out of state.

Samantha Bee eviscerates wingnuts who think diapers are too fancy for poor babies

Samantha Bee eviscerates wingnuts who think diapers are too fancy for poor babies

Iowa schools placed on lockdown after wingnut dad threatens to ‘retaliate’ over sex ed classes

Iowa schools placed on lockdown after wingnut dad threatens to ‘retaliate’ over sex ed classes

Comments section trolls target women and black writers the most

Comments section trolls target women and black writers the most — according to detailed analysis

Not All Greenery Is Good

Not All Greenery Is Good: 10 Hazardous Houseplants

Ride a Cow through the Swiss Alps

To see the lovely terrain of Hemishofen, Switzerland, mount your trusty steed and head out on the trail. That won't be a horse, but a dairy cow. It's one means of transport for visitors to the Bolderhof Farm. The Smithsonian magazine describes the delights and challenges of this cow-mounted adventure:

Once you’re on your cow—be it Umbra, Oklahoma, La Paloma or another—it’s time to get mooving. Don’t expect to take off at a trot, though. While a horse (usually) responds to its rider's speed preference, the cows at Bolderhof pick their own pace, which Rickenbacher says is “between slow and very slow.” The ride is calm and quiet, allowing riders to enjoy stress-free moments in the beauty of the Alps. There's a benefit to saddling up a cow instead of a horse: Cows don't really care about the kinds of things that might spook a horse. “If something happens around you, the cow stands still and looks,” Rickenbacher says.
The biggest challenge cow trekkers face are stalled rides because of some particularly delicious grass or corn along the route—a problem that can be fixed with a few pets and nice words to the cow. In the worst-case scenario, you may need to hop off and lead the heifer away from the distraction.

Extreme Life Found Deep Below Sea Floor

Extreme Life Found Deep Below Sea Floor

Microbial life is revealed by drilling in the world's biggest underground layer of water.

Massive Crab Swarm at Ocean Floor Filmed

Massive Crab Swarm at Ocean Floor Filmed

Video taken more than 1,164 feet below the Pacific Ocean’s surface captured a frenetic swarm of thousands of red crabs in very low oxygen, acidic waters.

Baby Dolphin Deaths Linked to BP Oil Spill

Baby Dolphin Deaths Linked to BP Oil Spill

A study blames chronic illnesses in mothers exposed to the oil for the deaths of their young.

Octopus Fight

This appears to be a scuffle between two octopuses over a nice cozy place to sit and blend in with the scenary. You see provocation, chase, and some smacking about, plus some color-changing, which might be communication, a cooling-off, or bragging. Who knows? There’s also an intriguing bit where an octopus wipes itself down.   

(YouTube link)

I can’t even tell who won, because how do you tell one shapeshifter from another? Anyway, it’s a pretty cool sequence. This all happened off the coast of Asu Island in Indonesia.

Animal Pictures