The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally

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Today in History

657		Mu’awiya defeats Caliph Ali in the Battle of Siffin in Mesopotamia.
1526		Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon and colonists leave Santo Domingo for Florida.
1529		Francisco Pizarro receives a royal warrant to “discover and conquer” Peru.
1758		British forces capture France’s Fortress of Louisbourg after a seven-week siege.
1759		The French relinquish Fort Ticonderoga in New York to the British under General Jeffrey Amherst.
1775		The Continental Congress establishes a postal system for the colonies with Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.
1790		An attempt at a counter-revolution in France is put down by the National Guard at Lyons.
1794		The French defeat an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus, France.
1830		King Charles X of France issues five ordinances limiting the political and civil rights of citizens.
1847		Liberia becomes the first African colony to become an independent state.
1848		The French army suppresses the Paris uprising.
1886		William Gladstone is replaced by Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister of England.
1918		Britain’s top war ace, Edward Mannock, is shot down by ground fire on the Western Front.
1920		The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified.
1948		In an Executive Order, President Harry Truman calls for the end of discrimination and segregation in the U.S. armed forces.
2005		The shuttle Discovery launches on mission STS-114, marking a return to space after the shuttle Columbia crash of 2003.

50% Of All Americans Will Be Nearsighted By 2030

Why 50% Of All Americans Will Be Nearsighted By 2030

Will you be sporting specs someday soon?

Why Can’t We Remember Our Early Childhood?

Why Can’t We Remember Our Early Childhood?

Your Part-Time Job May Be Hurting Your Chances Of Landing an Interview

Why Your Part-Time Job May Be Hurting Your Chances Of Landing an Interview

Employers think it’s just as bad as being unemployed for a year

Kissing, touching, oral sex: Fox 'News' employees say harassment problem goes way beyond Roger Ailes

Employees say that sexual harassment, bullying and intimidation at the Fox 'News' Channel are pervasive throughout the network's culture and by no means is the problem limited to now-ousted CEO Roger Ailes. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that it had spoken to a dozen women currently or formerly employed by the news network, all of whom say that they personally experienced sexual harassment or intimidation at work.

Read More 

Profits Are Sky-High, But Airlines Keep Coming Up With New Ways to Gouge You With Fees

Profits Are Sky-High, But Airlines Keep Coming Up With New Ways to Gouge You With Fees

Widow took husband's body on 'rolling wake'

Alan Bengaard, chief of police in Ketchikan, Alaska, has seen a lot in his decades-long law enforcement career. But he’s never seen anything like this. Ketchikan police received a third-party call from the area of the Potlatch Bar at around 3:15am on Wednesday.

When they arrived on scene, officers discovered an aluminum transport casket with the body of a 78-year-old man inside, according to Bengaard. The man had died from natural causes over the weekend on Prince of Wales Island, and his wife took the body to Ketchikan, Bengaard said.
“The body was in that and supposed to be destined for the mortuary, but for some reason she decided to not go directly to the mortuary and had been driving around with him for a couple days,” Bengaard said. “My understanding is kind of - leading up to the events of the last couple days - there’s been a rolling wake or viewing.

“It was pointed out to me that, evidently, she had stopped at a couple of the canneries and got ice and filled the bed of the truck with ice to keep the body chilled. You can’t make this stuff up,” the chief added. The wife did not break any laws that Bengaard was aware of. The mortuary took custody of the body after police responded to the scene. The family can make arrangements for how it wants to take care of the body. “Hopefully it won’t go back on the road again,” he said.

Man tells of unusual attack while stuck in traffic jam

A man says he is left stunned after a terrifying ordeal on an expressway in Michigan on Saturday.

Michael Mengis, of Oak Park, said he was driving with his son along I-94 near the I-96 interchange when they came to a complete halt due to heavy traffic. He said a man jumped out of his Jaguar car and onto the hood of his Dodge Dart.
Then, the attacker pulled out a knife and started using it to hit the driver’s side window. He was unable to break to break the glass. “Thank God Dodge builds a good window,” said Mengis. He said the man struck his car eight or nine times.

While the story is serious, Mr Mengis' account of the incident has some comedy elements.

YouTube link. Alternative YouTube link.

It is not clear if then stranger intended to carjack the victims. Once traffic picked up, Mengis says he sped away and called Michigan State Police. Mengis wants to warn other drivers about his attack.

Tall man pulled over for standing while driving arrested on another charge

A tall man from Hingham, Massachusetts, wasn't arrested for driving while standing out of his car’s sun roof on Thursday afternoon, but that’s what got the attention of police. Sgt. Steven Dearth said that Ryan Delaney, 20, who's 6 feet 7 inches tall, was charged for driving with a suspended license, after police got a call from a motorist who reported Delaney’s behavior. Dearth said the arrest began when a motorist called shortly before 3:30pm to report “a man standing up in the sun roof” of a Mercury Sable. The caller first noticed the driver and the Mercury less than a mile away, near Rockland, as the car headed north towards Hingham. The caller followed the Mercury into Hingham and stayed on the phone with police until a patrol officer pulled Delaney over into a school parking lot. Dearth said
Delaney denied standing up while driving. But a license check showed that his license had been suspended for seven “surchargeable offenses,” which include traffic accidents and speeding. The state Registry of Motor Vehicles suspends a license if a driver accumulates seven such offenses within three years. Dearth said Delaney’s female passenger had a valid license, so she drove the 2005 Mercury from the scene.
He said it’s not clear how Delaney would have steered the car if he had been standing up. Dearth said police couldn’t charge Delaney with driving to endanger since he was reported standing while driving in Rockland, not Hingham. Delaney was released on bail on Thursday but didn’t show up for a Friday arraignment at Hingham District Court - so he now also faces a bench warrant for failure to appear.

Motorist led police on hour-long high-speed chase because he was bored

A man from Thurston County, Washington, led multiple police agencies in a sometimes dangerous pursuit that spanned two counties and 49 miles on Saturday evening because he was bored, the county sheriff’s office said. Sgt. Dave Odegaard with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office said David B. McNalley, 30, had no warrants, no prior convictions, and a valid driver’s license when he tore off through an intersection in Tumwater at 4:38pm.

Burning rubber, he attracted the attention of a sheriff’s deputy, who tried to pull him over. “He took off,” Odegaard said of McNalley, who was driving a 1994 Mercury Sable. “The deputy felt like he basically instigated this pursuit. It went from the Tumwater area into the Olympia city limits and then went onto I-5.” The pursuit went on for more than an hour, crossing into Pierce County and circling back around into Olympia. A handful of patrol agencies were involved. McNalley “was passing cars on the shoulder of the road down near Nisqually,” Odegaard said.
Sometimes reaching 85 miles per hour, the pursuit was “was discontinued three times due to speed and public safety.” McNalley circled back into Olympia. The Thurston County Sheriff’s Department set up spike strips. In trying to avoid them, McNalley lost control and drove onto a farm, hitting a fence at about 5:45pm. There was minor damage to the fence, Odegaard said, but no one was hurt. McNalley didn’t appear to be impaired by drugs or alcohol, Odegaard said. “He said he was just bored,” Odegaard said. “It looks like to us right now ... he instigated this pursuit because he was bored and just wanted to do it.”
McNalley has been charged with three counts of attempting to elude a police vehicle, but other charges could be pending, Odegaard said. He is being held without bail in the Thurston County jail until his arraignment on Monday. Odegaard said it was an unusual chase. Usually, people being pursued don’t come back to the same jurisdiction where the chase started. “It’s frustrating, because in my mind he endangered not only his life but a number of officers that were involved,” he said. “We had jurisdiction from state patrol, Lacey, Thurston County Sheriff’s, Nisqually Tribal as well as all the citizens ... he could have very easily injured or killed some innocent people just for the joy of, ‘I was bored.’”

Man head-butted his mother because she brought home Chick-fil-A for dinner

Derek Foreman, 30, of Largo, Florida, is currently nursing an injured nose.

This follows an incident on Thursday when he allegedly head-butted his 55-year-old mother in the face during a confrontation about dinner arrangements at their home.
“Def. and Victim had a verbal disagreement because the victim brought home Chick-fil-A and the Def. did not want to eat Chick-fil-A,” a criminal complaint notes. Faced with the fast food, Foreman “became upset” and head-butted his mother, causing her bottom lip to split, investigators allege.
Foreman was arrested for domestic battery, a misdemeanor, and booked into the county jail. After a court hearing on Friday, Foreman was released from custody and directed to have no contact with his mother. A judge also ordered Foreman to be outfitted with a device that monitors his alcohol intake.

Man arrested after calling police to report theft of a pound of marijuana and large amount of cash

A man from Jamestown, North Dakota, is facing a Class A felony after he called 911 to report a large sum of money and marijuana were stolen from his residence. Tyler Dallmann, 31, was charged on Wednesday with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, a Class A felony, in Southeast District Court. He was also charged with criminal attempt to tamper with physical evidence and possession of drug paraphernalia marijuana, Class A misdemeanors, and possession of drug paraphernalia marijuana, a Class B misdemeanor. Dallman is free on bond. According to court documents, at 2:12am on Tuesday, Dallmann called Stutsman County Communications to report his residence had been burgled.
When police officers arrived on the scene, Dallmann allegedly said someone broke the window in the back door of his residence and stole $30,000 in cash and about a pound of marijuana. While officers spoke with Dallmann, other officers returned to the Stutsman County Law Enforcement Center to obtain a search warrant for Dallman’s residence, car and any outbuildings on the property.
After the search warrant was obtained, a search was conducted of the property. Marijuana was allegedly found in the house and a backpack containing $12,000 was found in a car belonging to Dallmann. The maximum penalty for a Class A felony is 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The maximum penalty for a Class A misdemeanor is one year in prison and a $3,000 fine. The maximum penalty for a Class B misdemeanor is 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine.

Christina's World (Andrew Wyeth, 1948)

Image via the Museum of Modern Art.  Text from an article in Mental Floss:

The 31-year-old Wyeth modeled the painting's frail-looking brunette after his neighbor in South Cushing, Maine. Anna Christina Olson suffered from a degenerative muscular disorder [Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease] that prevented her from walking. Rather than using a wheelchair, Olson crawled around her home and the surrounding grounds... The sight of Olson picking blueberries while crawling through her fields “like a crab on a New England shore” inspired Wyeth to paint Christina’s World.
Art historians have often snubbed Wyeth's works in their surveys, and some naysayers have attacked the painting's widespread popularity, deriding it as "a mandatory dorm room poster." Meanwhile, critics have chastised Wyeth's attention on Olson's infirmity and characterized it as exploitation. Still others claim there was no art in rendering realistic imagery in paint...
Christina's World remained her favorite to the end. Once when I asked her why, she simply smiled and said, 'You know pink is my favorite color.' 'But you're wearing a flowered pink dress in Miss Olson and holding a kitten. I thought you loved kittens.' 'Course I do, but in the other one Andy put me where he knew I wanted to be. Now that I can't be there anymore, all I do is think of that picture and I'm there.'

Many So-Called 'Natural' Disasters Are Actually Caused by Humans

Many So-Called 'Natural' Disasters Are Actually Caused by Humans—And They're Only Getting Worse

Why Do We Pretend to Clean Up Ocean Oil Spills?

Why Do We Pretend to Clean Up Ocean Oil Spills?

The secrets of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece

The secrets of the Delphic Oracle in ancient Greece -- and how it speaks to us today

"Ancient bottom wipers"

After writing posts about politics, it seems appropriate to consider the topic of "bottom wipers."

Some bamboo sticks with scraps of grimy cloth wound around them have been identified as bottom wipers from a latrine pit in a 2,000-year-old Chinese relay station on the Silk Road. They have also preserved the first solid evidence of disease spread from east to west by travelers. Samples of ancient feces scraped off the fabric and brought back to a laboratory in Cambridge have revealed eggs from four species of parasites, including Chinese liver fluke. The fluke needs marshy conditions to complete its life cycle, so could not have come from the desert area around the ancient Xuanquanzhi relay station.

I'm not sure why the cloth was attached to sticks for use.  I know the Romans used (and reused!) sponges on sticks, and similar contraptions are marketed nowadays for the severely obese or physically handicapped.

How to blow a cow

Found out about this subject matter from a recent podcast of No Such Thing as a Fish:

Cow blowing, Kuhblasen, phooka, or doom dev, is a process used in many countries according to ethnographers, in which forceful blowing of air into a cow's vagina (or sometimes anus) is applied to induce her to produce more milk.
Cow blowing was the reason why Gandhi abjured cow milk, saying that "since I had come to know that the cow and the buffalo were subjected to the process of phooka, I had conceived a strong disgust for milk."

A brief search yielded a video of the process.   Frankly, I don't find the maneuver any more disgusting than American presidential politics, but in recognition of the more refined sensibilities of some of this blog's readers, I'll place the a link to the video, go to it if you wish:

YouTube link.

Dog Saves Owner's Life

This is Guy, a dog who lives in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania. On Thursday, he was hiking in the woods with 79-year old human, who fell and hit his head. The human lay there for 12 hours while Guy frantically tried to get the help of other nearby two-legs. WJLA reports:

The dog reportedly ran up the bank where the rescuers were, and would stop every 20-30 feet, barking until he led them to where the elder man was lying. […]
"It was like watching an episode of 'Lassie,'" says emergency responder, Matthew Mariscano.

Good boy.

Animal Pictures