The Daily Drift

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Carolina Naturally

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Today in History

1146		Zangi of the Near East is murdered. The Sultan Nur ad-Din, his son, pursues the conquest of Edessa.
1321		Dante Alighieri dies of malaria just hours after finishing writing Paradiso.
1544		Henry VIII‘s forces take Boulogne, France.
1773		Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov successfully storm a Turkish fort at Hirsov, Turkey.
1791		Louis XVI swears his allegiance to the French constitution.
1812		Napoleon Bonaparte‘s invasion of Russia reaches its climax as his Grande Armee enters Moscow–only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained.
1814		Francis Scott Key writes the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” as he waits aboard a British launch in the Chesapeake Bay for the outcome of the British assault on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
1847		U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott capture Mexico City, virtually bringing the two-year Mexican War to a close.
1853		The Allies land at Eupatoria on the west coast of Crimea.
1862		At the battles of South Mountain and Crampton’s Gap, Maryland Union troops smash into the Confederates as they close in on what will become the Antietam battleground.
1901		Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the 26th President of the United States upon the death of William McKinley, who was shot eight days earlier.
1911		Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin is mortally wounded in an assassination attempt at the Kiev opera house.
1943		German troops abandon the Salerno front in Italy..
1960		Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia form OPEC.
1966		Operation Attleboro, designed as a training exercise for American troops, becomes a month-long struggle against the Viet Cong.
1975		Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first native-born American saint in the Roman catholic cult.
1979		Nur Muhammad Taraki, president and former prime minister of Afghanistan, is assassinated in a coup in which prime minister Hafizullah Amin seizes power.
1982		Bachir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, is killed along with 26 others in a bomb blast in Beirut.
1984		Joe Kittinger, a former USAF fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, becomes the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1994		Major League Baseball players strike over a salary cap and other proposed changes, forcing the cancellation of the entire postseason and the World Series.
2007		Northern Rock Bank suffers the UK’s first bank run in 150 years.

Why a volcano, Frankenstein, and the summer of 1816 are relevant to the Anthropocene

Why a volcano, Frankenstein, and the summer of 1816 are relevant to the Anthropocene

California first US state to promise overtime to farmworkers

California first US state to promise overtime to farm-workers

D.C. Will Hide Banned Books Around the City

September is banned books month and in celebration of all the great banned books that later were recognized as classics, the Washington D.C. library set up quite a clever scavenger hunt. Hidden in businesses around the city are copies of once-banned books -find one and it's yours. It's not just a matter of finding a free book of course, the program is a great way to look back on the history of censored books and each title will be wrapped in a cover that explains why the book was challenged. Clues to finding the secret treasures can be found on the library's Twitter account.

Was This America’s Worst Utopia?

In the early 1980s, Baghwan Shree Rajneesh brought his cult Osho from India to Wasco County, Oregon, and began a community of around 7,000 people called Rajneeshpuram. As the community expanded, they needed more space, but that would butt up against the rights of other communities.

In 1983, the Red Vermin started taking over nearby towns and tried to weasel representatives into government positions to gain control of the area and independence. Locals grew resistant and began to worry about the Rajneeshpuram utopia’s presence. Then, Wasco County turned into a battle zone when the Rajneeshees wanted to expand their city up on a mountain but city officials rejected the request. Enraged, the Rajneeshees bused in 2,000 homeless people to vote Rajneeshee members into the county government. However, the county did not recognize the homeless as voters.
The Rajneeshees then came up with an extravagant backup plan: poison the restaurant salad bars in the area with salmonella to prevent locals from voting against them. The Red Vermin created a brown liquid mixture of salmonella, carried it around in bags labeled “salsa,” and contaminated wherever they could—salad dressings, produce, water. After the salmonella salsa raid, 751 people fell ill, 45 were hospitalized, and two Oregon officials got sick. Thankfully, no one was killed.

The Rajneeshees were implicated in the plot, and their leaders fled, spelling the end of Rajneeshpuram. But that’s only one of the six utopian communities in this list. Read about their philosophies and how they crashed and burned -literally, in one case- at Alas Obscura.

Americans Are Drowning in Credit Card Debt, and It's Not Because They Are 'Irresponsible'

Americans Are Drowning in Credit Card Debt, and It's Not Because They Are 'Irresponsible'

5 Ways You Are Subsidizing Big Meat Without Knowing It

5 Ways You Are Subsidizing Big Meat Without Knowing It

NCAA moves ‘March Madness’ basketball finals out of North Carolina over anti-trans law

NCAA moves ‘March Madness’ basketball finals out of North Carolina over anti-trans law

The governing board overseeing U.S. college athletics said on Monday it will move seven championship sporting events out of North Carolina to protest state laws deemed discriminatory to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals.

Bisexual Men (Who Definitely Do Exist) Are Better Boyfriends and Dads

Bisexual Men (Who Definitely Do Exist) Are Better Boyfriends and Dads, Study Finds

The brain’s stunning genomic diversity revealed

The brain’s stunning genomic diversity revealed

Our brains contain a surprising diversity of DNA. Even though we are taught that every cell in our body has the same DNA, in fact most cells in the brain have changes to their DNA that make each neuron a little different. Now researchers at the Salk Institute and...

Atheists remain most disliked religious minority in the U.S.

Atheists remain most disliked religious minority in the U.S.

Ten years ago University of Minnesota sociologists conducted research showing that, among a long list of racial and religious minority groups,  atheists were the most disliked group of people in the United States. Last month they followed up with new research that...

Unusually addressed letter somehow made it to right recipient

An envelope addressed to "Scott, from Scotland" has somehow made it to its destination in New Zealand. Tiniroto resident Scott O'Brien could not believe his eyes when he saw the envelope in his letterbox. It was addressed to: "Scott, from Scotland ... aged about 60/70?? ... corner of Tiniroto Road (almost). By a bridge. Has a Japanese wife - who may be older but looks about 20 ... also has a daughter, about 3. Loves history ... Good sense of humor ... tells a good tale ... Rural delivery area, sort of south east of Gisborne."
The letter was from the man who delivers the phone books to all the homes in the district, George MacLachlan. He was keen to catch up with O'Brien again after meeting by chance outside his home while delivering the phone book about five months ago.
"The dog barked at him when he pulled up the drive and I went out to see what it was. We had a good chat for about half an hour and then off he went. The next I heard from him was this letter and it's amazing it arrived." O'Brien has high praise for NZ Post for making sure the mail got to the right owner. He hopes he will meet up with MacLachlanagain next year.

Woman still intends to marry fiancé despite his attempt to secretly film her mother taking a bath

The fiancée of a man who was convicted of trying to secretly record his future mother-in-law taking a bath has insisted she is standing by her man. Nicole Mageean, 20, from Portaferry, Northern Ireland, says that she still intends to marry Thomas Edgar, 19, and believed that he meant to record her, something she said she would have consented to. On Thursday, Edgar walked out of Newtownards Magistrates' Court with two years' probation and an order to sign the sex offenders' register for five years. The victim, Nicole's mother, said the ordeal was like an episode of the Jerry Springer Show and had put an enormous strain on her family and her relationship with her daughter.
She added that the "door is always open" to Nicole if she decided to end the relationship. The court heard on Thursday that while Nicole's mother was at home on November 21, she spotted Edgar's mobile phone hidden in a slipper when she went to use the toilet. She noticed it was "glowing", picked it up and saw it was set to record. Concerned, she left to get advice from friends. When she returned, she told Edgar and her daughter she was going for a bath. Edgar was said to have become agitated and asked to the toilet. When she returned, "his iPad was against the wall". After he was arrested, he told the police that he was trying to record his girlfriend as a "practical joke", rather than something more sinister. Judge Hamill said the trial had been a "ludicrous contest from start to finish" and called Edgar's version of events a "fairy story."
Nicole said: "If he was a bad a person I wouldn't be with him or engaged. I was there the night everything happened, so I know. The night that everything kicked off, mum just came into me and just told me. She brought me down to the bedroom with Thomas sitting on the bed and he was near enough in tears. He told me that he tried to do something stupid." She said that the couple had consented to film each other in private before. "We did stuff like this all the time," she explained. "We've done this a couple of times." Asked how she would react if Edgar had recorded her in the bathroom without her knowledge, Nicole replied: "That would have been fine from my point of view. But he wouldn't have been doing it to random people in my house." Asked again if he had been reckless with others in the house she replied: "No, I don't think that at all." Nicole added that staying with Thomas was not hard, despite his conviction.
"No, it wasn't difficult - there was never a question," she explained "My friends are all sticking by me 100%. They've got my back because they know him and that he would never do such a thing." She also admitted that she could see no way at present to reconnect with her now estranged family. Nicole's mother said she could not believe the situation. "Where do I start?" she said. My daughter comes from a good home. She has a ticket to university, a future. He (Thomas) admitted everything. My daughter knows the truth, and she has heard it from him." She also told how Thomas "slipped up" in court because when asked if Nicole knew about the video, he allegedly replied, "No, she would have cracked up". Nicole's mum admitted she hoped to reconnect with her daughter, but only "if she was to admit what was going on and leave that family - she knows that my door is always open". "How she can even stomach being in the same room as him?" she asked. "It's like Jerry Springer. I can't move on because that's my daughter, not till I save her."

Man fatally shot by his cousin while attempting to see whether bullet-resistant vest still worked

A Florida man faces a manslaughter charge after shooting his cousin in an attempt to see whether a bullet-resistant vest still worked, according to police. At 10pm on Saturday, Joaquin Mendez, 23, tried on the bullet-resistant vest, Tampa police said.
He wondered aloud whether it was functional. "Let's see," replied his cousin Alexandro Garibaldi, who pulled out a gun and shot at the vest, according to police. Police officers responded to the address in Tampa minutes after the shooting.
They said they found Mendez outside, wounded in the chest. Inside, they found blood and the vest, which had a bullet hole. Garibaldi, 24, told officers he heard a gunshot, then discovered his wounded cousin outside. But police said they heard a different story from a witness.

YouTube link.

The witness reported that Mendez sat in a chair and put the vest on, wondering whether it worked, and that Garibaldi took out a gun, said, "Let's see," and shot. Mendez was taken to a hospital, where he died. In addition to the manslaughter with a weapon charge, Garibaldi faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter

Reconciling dwarf galaxies with dark matter

Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf galaxies surround our own Milky Way, there seem to be far too few of them compared with standard...

Explaining why the universe can be transparent

Explaining why the universe can be transparent

Two papers published by an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside and several collaborators explain why the universe has enough energy to become transparent. The study led by Naveen Reddy, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and...

Snail venom holds key to better diabetes treatments

Snail venom holds key to better diabetes treatments

New research has found that venom extracted from a species of marine cone snail could hold the key to developing ‘ultra-fast-acting’ insulins, leading to more efficient therapies for diabetes management. Researchers from Australia and the US have...

Family rescued after being trapped by wolf

A family of four hiking on Discovery Island off Oak Bay in British Columbia, Canada, had to be rescued by the Coast Guard on Saturday afternoon when they were trapped by the island’s resident wolf. The distress call to the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Center was taken by Dylan Carter.
“We deal with bears and things like that from time to time, and people stranded with bears in the area. But this is the wolf call I’ve ever had. They were stalked by a wolf and had made their way to the lighthouse, and climbed on top of the foghorn building of the lighthouse to escape it.” The Coast Guard’s M. Charles M.B. vessel was a short distance away, with two armed fisheries officers aboard.
“They hiked ashore and helped them down off the roof of this old lighthouse building, and helped them under armed escort down to the Coast Guard zodiac which took them back to their campsite.” Ian Cesarec patrols the waters in and around the Chatham Islands, property belonging to the Songhees First Nation. “Access to any of the Songhees territorial lands are 100 percent no go. That includes half of Discovery Island, including the lighthouse property.

“If, in fact, these people did have a dog with them, they would have attracted that wolf. And possibly that would have been the curiosity factor around the wolf.” The wolf appeared on the island at same time as the death of Songhees Chief Robert Sam four years ago. And Discovery Island is off limits to the public where the family was rescued. “It doesn’t matter if they have a dog or anything with them. No trespassing means no trespassing. And people should be aware of their environment.” Despite the signs, and warnings, many people continue to travel to all areas of the island.

Animal Pictures