The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Word ...! 

 

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Respect the Minion ... !

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Today in History

1758		James Abercromby is replaced as supreme commander of British forces after his defeat by French commander the Marquis of Montcalm at Fort Ticonderoga during the French and Indian War.
1759		Quebec surrenders to the British after a battle which sees the deaths of both James Wolfe and Louis Montcalm, the British and French commanders.
1793		George Washington lays the foundation stone for the U.S. Capitol.
1830		Tom Thumb, the first locomotive built in the United States, loses a nine-mile race in Maryland to a horse.
1850		Congress passes the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in 1793), requiring the return of escaped slaves to their owners.
1862		After waiting all day for a Union attack which never came at Antietam, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins a retreat out of Maryland and back to Virginia.
1863		Union cavalry troops clash with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.
1874		The Nebraska Relief and Aid Society is formed to help farmers whose crops were destroyed by grasshoppers swarming throughout the American West.
1911		Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin dies four days after being shot at the Kiev opera house by socialist lawyer Dimitri Bogroff.
1914		The Irish Home Rule Bill becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I.
1929		Charles Lindbergh takes off on a 10,000 mile air tour of South America.
1934		The League of Nations admits the Soviet Union.
1939		A German U-boat sinks the British aircraft carrier Courageous, killing 500 people.
1948		Margaret Chase Smith becomes the first woman elected to the Senate without completing another senator’s term when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten. Smith is also the only woman to be elected to and serve in both houses of Congress.
1960		Two thousand cheer Fidel Castro’s arrival in New York for the United Nations session.
1961		UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold is killed in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the Congo.
1964		U.S. destroyers fire on hostile targets in Vietnam.
1973		East and West Germany and The Bahamas are admitted to United Nations.
1975		Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped by violent radical group SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army); she will later take part in some of the group’s militant activities and will be captured by FBI agents.
1977		Voyager I takes first photo of Earth and the Moon together.
1980		Cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo, a Cuban, becomes the first black to be sent on a mission in space.
1998		ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is formed to coordinate unique identifying addresses for Websites worldwide.
2009		The US television soap opera The Guiding Light broadcasts its final episode, ending a 72-year run that began on radio.

Muslim Women Are Set on Fire and Assaulted For Being Muslims

Muslim Women Are Set on Fire and Assaulted For Being Muslims

It is time for the mayor and the NYPD to put forward the necessary resources to investigate and prevent these attacks on the Muslim community.…

Mommy, what's a polyamorous christian socialist utopia ?

Founded in 1848, and in operation for just over three decades, the Oneida Community was profoundly revolutionary for its time, paving the way for advances in women’s and workers’ rights. At the commune headquartered on the Oneida River in upstate New York, women cut their hair short, ditched the corset, and did the same work as the men. Everyone worked four to six hours a day, and no one accumulated any material possessions—not furniture, not fine clothing, and certainly not silverware.

Most scandalously, commune members engaged in a system of “complex marriage,” believing that loving, open sexual relationships could bring them closer to Dog. They believed the liquid electricity of jesus christ’s spirit flowed through words and touch, and that a chain of sexual intercourse would create a spiritual battery so charged with Dog’s energy that the community would transcend into immortality, creating heaven on earth...

The first tenet of Noyes’ bible communism was to let go of emotional attachment to other people, be they spouses or even children, in exchange for a communal spirit fed by Dog’s love. Married couples who joined the commune were told to give up their “marriage spirit” of sexual possessiveness and jealousy. Mothers and children or pairs of lovers who showed too much attachment or “sticky love” would be punished with periods of separation... At Oneida, another building on the former farm was converted to the “Children’s House” where all the Community’s children, ages one and half to 12, would be raised by nurses and teachers. Noyes believed that favoring one’s own children over others, or “philoprogenitiveness,” was also a sin...

Noyes didn’t see any conflict between scientific progress and his brand of christianity: Like many Victorians, he was mystified and enchanted by electricity and magnetism. Noyes combined ideas from Franz Anton Mesmer’s theories of animal magnetism and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s concept of the Over-Soul, wherein everyone and everything is a connected part of Dog. He asserted that christ’s love was an electric fluid that could be passed through words, both written and spoken, as well as through touch. But the ultimate way to charge up the Community’s “Dog's battery” was through sex, and if the members had enough electric sex in the name of jesus, they could achieve immortality on earth...

Each boy coming of age, usually around 14, would be introduced to sex with a spiritually devout postmenopausal woman. Meanwhile, girls who’d gone through puberty—at that time, New York’s age of consent was 12—would lose their virginity to Noyes himself (who was already 37 when the Community settled in Oneida). While there are no records of brother-sister or child-parent partnering, the Oneidans accepted sexual relationships between uncles and nieces as well as first cousins.

Much more in the longread at Collectors Weekly, including an explanation of how the legacy of the word "Oneida" eventually came to be associated with flatware and silverware:

Oneida’s early enterprises included canning fruits and vegetables and manufacturing animal traps, chain link, and silk sewing thread. It was Wayland-Smith’s great-great-grandfather, Charles Cragin, who in 1877 suggested the community start making spoons at its colony in Wallingford, Connecticut, near the rushing Quinnipiac River. The original polyamorous religious commune broke up in 1880 and reorganized its assets into a corporation. In the 1890s, Oneida Community, Limited, started to drop its other products to focus on the cutlery market.

How to put on a torc

Basically, you fit the torc around your neck by applying torque to it.  First the definition:

A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large rigid or at least stiff neck ring in metal, made either as a single piece or from strands twisted together. The great majority are open at the front, although some had hook and ring closures and a few mortice and tenon locking catches to close them. Many seem designed for near-permanent wear and would have been difficult to remove. Torcs are found in the Scythian, Illyrian, Thracian, Celtic, and other cultures of the European Iron Age from around the 8th century BC to the 3rd century AD. For the Iron Age Celts the gold torc seems to have been a key object, identifying the wearer as a person of high rank, and many of the finest works of ancient Celtic art are torcs...

 The word comes from Latin torquis (or torques), from torqueo, "to twist", because of the twisted shape many of the rings have. Typically, neck-rings that open at the front when worn are called "torcs" and those that open at the back "collars".

Now this explanation from a curator at the British Museum:

Although this [illustration embedded at top] is one of the most famous examples, the form is typical: open at the front, with a flexible neck-ring made of coiled or twisted wires. This type of torc is put on and taken off by being bent out of shape. You can see that one of the terminals of this torc has been pulled slightly forward compared to the other one. This is the result of it being repeatedly pulled open to be slipped on...

This constant flexing caused a lot of stress to the metal neck rings of the torc. When you bend metal in this way, it tends to harden and become brittle. You may have experienced this first hand if you have ever wanted to break off a piece of wire for hanging a picture or working in the garden and did this by bending it back and forth until it broke. The same thing happened to some torcs. We have many examples of truly beautiful neck-rings which were worn to destruction – taken on and off so many times that they broke at the back. They have often been somewhat clumsily repaired, as in this case:

On the Continent, there are other types of torc, which sometimes have clever hidden clasps, hinges, or removable sections... The idea of a hinge was taken up in later British neck-rings found in south-western Britain. They have a discreet hinge at the back, and a clasp at the front that was hidden when the terminals were closed... But there are some torcs which I don’t think could be opened up...

For details on those latter versions and relevant photos, see the entry at the British Museum's blog.

The origin of the phrase "No soap"

Explained at World Wide Words:

A speaker usually means by it that there’s no chance of something happening or no hope of some outcome, that the enquirer is out of luck or more generally that some request is being denied...

The first examples of the idiom appear near the end of the First World War in letters home from draftees. The more literate of such letters were often reprinted in small-town newspapers to let readers know how their boys were doing... the expression was widespread within the US Navy...

Recruits often complained they weren’t being supplied with soap, a need that was at times met by the Red Cross in the comfort kits they supplied. Soap was in short supply in the US at the time — as it was throughout Europe — because its raw materials of gelatine and fat were being diverted to make explosives. It seems likely that no soap, at first a rueful complaint, became for recruits a saying that meant — as early references confirmed — “you’re out of luck”. The slightly broader senses naturally followed.

The Film, Television, and Video History of NASA

NASA was formed in 1958 to replace the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), and introduced the concept with a short film -back when even the directors pronounced it “En Aye Ess Aye.”

(YouTube link)

Since then, NASA has produced many such films, TV shows, and videos to bring space close to all of us. Here’s a compressed look at them.

Random Photos

LSD and Language

How LSD Affects Language

8 'Facts' About Your Health That Turn Out Not to Be True

8 'Facts' About Your Health That Turn Out Not to Be True 

Fried Jell-O?

Yes, Fried Jell-O

State fairs are known for deep-fried goodness and the reality is that because new items are introduced every year at practically every fair, it's hard to find new and unusual creations. That being said, fried Jell-O is certainly a new one and unlike fried Kool Aid and many other fried treats, it's not just funnel cake with some kind of liquid poured  into the batter. This time it's actually Jell-O battered and then deep fried and it must be good -after all, it won first place in the Best Taste award at the Texass State Fair. So if you get your chance to find some fried Jell-O, remember, there's always room for J-E-L-L-O.

How the sugar industry influenced public policy

An abstract from this week's issue of JAMA:

Early warning signals of the coronary heart disease (CHD) risk of sugar (sucrose) emerged in the 1950s. We examined Sugar Research Foundation (SRF) internal documents, historical reports, and statements relevant to early debates about the dietary causes of CHD and assembled findings chronologically into a narrative case study. The SRF sponsored its first CHD research project in 1965, a literature review published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which singled out fat and cholesterol as the dietary causes of CHD and downplayed evidence that sucrose consumption was also a risk factor. The SRF set the review’s objective, contributed articles for inclusion, and received drafts. The SRF’s funding and role was not disclosed. Together with other recent analyses of sugar industry documents, our findings suggest the industry sponsored a research program in the 1960s and 1970s that successfully cast doubt about the hazards of sucrose while promoting fat as the dietary culprit in CHD. Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development.

Local Peace Economy

10 Ingredients for a Local Peace Economy

Why the Native American pipeline fight in North Dakota is about climate justice

Why the Native American pipeline fight in North Dakota is about climate justice

Stopping DAPL is a matter of climate justice and decolonization for indigenous peoples. It may not always be apparent to people outside these communities, but standing up for water quality and heritage are intrinsically tied to these larger issues.

Did You Know We Are Having the Largest Prison Strike in History?

Probably Not, Because Most of the Media Have Ignored It 

Man jailed after stealing almost £200 worth of toothbrushes

A man who stole almost £200 worth of toothbrushes has been jailed. The thefts occurred across a two-day period in May from Superdrug in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Geoffrey Rackstraw, 56, from Amersham, admitted to stealing the toothbrushes, worth £189.94.
Rackstraw has been ordered to pay back every penny. He and was also given two consecutive 10-day jail terms.

Men modified rental car with homemade 'snorkel' in order to drive it off-road

A rental car with homemade modifications, including a "snorkel" made from a drainpipe, has been issued with an infringement notice and ordered off the road by police in New Zealand. The driver was ordered not to drive the vehicle by police at Queenstown Airport on Wednesday.
Constable Matt Hargreaves said four men rented the car, took the bonnet off and added a "snorkel", before taking the car on an off-road joyride around the hills of Arrowtown. The men got into trouble when they went to pick up a friend from the airport and were spotted by police, Hargreaves said.
The rental company, understood to be Ace Rental Cars, cancelled the men's contract and threatened to take civil action due to the damage done, he said. The men, from the North Island, then approached the rental company and bought the car outright to stop any further action, Hargreaves said. He had "no idea" why the men did not just rent an off-road vehicle.
"To be honest, I just think they thought it was going to be a bit of a laugh," Hargreaves said. Senior Sergeant Paula Enoka said the men took the vehicle to Macetown, a gold mining ghost town above Arrowtown, accessed by a four-wheel-drive track that crosses the Arrow River and other fords. She suggested next time the men wanted to go off-road, they should "hire a vehicle with a snorkel as opposed to creating your own one".

Man charged after beer bottle thrown from car bounced back off pole and hit fellow passenger

Chase R. McGrew, 21, from Marietta, Pennsylvania, has been charged with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. McGrew was a passenger in a vehicle when he threw a beer bottle from a window in East Donegal Township on July 27.
The bottle bounced off a utility pole and came back into the vehicle where it struck another passenger.
The person required medical treatment. The juvenile driver of the vehicle was also charged with allowing an open container in the car.

Elderly man faces battery charge following shuffleboard dispute

A dispute on a Florida shuffleboard court turned violent on Wednesday afternoon when an 81-year-old man allegedly punched a fellow pensioner and struck him with his shuffleboard cue, according to court records.
The confrontation occurred at the Pinellas Park Senior Center, which includes an open-air pavilion with 16 shuffleboard courts. Police say that octogenarian Herbert Hayden “had a verbal argument that escalated into a physical altercation.” Hayden allegedly punched the victim, James Sutton, in the face and “hit him with his shuffleboard cue causing damage to both cues.”
Sutton, officers noted, sustained a pair of four-inch scratches “on the right cheek of his face.” Sutton’s age is not included in court filings. Hayden was arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge and booked into the county jail, where he is being held on $250 bond. A judge has issued an order barring Hayden, who lives in a St. Petersburg mobile home park, from having any contact with Sutton.
A criminal complaint does not indicate what prompted the reported argument between Hayden and Sutton. The confrontation came at the close of the senior center’s Black and White Shuffleboard League, which competes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. “Shuffleboard is a popular sport for the ‘Seniors’ in Pinellas Park,” according to the senior center’s web site.

Animal Pictures