The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be Silly Sayings Day ...! 

 

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Today is - National Chess Day

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Today in History

54		Nero succeeds his great uncle Claudius, who was murdered by his wife, as the new emperor of Rome.
1307		Members of the Knights of Templar are arrested throughout France, imprisoned and tortured by the order of King Philip the Fair of France.
1399		Henry IV of England is crowned.
1670		Virginia passes a law that blacks arriving in the colonies as Christians cannot be used as slaves.
1775		The Continental Congress authorizes construction of two warships, thus instituting an American naval force.
1776		Benedict Arnold is defeated at Lake Champlain.
1792		President George Washington lays the cornerstone for the White House.
1812		At the Battle of Queenston Heights, a Canadian and British army defeats the American who have tried to invade Canada.
1849		The California state constitution, which prohibits slavery, is signed in Monterey.
1903		Boston defeats Pittsburgh in baseball’s first World Series.
1904		Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams is published.
1942		In the first of four attacks, two Japanese battleships sail down the slot and shell Henderson field on Guadalcanal, in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the American Cactus Air Force.
1943		Italy declares war on Germany.
1944		Troops of the advancing Soviet Army occupy Riga, capital of Latvia.
1946		The Fourth Republic begins in France; it will continue to 1958.
1958		First appearance of Paddington Bear, now a beloved icon of children’s literature.
1967		First game of the fledgling American Basketball Association; Oakland Oaks beat Anaheim Amigos 134-129 in Oakland, Cal.
1972		Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes Mountains, near the Argentina-Chile border; only 16 survivors (out of 45 people aboard) are rescued on Dec. 23.
1976		Dr. F.A. Murphy at Center for Disease Control obtains the first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle.
1983		The Space Shuttle Challenger, carrying seven, the largest crew to date, lands safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
1990		The Lebanese Civil War ends when a Syrian attack removes Gen. Michel Aoun from power.
2010		After being underground for a record 69 days, all 33 miners trapped in a Copiapo, Chile, mine are rescued.

Farmer's Markets and Small Family Farms Are Essential to Our Future

The Many Ways Farmer's Markets and Small Family Farms Are Essential to Our Future

The Nation’s Opioid Epidemic Is Morphing — and Growing

How the Nation’s Opioid Epidemic Is Morphing — and Growing

In the Workplace, Incivility Begets Incivility

In the Workplace, Incivility Begets Incivility, New Study Shows

Incivil behaviors at work -- put-downs, sarcasm and other condescending comments -- tend to have a contagious effect, according to a new study by a management professor at the University of Arkansas and several colleagues. Incivil behaviors are less serious than...

There's an Arrest for Drug Possession Every 25 Seconds

There's an Arrest for Drug Possession Every 25 Seconds—And Marijuana Arrests Exceed Those for All Violent Crimes 

Time for Imperial Boredom

British photographers in India in the nineteenth century.

by Alice Shirell Kaswell

At its height, the British empire produced magnificent heaps of wealth and power. But according to historian Jeffrey Auerbach, the empire also generated staggering amounts of boredom.
In a copiously documented report in the journal Common Knowledge, Auerbach writes:

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience traveling and working in the service of king or queen and country. Yet in the public mind, the British empire was thrilling -- full of novelty, danger, and adventure, as explorers, missionaries, and settlers sailed the globe in search of new lands, potential converts, and untold riches.

Aurebach’s study is: “Imperial Boredom,” Jeffrey Auerbach, Common Knowledge, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 283-305.
Auerbach is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Northridge. His interests are not limited to boredom. He has published on many other subjects, among them “The Homogenization of Empire,” “The Monotony of Empire,” and the inspirationally titled “The Impossibility of Artistic Escape.”

The imperial boredom report is filled with telltale evidence of administrators’ boredom. Those administrators range from the soon-to-be celebrated Winston Churchill (who at age 21 wrote that Indian life was “dull and uninteresting”) to the clerk who wrote this ditty:

From ten to eleven, ate a breakfast at seven;
From eleven to noon, to begin ‘twas too soon;
From twelve to one, asked “What’s to be done?”
From one to two, found nothing to do;
From two to three, began to foresee
That from three to four would be a damned bore.

Auerbach complains that, for generations,

Scholars have by and large perpetuated [a] glamorous view of the empire, portraying imperial men either as heroic adventurers who charted new lands and carried ‘the white man’s burden’ to the farthest reaches of the planet or as aggressors who imposed culturally bound norms and values on indigenous peoples and their ways of life.

Auerbach says he did his research by “reading against the grain of published memoirs and travel logs” and by digging into the unspectacular mutterings of private diaries and letters. His task was the more difficult, he argues, because “if people felt bored before the mid-eighteenth century, they did not know it.” This view of boredom, he points out, was persuasively developed by Patricia Meyer Spacks, whose 304-page book Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind titillated thrill-starved scholars in 1995.
After publishing the “Imperial Boredom” paper in 2005, Auerbach announced that he himself was writing a book about imperial boredom. He will need to expand considerably upon his current study, which is 23 pages long and includes only 76 footnotes. As of 2016, Professor Auerbach still lists this book on his resumé as “in progress.”

British administrators enduring tennis.

Perhaps, though, he has already done his finest work. Here, in just 47 words, is Auerbach’s take on imperial boredom:

The reality simply could not live up to the expectations created by newspapers, novels, travel books, and propaganda. As a consequence, notwithstanding some famous exceptions, nineteenth-century colonial officials were deflated by the dreariness of their imperial lives, desperate to ignore or escape the empire they had built.The reality simply could not live up to the expectations created by newspapers, novels, travel books, and propaganda. As a consequence, notwithstanding some famous exceptions, nineteenth-century colonial officials were deflated by the dreariness of their imperial lives, desperate to ignore or escape the empire they had built.

A Lifetime Ban from Tristan da Cunha

Simon Winchester visited the island of Tristan da Cunha, known as the most remote inhabited island in the world. He toured the island, met the people, and looked into its history. Then wrote a book about the islands of the Pacific, and included a story he knew about Tristan da Cunha. Twelve years went by, and Winchester was invited to take a cruise through the Pacific in exchange for telling stories about those places to the other passengers. He entertained them while informing them about places they were to stop.

Then on a Friday morning, during a half gale just north of the Antarctic convergence, I gave my talk about the history of Tristan. We arrived the following evening, and when we were comfortably at anchor off the Edinburgh mole, we were boarded, somewhat surprisingly, by a very large imperial policeman. He had a brief announcement to make: everyone would be permitted onto the island the following morning, but regrettably not—the ship’s passenger manifest had been radioed ahead—Mr. Winchester.
I had, he explained sternly, betrayed an island secret. I had been warned; I had actually been implored. But I had gone ahead, and now the islanders were every bit as hurt and upset as Kenneth Rogers had forewarned. The constable was implacable, immovable. And so the passengers, most of them greatly amused, filed past me down to the gangway, boarded their Zodiacs, and were swept off behind the riprap into Calshot Harbor—named for the village in Hampshire to where the islanders had been evacuated in 1961—and off to see the sights of Edinburgh. When they returned an hour or so later they shook their heads as one: why would anyone want to live there? And then they puzzled over my exclusion: it’s not as though you had killed someone.

Winchester was banned from ever going ashore at Tristan da Cunha for the rest of his life. That made him ponder his actions, and the actions of others in setting foot in exotic places and going against the wishes of the locals. Read the story that led to the ban, and how it is only one incident in a history of globetrotting rudeness, at Lapham’s Quarterly.

Wedding delayed when groom's mother got lost in the woods

A Massachusetts couple’s wedding day took a worrying turn on Sunday when the groom’s mother went missing in the woods of Landaff, New Hampshire, but state troopers were able to find the woman and reunite her with her family.The mother had been missing for four hours after she got “turned around and lost in the woods” near the property the family were renting, New Hampshire State Police wrote on their Facebook page.
The family grew concerned, and the wedding was delayed for several hours. “Troopers from Troop F and conservation officers from New Hampshire Fish and Game quickly mobilized to locate the mother of the groom,” police wrote.
They found her a few hours later and reunited the mother with her family, “safe and sound.” "The wedding was delayed for several hours, but the bride and groom will definitely have a story for the future. Congratulations to the Guarinos on their nuptials!" police added.

102-Year-Old Woman Crosses "Get Arrested" Off Her Bucket List

With all the stories circulating about cops killing kids and unarmed people it's nice to read a heartwarming story about police officers doing something good- like arresting an old lady.
Don't worry- the centenarian in question isn't a criminal about to spend the rest of her life behind bars, she's just a sweet old lady who wanted to cross "get arrested" off her bucket list.

102-year-old Edie Simms from St. Louis, Missouri has lived a life of generosity and goodness, but for some reason she's always been fascinated with the idea of getting handcuffed and thrown in the back of a cop car.

So Michael Howard, creative director of the 5 Star Senior Center to which Edie has been donating handmade items for nearly a decade, decided to repay her kindness by calling the cops.
Here's more on this unusual arrest:

Since one of the center’s volunteers is friends with a local police officer, the police department “offered to send a police cruiser to take her” to the center, Howard said.
Simms’ reaction was one of unbridled joy.“She said oh that’d be wonderful and said, ‘do you think that they’d put the handcuffs on me?’” Howard recalled.
Once in the back of the car, Howard said Simms was one proud passenger. While passing a county police officer, Howard recalled: “Edie held her hands up to show that she had the handcuffs on! She’s just such a neat lady.”

Woman rescued from drain pipe under library said that the devil had chased her in there

A woman told rescuers she got stuck in a drain pipe under a library because the devil had chased her.
Police Sgt. John Burt said the 26-year-old woman, whose socks were found in front of the PVC pipe entrance inside a manhole, had taken off her clothing and crawled about 25-30 feet into the pipe and was somewhere underneath the Pearl Public Library in Mississippi.
The woman was found when some boy scouts heard her yelling for help, Burt said, and officials were able to locate her by shining a light down the pipe, which was between a foot and a foot and a half in diameter. When they located her, the woman told authorities that she was stuck and couldn't breathe.
When they asked her how she got into the pipe, she told firefighters that the devil chased her in there. Burt said when the woman was rescued from the pipe at around 6:30pm on Monday, she was taken to the hospital to be checked out. Because of the nature of the situation, the woman's name is not being released.
There's a news video here.

Man thanks thief who stole his broken car stereo and left cash

A man from Perth, Australia, who had his car broken into last week has said "thank you" to the thief. On Saturday, Tom Drury's uncle notified him the back door of his 1994 Mazda hadn't been locked properly.Upon investigating, Mr Drury found his car been broken into, and the stereo removed. While many people would be frustrated and upset by a missing sound system, Mr Drury said the news wasn't at all bad.
"The stereo was broken, it didn't pick up radio stations and didn't read any discs, it was just rubbish," he said. "I had tried removing it not long before, but I gave up out of frustration. To get it out, I needed a special tool I didn't have, so when I saw that the stereo was removed, I couldn't help but laugh."
And that wasn't all. Mr Drury then noticed a $10 note and a number of coins had been left on the front drivers seat seat. "When I went to inspect it myself, I discovered $22.10," he said. "If I could say one thing to the thief, it would be 'thank you.' Thank you for paying me for a service I was going to pay someone else to do. And by the way, no refunds!"

Spectacularly drunk man has apologized after blowing up nightclub toilet

Police arrived at a nightclub on the outskirts of Amberg in Bavaria, Germany, at the weekend to discover an unusual surprise in the gents' lavatories.
Officers were left shocked when they were called to the club on the outskirts of the town in the early hours of Sunday morning. A 26-year-old man, revealed as Felix T., had thrown a firecracker into a toilet in the club, blowing it to pieces.
The force of the blast completely demolished the lavatory. “Fortunately, no one was injured,” police said. The damage costs, however, will be in the region of €500. And the police’s surprise didn’t stop there, the alcohol test had another shock in store.
The man's blood level clocked in at 5.24 permille, meaning a 0.524% blood alcohol content. For most people, a reading of 3.5 permille is life-threatening, and very few survive more than 5 permille, let alone still have the capacity to light a firecracker. Felix T. expressed his remorse: "I am very sorry that it got so out of hand. I will also settle the damage costs as soon as they have been confirmed."

Homeowner says intruder wore his sunglasses and slippers, then shot at him with his gun

A suspected home invader repeatedly shot at a homeowner in Clinton Township, Michigan, who fled his house after encountering the intruder, police said. The man wasn't hit by any of the eight bullets. Police said the man went home on his lunch hour to let his dogs outside. He noticed someone had tampered with his car, so he went inside to check on things.
Once inside, he saw a strange man in his home, wearing his sunglasses. "He said, 'I'm not stealing these,'" John Broderick said. "Then I looked down and he was wearing my slippers." Broderick ran to get his 9mm pistol, but it was gone. "I thought, 'Oh boy,'" Broderick said. "I just turned around and I ran like hell out of there."
As Broderick escaped into the garage, the invader fired three shots through the door. Broderick ran for his neighbor's house with the gunman about 30 feet behind him. "I got about halfway across the lawn, and the next thing I know, 'Pow! Pow! Pow!" Broderick said. "He shot off about eight rounds." Broderick hid at his neighbor's house and called 911.

YouTube link.

"I can't even explain it," he said. "Honestly, I thought I was done." When police arrived, the intruder, who is now in custody, told police that he was the homeowner. "He said he lived here and that I came in to rob him," Broderick said. Broderick was not injured. His wife Pam is still shaken up about his terrifying encounter.

More progress in building functional human tissues

More progress in building functional human tissues

Toward the ultimate goal of engineering human tissues and organs that can mimic native function for use in drug screening, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine, a team led by Jennifer A. Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at...

Five Impressive Space Exploration Technologies

There are plenty of problems associated with space travel and exploration, but there are also many minds working hard to solve those problems. Every day, NASA and its partners (which include many universities and corporations) are coming up with innovative ways to do what we want to do -and now, so are private space exploration companies. For example, we may soon be able to see much farther into the past than every before with NIRCam.

NIRCam stands for Near Infrared Camera, which refers to a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona to come up with an instrument capable of capturing images from billions and billions of years ago. While this can sound rather unbelievable, it is important to remember that heat was being generated throughout the universe at the time, which in turn, meant light shooting off in countless directions from countless places.
Combined with the limited speed of light as well as the continuing expansion of the universe, this meant that it is still possible to capture images from billions and billions of years ago so long as a camera is sensitive enough to pick up on that light as well as shielded from other light that can obstruct it from performing its intended function. Should the NIRCam prove to be a success, it could provide scientists with an incredible amount of information about the early universe, which remains one of the most mysterious and thus one of the most interesting periods known to us.

But that’s just the beginning. Read about other space exploration technologies you might not be familiar with at Money Inc.

A Strange History of Dog-Headed Men

We’ve had several articles about strange creatures described by explorers, often from accounts handed down instead of direct observation, and illustrated by artists who never saw the real thing. A tale that was a bit easier for people of the times to understand was that of the Cynocephali, a term meaning humans with the heads of dogs. This particular description of unknown groups of people came from all over the world, over a period of thousands of years.

In around 400 BC, the Greek physician Ctesias wrote an intriguing and detailed account of the Cynocephali of the mountains of India, which was at the time known as Indica. In his account he describes a tribe of people with the heads of dogs, who used a series of barks and snarls to communicate, although they could understand the language of humans, and who subsisted on raw meat. They were said to have teeth that were longer than those of dog’s, as well as nails that were long, curved and rounded. The tribe is reported to have lived by hunting, roasting their kills in the sun, as well as raising flocks of sheep and goats. They are also told of being fond of the fruit of the Siptakhora, and were known to cultivate this fruit for the purposes of trading it for bread, flour, and cotton, as well as swords, spears, bows and arrows.

Such people were also described hundreds of years later by Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, and even Christopher Columbus, although they may have just passed along legends they heard. Artists illustrated these tales along the way. Read about the Cynocephali through history at Mysterious Universe.

From unknown to beardog

From unknown to beardog: Findings rescue fossils from ‘trashbin’ genus

Large, ferocious-looking animals called beardogs — neither bears nor dogs — roamed the Northern Hemisphere between about 40 and 5 million years ago. But because so little data on their earliest members are available, their evolutionary relationships or phylogeny — and...

Virus carrying DNA of black widow spider toxin discovered

Virus carrying DNA of black widow spider toxin discovered

A tiny virus that may sting like a black widow spider. That is one of the surprise discoveries made by a pair of Vanderbilt biologists when they sequenced the genome of a virus that attacks Wolbachia, a bacterial parasite that has successfully infected not only black...

Animal Pictures