The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be National Apple Cider Day ...! 

 

Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.   

   
"Steamboat Willy" Mickey ... !

Today is - Mickey Mouse Day

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Today in History

1477		William Claxton publishes the first dated book printed in England. It is a translation from the French of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosopers by Earl Rivers.
1626		St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome is officially dedicated.
1861		The first provisional meeting of the Confederate Congress is held in Richmond, Virginia.
1865		Mark Twain’s first story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is published in the New York Saturday Press.
1901		The second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty is signed. The United States is given extensive rights by Britain for building and operating a canal through Central America.
1905		The Norwegian Parliament elects Prince Charles of Denmark to be the next King of Norway. Prince Charles takes the name Haakon VII.
1906		Anarchists bomb St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
1912		Cholera breaks out in Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire.
1921		New York City considers varying work hours to avoid long traffic jams.
1928		Mickey mouse makes his film debut in Steamboat Willie, the first animated talking picture.
1936		The main span of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is joined.
1939		The Irish Republican Army explodes three bombs in Piccadilly Circus.
1943		RAF bombs Berlin, using 440 aircraft and losing nine of those and 53 air crew members; damage to the German capital is light, with 131 dead.
1949		The U.S. Air Force grounds B-29s after two crashes and 23 deaths in three days.
1950		The Bureau of Mines discloses its first production of oil from coal in practical amounts.
1968		Soviets recover the Zond 6 spacecraft after a flight around the moon.
1978		Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones leads his followers to a mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after cult member killed Congressman Leo J. Ryan of California.
1983		Argentina announces its ability to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
1984		The Soviet Union helps deliver American wheat during the Ethiopian famine.
1991		The Croatian city of Vukovar surrenders to Yugoslav People’s Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces after an 87-day siege.
1993		Twenty-one political parties approve a new constitution for South Africa that expands voter rights and ends the rule of the country’s white minority.
2002		UN weapons inspectors under Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
2003		Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules the state’s ban on same-sex marriages is unconstitutional; the legislature fails to act within the mandated 180 days, and on May 17, 2004, Massachusetts becomes the first US state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Stephen Hawking puts an expiration date on humanity

Stephen Hawking puts an expiration date on humanity

Stephen Hawking believes that humanity has less than thousand years on Earth before a mass extinction occurs.

"Post-truth" defined

It's the Oxford Dictionaries "Word of the Year" for 2016.

After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’...

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics. ..

The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event – as in post-war or post-match – the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant’. This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century, in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971).

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’.

More at the link.  Post-truth beat out chatbot and coulrophobia, among others. 

Tasting Light

Tasting light: New type of photoreceptor is 50 times more efficient than the human eye

An international team of scientists led by the University of Michigan has discovered a new type of photoreceptor—only the third to be found in animals—that is about 50 times more efficient at capturing light than … Read more

Product shrinkage

A rant from The Guardian:

I’m not sure I understand the problem. It looks nothing like a Toblerone any more! It looks like a Toblerone rip-off you might buy from unmarked cardboard boxes in markets!
I see. Why has this happened? Because Toblerone is a penny pincher. A gappy new Toblerone contains less chocolate than before, which makes them less expensive to make.
Surely in the face of rising ingredient prices, this is a sensible way to protect the consumer. Then just have fewer triangles! Make the bars shorter! Don’t turn them into this gappy monstrosity! It simply isn’t British!
You know that Toblerone is Swiss, right? Actually smartypants, I think you’ll find it is owned by Mondelēz, an American multinational company.
Wait a second, did you say Mondelēz? I did.
Isn’t that the company that bought Cadbury in 2009? Now you come to mention it, yes. It’s the company that took Dairy Milk out of Creme Eggs last year. It’s the company that stopped producing Cadbury chocolate coins. The company that rounded the squares in Dairy Milk bars. The company that put Cadbury chocolate in cheese spread, and put Ritz crackers in Cadbury chocolate, and covered Roses in those miserable tear-open wrappers...

Related: Higher prices bite chocolate makers.

From the company that used to offer "the friendly skies"

United Continental Holdings Inc will become the first big U.S. airline to limit low-fare customers to one carry-on bag that fits under a seat...
United, the No. 3 U.S. airline by passengers carried, said customers who bought its cheapest fares would not be assigned seats until the day of departure, meaning people on the same ticket may be split apart.
United will also prohibit these travelers from carrying on bags that can only fit in overhead bins, and they will not accrue miles toward elite status.
The company expects the moves to add $4.8 billion to its annual operating income by 2020, although the figure does not include rising wages.  Fare initiatives such as "basic economy" will account for $1 billion of this, as more customers pay to check bags or select higher fares that give them two "free" carry-ons.

The classic rolling carry-on, of course, does not fit under a seat.  More at Reuters.

Man squirted body spray into his mouth during DUI stop

Police in Rock Hill, South Carolina, have charged a man with DUI after they said he swerved all over the road before he squired body spray into his mouth. According to a police report, just after midnight on Monday morning, an officer spotted Patrick Butler driving a silver Nissan Frontier erratically. Butler swerved to avoid a curb and also crossed the center line several times, police allege.
The officer pulled the Nissan over and when he walked up to the vehicle, he watched Butler spray AXE body spray into his mouth. When the officer asked him why he was doing that, Butler said he was spraying himself from head to toe.
According to the report, Butler's eyes were bloodshot and glossy and he told the officer that he was driving back from Columbia, where he had two beers and a shot of Jack Daniels while watching football. Police said Butler failed the field sobriety tests and was arrested and charged with DUI.

‘KKK’ deputies who killed NC man in warrantless search had record of harassing the public

A group of sheriff’s deputies who killed a man during a warrantless search last year privately called themselves “the KKK” and had a long record of harassing and abusing the public.

Police Force Dumbass Trump-Bashing Professor Into Psych Evaluation

Police Force Dumbass Trump-Bashing Professor Into Psych Evaluation

It's starting - Putting sane people in insane asylums ...
Hello, Germany circa 1930s

More Than 400 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since the Election

More Than 400 Incidents of Hateful Harassment and Intimidation Since the Election

‘I will tattoo a swastika on your head’

‘I will tattoo a swastika on your head’: Seattle councilwoman threatened after calling for anti-Dumbass Trump protests

“I am tired of being shamed because I’m a white male. You automatically think I’m a racist. How about you go the fuck back to India or wherever you came from?”

***

Nope, not a racist at all ...

Lunatic Fringe Wingnut German Hate Groups Plan Attacks ...

Lunatic Fringe Wingnut German Hate Groups Plan Attacks With American Counterparts Emboldened by Dumbass Trump

White Supremacists Hide Razor Blades In Racist Fliers On UC Davis Campus

Students at University of California, Davis have been warned about removing white supremacist fliers because some have been found to have razor blades.

‘Jesus told her to’

‘Jesus told her to’: Louisiana mom blames christ after slashing her son’s throat with kitchen knife

The Baton Rouge Police Department said that officers were dispatched to the home of 40-year-old Gloria Ross on Wednesday after a neighbor reported that she was trying to kill her 8-year-old son.

Hepatitis A spread by strawberries in margaritas

Strawberries at three El Paso County restaurants have been connected to a multi state hepatitis A outbreak... strawberries used in margaritas at the restaurants... may have been contaminated with the virus.
Health officials say anyone who ate or drank strawberries at the restaurants should receive hepatitis A vaccinations.
Health officials have connected more than 100 hepatitis A cases to frozen strawberries imported from Egypt since Jan. 1.

Everyone knows to wash commercially-purchased strawberries before eating them, but who would suspect strawberries in margaritas not having been washed.
And it's a strange world we live in where it's cheaper to import strawberries from Egypt than it is to grow them in this country.

Hepatitis C virus tricks liver cells to sabotage immune defenses

Hepatitis C virus tricks liver cells to sabotage immune defenses

The virus that causes hepatitis C protects itself by blocking signals that call up immune defenses in liver cells, according to University of Washington researchers and colleagues reporting Nov. 14 in Nature Medicine. “The finding … Read more

Elderly man killed by rampaging sheep that also attacked a politician

A 94-year-old man died from his injuries after being knocked down and then trampled by an "aggressive" sheep in the south west of France. The man’s body was found by his family on Monday, by a footpath near the village of Cestas, south of Bordeaux. He was discovered with severe injuries to his face and knees. The police launched an investigation after the mysterious discovery and their investigation, which included a post-mortem of the man’s body, confirmed their theory he had been attacked by a sheep. Police believe he was knocked to ground by the animal before the sheep launched a furious attack, targeting the pensioner with its head and hooves.
The sheep belonged to a local breeder and landowner whom the elderly man had gone to discuss his order of timber. "It was a young, one-year-old ram who is not at all aggressive, my daughter reared him by bottle," the farmer who owns the animal said, asking not to be named. "But in this case he was protecting his flock. He was playing the role of the dominant male because there were a lot of ewes."
Several people witnessed the aggressiveness of the animal, which had also attacked a local politician who had gone to help the man's family after hearing the news. The woman was left needing hospital treatment after suffering a fracture and heavy bruising. Police were at a loss to explain why the animal charged initially and simply put the attack down to the "animal's aggression.

Two-headed sharks are now a thing

As reported by National Geographic:

Two-headed sharks may sound like a figment of the big screen, but they exist—and more are turning up worldwide, scientists say... [four examples cited]...
Sans-Coma and colleagues say a genetic disorder seems to be the most plausible cause for the two-headed catshark... But wild sharks' malformations could come from a variety of factors, including viral infections, metabolic disorders, pollution, or a dwindling gene pool due to overfishing, which leads to inbreeding, and thus genetic abnormalities...
Galván-Magaña, who authored the 2011 study, doesn't think two-headed sharks are more common—but rather that there are more scientific journals around to publish accounts.

Animal Pictures