The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

The 8th Xmas Tree ...! 

 

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

   
Time to go ... !

Today is - Pretend To Be A Time Traveller Day

 You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
Some of our readers today have been in:
The Americas
Antigua - Argentina - Aruba - Bahamas - Barbados - Belize - Bolivia - Brazil - Canada - Chile  Colombia - Costa Rica - Dominican Republic- Ecuador - El Salvador - French Guiana - Guatemala Haiti - Honduras - Jamaica - Mexico - Nicaragua - Paraguay - Peru - Puerto Rico
Sint Eustatius and Saba - Sint Maartin - Trinidad and Tobago - Turks and Caicos - United States  Uruguay - Venezuela - Virgin Islands
Europe
Albania - Armenia - Austria - Belarus - Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Croatia  Cyprus -  Czech Republic - Denmark - England - Estonia - Finland - France - Georgia - Germany Greece -  Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Isle of Mann - Italy - Jersey - Latvia - Lithuania - Macedonia  Malta - Moldova - Monaco - Montenegro - Netherlands - Northern Ireland - Norway - Poland Portugal - Romania - Russia - San Marino - Scotland - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden  Switzerland - Turkey - Ukraine - Wales
Asia
Afghanistan - Azerbaijan - Bangladesh - Brunei - Burma - Cambodia - China - Hong Kong - India  Indonesia  Iran - Iraq - Israel - Japan - Jordan - Kazakhstan - Korea -  Lebanon - Malaysia - Mauritius
Mongolia - Nepal - Oman - Pakistan - Palestine - Saudi Arabia - Singapore - Sri Lanka - Taiwan Thailand - Tibet - United Arab Emirates - Uzbekistan - Vietnam - Yemen
Africa
Algeria - Chad - Congo - Egypt - Ethiopia - Ivory Coast - Ghana - Kenya - Libya - Madagascar  Morocco - Mozambique - Nigeria - South Africa - Sudan - Tunisia - Zambia - Zimbabwe
The Pacific
Australia - French Polynesia - Guam - Marshall Islands - New Zealand - Papua New Guinea Philippines

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Today in History

1660		The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona.
1861		CSS Sumter captures the whaler Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.
1863		Union General William Averell‘s cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.
1914		The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Leipzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
1920		President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
1932		Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.
1941		Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore.
1943		U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.
1944		The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
1948		The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.
1967		In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.
1968		South Vietnam’s Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.
1980		John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.
1982		In Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.
1987		The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed.
1987		An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First Intifada.
1991		The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.
2004		The Cuzco Declaration signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.
2010		SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
2010		The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.

Helsinki in November

This sign was erected at the Messukeskus convention center to welcome visitors to the Slush  entrepreneurship convention, which was apparently a lot of fun. To belie the sign, the reddit thread is full of people telling what a great time they had when they visited or lived in Finland. Still, many suggest going in summer.

ICEHOTEL 365

For 27 years, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, had a temporary hotel built out of ice that lasted from December through April. But now a new design will allow the hotel to remain open year round! The new ICEHOTEL 365 has concrete outer walls with pipes running through it to bring refrigeration to the ice that covers them, sustaining it through the summer by solar power.

With an eye toward research, ICEHOTEL founder Yngve Bergqvist knows that Sweden will have shorter winters in the future. He also has had visitors every year asking if they could visit his creation during the summer and autumn months. It was important that ICEHOTEL become sustainable year-round, so the 2,100-square meter ice experience was designed and built. It now includes 11 art suites, 9 deluxe suites with private bathrooms and saunas, an ice gallery and an ice bar. In keeping with tradition, the structure was hand carved by global artists, hand selected for the project.

Read more about ICEHOTEL 365, and see lots of pictures at Money Inc.

Meet Four Young Farmers Who Are Rising to the Challenge of Water Scarcity in the Western U.S.

Meet Four Young Farmers Who Are Rising to the Challenge of Water Scarcity in the Western U.S.

Fight for $15 Catches Nation's Attention With Surprise One-Day Strike

Fight for $15 Catches Nation's Attention With Surprise One-Day Strike

United Airlines Announces Charges for Overhead Bin Use ...

United Airlines Announces Charges for Overhead Bin Use Just as It Rolls Out New Perks For Wealthy Travelers

Kleptocracy and kakistocracy explained

Kleptocracy (from Greek: κλεπτοκρατία, klépto- thieves + -kratos rule, literally "rule by thieves") is a government with corrupt rulers (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service...

The effects of a kleptocratic regime or government on a nation are typically adverse in regards to the welfare of the state's economy, political affairs and civil rights. Kleptocratic governance typically ruins prospects of foreign investment and drastically weakens the domestic market and cross-border trade...

Kakistocracy (Greek: κακιστοκρατία; kækɪsˈtɑkɹəsi) is a term meaning a state or country run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens... The word comes from the Greek words kakistos (κάκιστος; worst) and kratos (κράτος; rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.

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Posted for future reference, not because of anything that, you know, is actually going on.
Yet. (wink, wink)

Humanity Faces Real and Imminent Threats to Our Survival

Chomsky: Humanity Faces Real and Imminent Threats to Our Survival

Wingnut Confusion Runs Rampant in Their Invented 'War on Xmas'

Wingnut Confusion Runs Rampant in Their Invented 'War on Xmas'

Fox Friends Outraged Over Atheists 'Making Xmas Great Again'

Fox's Friends pretend American Atheists wants to hurt cultgoers and religion, which is absolutely false.

Weather.Com Meteorologist To Breitbart: Quit Using Our Videos To Lie About Climate Change

Good for Weather Channel for stepping on the lie early and hard.

Reporter Discovers Wi-fi Named 'Nigger Genocide' At Texas A&M White Nationalist Event

Jeff Paul, a reporter for CBS affiliate KTVK in Dallas, attended a white nationalist event at Texas A&M this week and found a disturbing name when he tried to connect to wi-fi.

Louisiana Sheriff Reads Bigoted Slurs, Cut Off By MSNBC

Louisiana Sheriff Reads Bigoted Slurs, Cut Off By MSNBC

A Jefferson Parish Sheriff was upset that his department took as much heat as they did before they arrested the man who shot former NFLer Joe McKnight and decided to share vile comments with the public.

Pizzagate Lunatics Expand Their Conspiracy Theory To Other Businesses

Four more Washington, DC business owners tell CNN Money that "pizzagate" lunatics have called and visited their stores to verbally harass or confront staff.

Fox 'Psychiatrist' Ablow Blames Liberals For Pizzagate And Fake News

The only one who needs a diagnosis here is Ablow himself.

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It's old school - but a good dose of Thorazine daily would help the asshole immensely ... not to mention helping everybody else that has suffered because of his idiocy.

Internet Eviscerates Santorum for Telling Immigrant to Leave the US

Internet Eviscerates Santorum for Telling Immigrant to Leave the US

Exercise Tiger at Slapton Sands

"To the north from here stretches a duney expanse called Slapton Sands, so similar to the beaches of Normandy that they used it for a dress rehearsal for D-Day in the spring of 1944. Amid great secrecy, thirty thousand American troops were loaded onto landing craft and taken out in the bay to practice coming ashore, but by chance nine German torpedo boats spotted the activity and cruised at will among then, blowing the landing craft out of the water with ease and causing all kinds of mayhem. No one from the Allied side, it appears, had thought to line up suitable protection for the exercise, so the U-boats [sic: E-boats] were able to move about unimpeded.
One of those watching the carnage was Eisenhower himself. Nobody seems to know how many people died. Numbers range from 650 to 950 or so. An information board at Torcross says 749 American soldiers and sailors died. Whatever the exact figure, far more Americans were killed that night than died in the actual landing at Utah beach just over a month later. (Casualties were much higher at Omaha beach.) It was the most lopsided rout America suffered during the war, yet nobody has ever heard of it because news of the disaster was withheld, partly for purposes of morale, partly because of the general secrecy surrounding the invasion preparations.  What is most extraordinary is that the Germans, having chanced upon a massive collection of boats and men engaged in training exercises just across the sea from the Cherbourg peninsula, failed to recognize that an invasion of northern France was imminent." Text excerpted from Bill Bryson's The Road to Little Dribbling.  More information at Wikipedia.

Did a Hugh Williams survive a wreck in Wales yesterday?

"On December 5, 1664, a ship sunk in the Menai Strait, a stretch of water with tremendous tidal swings off the coast of Wales. All 81 passengers died, except one. His name was Hugh Williams.
 On December 5, 1785, another ship sunk in the Menai Strait, with again everyone aboard dying except for one man…named Hugh Williams.
And then again, on December 5, 1820, yet another ship sunk in the Menai Strait. Only one man survived, and he was named Hugh Williams. This is an awesome legend, and the scope of the coincidence is staggering.
Another source actually references two other British shipwrecks with the lone survivors bearing the name Hugh Williams, except they weren’t on December 5. In one of those wrecks, there were actually two survivors, an uncle and nephew, and both were named Hugh Williams. And so despite having two survivors, you could still technically say of the wreck “the only man to survive was named Hugh Williams.”"

Via The Cuttlefish, which suggests that the explanation lies in... mathematics.

Animal Pictures