CAROLINA NATURALLY: Dec 21, 2016

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

The 21st Xmas Tree ...!

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

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Today is - The Winter Solstice

and Yule

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Today in History

68		Vespian, a gruff-spoken general of humble origins, enters Rome and is named emperor by the Senate.
1620		The Pilgrims land at or near Plymouth Rock.
1708		French forces seize control of the eastern shore of Newfoundland after winning a victory at St. John’s.
1790		Samuel Slater opens the first cotton mill in the United States (in Rhode Island).
1862		The U.S. Congress authorizes the Medal of Honor to be awarded to Navy personnel who have distinguished themselves by their gallantry in action.
1866		Indians, led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, kill Captain William J. Fetterman and 79 other men who had ventured out from Fort Phil Kearny to cut wood.
1910		Over 2.5 million plague victims are reported in the An-Hul province of China.
1928		Coolidge signs the Boulder Dam bill.
1944		German troops surround the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne in Belgium.
1945		General George S. Patton dies at the age of 60 after being injured in a car accident.
1946		An earthquake and tidal wave kill hundreds in Japan.
1963		The Turk minority riots in Cyprus to protest anti-Turkish revisions in the constitution.
1964		Great Britain’s House of Commons votes to ban the death penalty.
1965		Four pacifists are indicted in New York for burning draft cards — Thomas C. Cornell, 31, co-secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship; Roy Lisker, 27, a volunteer of the Catholic Worker Movement; James E. Wilson, 21, a volunteer at the Catholic Worker Movement and a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation; and M P, Edelman, a full-time worker for the War Resisters League.
1969		American draft evaders gather for a holiday dinner in Montreal, Canada.
1986		500,000 Chinese students gather in Shanghai’s People’s Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.
1988		Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, an hour after departure. All 259 passengers were killed in the explosion caused by a bomb– hidden inside an audio cassette player — that detonated inside the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. A shower of airplane parts falling from the sky also killed 11 Lockerbie residents.
1994		Popocatepetl, a volcano in Mexico spews forth gases and ash after nearly a half-century of dormancy.
1995		The city of Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.
2004		A suicide bomber attacks the forward operating base next to the US military airfield at Mosul, Iraq, killing 22 people; it is the deadliest suicide attack on US soldiers during the Iraq War.

Sunset reflected in a shattered mirror

From a gallery of similar photographs by Bing Wright, posted at This is Colossal.

Some of the World's Most Successful and Richest People Have Quirky Eating Habits

Some of the World's Most Successful and Richest People Have Quirky Eating Habits: Is There a Connection ?

What Happened to Dorothy's Ruby Slippers?

The shoes that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz are on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. They are covered with red sequins, with bows covered in red glass and beads. But after 80 years, the color has faded, and the sequins are brittle. Earlier this year, the museum raised $300,000 online to fund a careful cleaning and the construction of a special display case that will protect them from light damage. The shoes at the Smithsonian don't even come from the same pair -they are different sizes! That's because MGM had several pairs made for the movie production. In 1970, MGM cleared out its warehouse, and sent costume worker Kent Warner to salvage one pair for posterity.

On a dusty shelf, he found what he was looking for—a collection of ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore for her portrayal of Dorothy Gale for the filming of the 1939 Wizard of Oz. These were the famous shoes that only needed to be tapped three times and that touched so many hearts with their magical theme—“There’s no place like home.”
There were several sets of ruby slippers on the shelf, plus a curly-toed test pair. Warner had been told to destroy all but one. The single remaining pair were to be offered for sale at the seminal multi-day MGM Studios auction, where 350,000 costumes were to be sold, including the loin cloth worn by Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan and Gene Kelly’s sailor hat from the 1949 film On the Town.
Warner picked out a pair of ruby slippers for the sale. But on the sly, he stuffed the others in a bag and walked them off the lot.

So what happened to the other slippers? Find out in an article at Smithsonian.

Finding North America’s lost medieval city

Cahokia was bigger than Paris—then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.

by Annalee Newitz

A thousand years ago, huge pyramids and earthen mounds stood where East St. Louis sprawls today in Southern Illinois. This majestic urban architecture towered over the swampy Mississippi River floodplains, blotting out the region's tiny villages. Beginning in the late 900s, word about the city spread throughout the southeast. Thousands of people visited for feasts and rituals, lured by the promise of a new kind of civilization. Many decided to stay.

More

"Human population through time"

YouTube link.

"It took 200,000 years for our human population to reach 1 billion—and only 200 years to reach 7 billion."

Finland will test giving people a free "basic income"

Jobless people generally cannot earn additional income while collecting unemployment benefits or they risk losing that assistance. For laid-off workers from Nokia, simply collecting a guaranteed unemployment check often presents a better financial proposition than taking a leap with a start-up in Finland, where a shaky technology industry is trying to find its footing again.

Now, the Finnish government is exploring how to change that calculus, initiating an experiment in a form of social welfare: universal basic income. Early next year, the government plans to randomly select roughly 2,000 unemployed people — from white-collar coders to blue-collar construction workers. It will give them benefits automatically, absent bureaucratic hassle and minus penalties for amassing extra income...

The answers — to be determined over a two-year trial — could shape social welfare policy far beyond Nordic terrain. In communities around the world, officials are exploring basic income as a way to lessen the vulnerabilities of working people exposed to the vagaries of global trade and automation. While basic income is still an emerging idea, one far from being deployed on a large scale, the growing experimentation underscores the deep need to find effective means to alleviate the perils of globalization...

Universal basic income is a catchall phrase that describes a range of proposals, but they generally share one feature: All people in society get a regular check from the government — regardless of their income or whether they work. These funds are supposed to guarantee food and shelter, enabling people to pursue their own betterment while contributing to society...

A Silicon Valley start-up incubator, Y Combinator, is preparing a pilot project in Oakland, Calif., in which 100 families will receive unconditional cash grants ranging from $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Voters in Switzerland recently rejected a basic-income scheme, but the French Senate approved a trial. Experiments are being readied in Canada and the Netherlands. The Indian government has been studying basic income as a means of alleviating poverty...

Strikingly, basic income is being championed across the ideological spectrum...

“Some people think basic income will solve every problem under the sun, and some people think it’s from the hand of Satan and will destroy our work ethic,” says Olli Kangas, who oversees research at Kela, a Finnish government agency that administers many social welfare programs. “I’m hoping we can create some knowledge on this issue.”

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From an interesting long read at The New York Times.

Link Dump

How to Live a Day by the Doctor’s Orders

UN drops Wonder Woman as honorary ambassador

Globe-trotting granny reunited with lost camera

11 Ft 8 In: The Infamous ‘Can Opener’ Bridge

5 tricks to free up space on your Android phone

Google’s Hidden Games

What Santa Eats & Drinks Around the World

Swimmer wearing only Speedos checks in for flight

Santa’s Reindeer Names and Their Personalities

47 Insanely Clever Storage Ideas For Your Whole House

Know Your Sh!t – Identifying wildlife droppings

16 Affordable Places To Visit For The Young And Adventurous

Police break into car to rescue what turns out to be life-sized mannequin

Two women thwart robbery by unleashing fake phallus firestorm

"Preinstalled ransomware"

That's the term that has been suggested regarding proposed legislation in South Carolina:

People buying computers in South Carolina would be limited in their access to porn online under newly proposed legislation.
A bill pre-filed this month by Chumley would require sellers to install digital blocking capabilities on computers and other devices that access the internet to prevent the viewing of obscene content...
Both sellers and buyers could get around the limitation, for a fee. The bill would fine manufacturers that sell a device without the blocking system, but they could opt out by paying $20 per device sold. Buyers could also verify their age and pay $20 to remove the filter...

Kleptocracy: Kuwait Changes Event From Four Seasons To Dumbass Trump DC Hotel

Kleptocracy: Kuwait Changes Event From Four Seasons To Trump DC Hotel

They were pressured to do so by unnamed people inside Dumbass Trump's cabal.

The Nazis and Hitler himself studied American race laws for inspiration

Why the Nazis and Hitler himself studied American race laws for inspiration

Meet the Identitarians

Meet the Identitarians: Europe’s version of the so-called alt-right

They are the Identitäre Bewegung, which translates into English as the “identitarian movement.” “German patriots” is what they call themselves. And they are part of a broader “new right” emerging in European politics.

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Just call them what they are - NAZIS!

Wingnut Confirms It: Die And Die Quickly

GOP Rep. Confirms It: Die And Die Quickly

Huizenga (R-Dystopia) doesn't think we need to rush to the doctor and if we do, we should pay for it.

A Michigan wingnut who wants to repeal Obamacare urged families to save on medical care by waiting overnight for treatment instead of visiting the emergency room

Make kids sleep on broken arms to avoid costly ER visits

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Invariably it is the wingnuts themselves who are guilty of what they accuse others of ... so ... if there is any 'child sex ring' you know this troll is part of it.