CAROLINA NATURALLY: 01/01/2017

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

Hell, Yes ...!

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

Colorful Evening ... !

Today is - Inspire Your Hear With Art Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit: The Truth Be Told
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The Pacific
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Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1606		Guy Fawkes is hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to blow up Parliament.
1620		Virginia colony leaders write to the Virginia Company in England, asking for more orphaned apprentices for employment.
1788		The Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart dies.
1835		A man with two pistols misfires at President Andrew Jackson at the White House.
1865		House of Representatives approves a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.
1911		The German Reichstag exempts royal families from tax obligations.
1915		Germans use poison gas on the Russians at Bolimov.
1915		German U-boats sink two British steamers in the English Channel.
1916		President Woodrow Wilson refuses the compromise on Lusitania reparations.
1917		Germany resumes unlimited sub warfare, warning that all neutral ships that are in the war zone will be attacked.
1935		The Soviet premier tells Japan to get out of Manchuria.
1943		The Battle of Stalingrad ends as small groups of German soldiers of the Sixth Army surrender to the victorious Red Army forces.
1944		U.S. troops under Vice Adm. Spruance land on Kwajalien atoll in the Marshall Islands.
1950		Paris protests the Soviet recognition of Ho Chi Minh‘s Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
1966		U.S. planes resume bombing of North Vietnam after a 37-day pause.
1968		In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers attack strategic and civilian locations throughout South Vietnam.
1976		Ernesto Miranda, famous from the Supreme Court ruling on Miranda vs. Arizona is stabbed to death.
1981		Lech Walesa announces an accord in Poland, giving Saturdays off to laborers.

Study explains how western diet leads to overeating and obesity

More than two in three adults in the United States are considered overweight or obese, with substantial biomedical and clinical evidence suggesting that chronic overconsumption of a “western diet” – foods consisting high levels of … Read more

Brain Personality

The Shape of Your Brain Could Determine Your Personality

Do You Have A Sleep Disorder?

Do You Have A Sleep Disorder? Answer These 5 Questions To Find Out

Don't hit the snooze button on your sleeping problems.

We dislike hypocrites because they deceive us

We’re averse to hypocrites because their disavowal of bad behavior sends a false signal, misleading us into thinking they’re virtuous when they’re not, according to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association … Read more

Apparently it's no longer safe to say the word "yes" on the telephone.

What kind of #*@!# world are we creating for ourselves?

It’s not a Verizon commercial: If you receive a phone call from someone asking “can you hear me,” hang up. You’re a potential victim in the latest scam circulating around the U.S.
Virginia police are now warning about the scheme, which also sparked warnings by Pennsylvania authorities late last year. The “can you hear me” con is actually a variation on earlier scams aimed at getting the victim to say the word “yes” in a phone conversation. That affirmative response is recorded by the fraudster and used to authorize unwanted charges on a phone or utility bill or on a purloined credit card...
But how can you get charged if you don’t provide a payment method? The con artist already has your phone number, and many phone providers pass through third-party charges.
In addition, the criminal may have already collected some of your personal information -- a credit card number or cable bill, perhaps -- as the result of a data breach. When the victim disputes the charge, the crook can then counter that he or she has your assent on a recorded line.

More details on what to do if you've been victimized and how to dispute the claims at CBS News.
I believe I received one of these calls this past week. The caller (to my private cell which is not a publicly known number) started by saying he was calling in response to my job application. I denied such and he replied "Can you hear me ok?" My response was "you've either got the wrong number or you are spamming me" and I disconnected.
Scum.

City Life After the Car

Imagining City Life After the Car

‘Stop doing anything that could be construed as free speech’

Huh?

The Life-Changing Magic of Decluttering in a Post-Apocalyptic World

When the world collapses around us, how will we continue the everyday housekeeping chores of our normal lives? A sense of normalcy will be important when you're battling giant insects, homicidal robots, sulfurous fire, and/or zombies. Tom Gauld gives us tips on keeping your home decluttered and efficient in various post-apocalyptic scenarios. See the rest of the series at The New Yorker.

Tax-return delay could hurt low-income families

Millions of low- and moderate-income Americans who claim certain tax credits will have to wait weeks longer than usual this year for their federal income tax refunds because of a new law aimed at reducing … Read more

Dumbass Trump's Appetite for Privatization Threatens Your Drinking Water

How Dumbass Trump's Appetite for Privatization Could Threaten Your Drinking Water

Dumbass Trump Hotels Asked For People’s Favorite Travel Memories, And Twitter LIT THEM UP

This REALLY didn’t go very well for Dumbass Trump Hotels.

Continue Reading

Corporate America Is Inching Even Closer to a Constitutional Convention

Corporate America Is Inching Even Closer to a Constitutional Convention

Link Dump

‘House of Cards’ teases with Inauguration Day statement

What all can Amazon’s Echo (Alexa) do?

Can you use a dead person’s finger to unlock their phone?

I better check under my mattress…

The rudest & funniest placards from the Dumbass Trump protests

Why In America, It’s Typically Free to Go Pee

Are your turds boring? Then you need the Turd Twister

94-year-old graduates college with 4.0 GPA

The sad state of affairs when no one shows up to your class

I Knew Chelsea Manning in Basic Combat Training

Watch out for the “Can you hear me” scam

This Sexy Cannibal Mermaid Musical Is Tops

‘The Lure’: Forget ‘La La Land’

This surreal polish fantasy film from director Agnieszka Smoczynska is a total trip.

La La Land may be headed for Academy Awards history next month (thanks to its record-tying 14 Oscar nominations), but come this Wednesday (Feb. 1), it won’t even be the best musical playing in theaters. Instead, that distinction will go to The Lure ...
More

A Vaudeville Act So Bad it Set Legal Precedent

Before Mrs. Miller and William Hung, and even before Florence Foster Jenkins became famous for singing badly, there were the Cherry Sisters: Ella, Lizzie, Addie, Effie, and Jessie Cherry. While mediocre talent is soon forgotten, the Cherry Sisters were so bad that they found a place in history.

The trope of an angry crowd throwing vegetables at a bad performance may have come from the Cherry Sisters. Previous acts were surely pelted with produce before the Cherrys, but they seem to have been famous for it. When they first performed their show, Something Good, Something Sad, in their hometown of Marion, Iowa, audiences were polite, as it was mainly their friends and neighbors in attendance. But as soon as they took their act on the road, it was clear at least one half of that title was misleading. “Spectators routinely laughed, heckled, catcalled, booed, and threw vegetables,” according to their Wikipedia page. One audience member sprayed a fire extinguisher directly into one of the women’s faces to stop the show. They eventually began performing behind a wire mesh to avoid being hit by projectiles (although they later denied ever doing so).

Strangely the group soldiered on, and was booked for various tours and even a Broadway theater. The A.V. Club found the Cherry Sisters at Wikipedia and did some more research on this unconventional vaudeville act. Read about them, and how their refusal to give up led to a refinement in libel law.

What are "troll-drums" ?

In reading a volume of writings by Nobel prize winners. The sample used for Eugene O'Neill was his play "The Emperor Jones," in which background drumming is a prominent theatrical feature, as described in this commentary:

The despot perishes on the flight from his glory, hunted in the dead of night by the troll-drums of his pursuers and by recollections of the past shaping themselves as paralyzing visions.

Never heard of troll-drums, have difficulty adding a drum to my inner vision of trolls, can't quite derive the word from my understanding of "troll," and can't envision trolls in a Caribbean environment.
Can anyone clarify? May have missed an essential part of the folklore.

A supermassive black hole is really, really big

In the schematic image above, there is a little dot in the center for size compairson.
That's not the earth. That's our entire solar system.

"Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space."

Discussed at the Space subreddit.

Animal Pictures

Monday, January 30, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

Not This Time Indeed, Motherfucker ...!

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

Croissant Francais ... !

Today is - Croissant Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1649		Charles I of England is beheaded at Whitehall by the executioner Richard Brandon.
1844		Richard Theodore Greener becomes the first African American to graduate from Harvard University.
1862		The USS Monitor is launched at Greenpoint, Long Island.
1901		Women Prohibitionists smash 12 saloons in Kansas.
1912		The British House of Lords opposes the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.
1931		The United States awards civil government to the Virgin Islands.
1933		Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor by President Paul Hindenburg.
1936		Governor Harold Hoffman orders a new inquiry into the Lindbergh kidnapping.
1943		Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus surrenders himself and his staff to Red Army troops in Stalingrad.
1945		The Allies launch a drive on the Siegfried line in Germany.
1949		In India, 100,000 people pray at the site of Gandhi’s assassination on the first anniversary of his death.
1953		President Dwight Eisenhower announces that he will pull the Seventh Fleet out of Formosa to permit the Nationalists to attack Communist China.
1964		The Ranger spacecraft, equipped with six TV cameras, is launched to the moon from Cape Canaveral.
1972		British troops shoot dead 14 Irish civilians in Derry, Ireland. The day is forever remembered in Ireland as ‘Bloody Sunday.’
1976		The U.S. Supreme Court bans spending limits in campaigns, equating funds with freedom of speech.
1980		The first-ever Chinese Olympic team arrives in New York for the Winter Games at Lake Placid.

Federal Judge Halts Enforcement Of Muslim Ban

Federal Judge Halts Enforcement Of Muslim Ban

Thank goodness for the ACLU.

Google CEO SHREDS Dumbass Trump’s Immigration Ban For Being Bad For Business And Families

Google CEO SHREDS Dumbass Trump’s Immigration Ban For Being Bad For Business And Families

Dumbass Trump’s ban on Muslims coming to the United States is having a negative effect on businesses and the families of employees. And the CEO of Google just called him out for it.

Dumbass Trump Already Breaking Up Families With His Muslim Ban

It didn’t take long for reality TV hCK-turned-alt right Nazi/fascist pretender Dumbass J. Trump to start making tragedies out of the prejudices on which he ran for office.

The Megatsunami Of Lituya Bay

Alaska's Lituya Bay had been used for many years as a temporary shelter for boats traveling the eastern Pacific, but no one lives there permanently. In fact, the local Tlingit people told the legend of a monster at the mouth of the bay who shook the ocean to send huge waves. They knew what was going on. The unique geography of the bay amplifies waves to a terrifying extent. Travelers were there when the largest tsunami wave in recorded history blew through Lituya Bay in July of 1958. It reached about a third of a mile up the shore, destroying everything in its way. It started with a magnitude 8 earthquake.

The earth shook for anywhere from one to four minutes—eyewitness reports varied. When the fault finally came to rest, the foamy water of Lituya Bay settled back into something resembling its ordinary lazy waves, and a new quiet blanketed the bay. Despite the cessation of shaking, Orville and Mickey Wagner on the Sunmore—the boat headed for the bay exit—continued their retreat toward the open ocean.
After a minute or so of apparent calm, a crash described as “deafening” rattled the atmosphere. One of the unnamed mountain peaks that stood at the inland end of Lituya Bay had broken off, dropping ninety million tons of rock into the water with the force equivalent to a meteor strike. The resulting impact shook loose other rocks on the slopes, and chunks of adjacent glaciers, and these plunged into the water practically all at once. Millions of cubic yards of displaced water heaved upward and formed a wave traveling outward at about 110 miles per hour (180 km/h).
Within about a minute, the approaching wave became visible to the boats still at anchor, and the occupants looked on in awe as the wide skyscraper of water traversed the length of the bay towards them. When it reached Cenotaph Island another minute or so later, the proportions of the wave became clear. The center of the wave was almost as high as the highest point on the island, 300 feet in the air. On the two opposite shores, the plowing saltwater reached over 1,700 feet (over 500 meters) onto land, twisting even the most massive trees from their roots and scraping the bedrock nearly clean.

Read the story of the Lituya Bay megatsunami, gleaned from eyewitness accounts and the geologic record, at Damn Interesting

7 Strange Mysteries of World War One

We study the big wars of history, but there will always be things we don't know due to the chaos, death, and destruction all wars bring. Records and witnesses are hard to come by even in recent wars, but World War I was 100 years ago. Things we don't know about the Great War will most likely forever be shrouded in mystery. One of the more shocking of these mysteries is the case of Béla Kiss.

Béla Kiss was a Hungarian tinsmith who marched off to war in 1914. He left his home in the care of his housekeeper, along with his collection of seven giant metal drums. Townsfolk knew that he had been collecting gasoline in anticipation of wartime rationing, and when gasoline was needed, they cracked open the drums. Instead of gasoline, they were met by the stench of death.
A search of Kiss’ property revealed 24 dead bodies, 23 women and a man, who had been strangled and pickled in alcohol. Further investigation uncovered a secret room and stacks of letters between Kiss and 74 different women. Police discovered that he had defrauded countless women and had even been taken to court. They issued an arrest warrant for Kiss. He was almost apprehended in a Serbian hospital in October of 1916, but escaped at the last minute.
From there, Kiss vanished. Rumours circulated about a French Foreign Legion soldier who used his alias (Hoffman) and boasted about strangling people). Another alleged sighting occurred in New York City. But Béla Kiss’ fate – and his story in general – remains one of the more sinister mysteries of World War One. It’s also likely that not all of his victims were found.

That's one mystery that may never be solved. There are others, some with a glimmer of hope, that you can read about at Urban Ghosts.

Baby Photos

Man With Bionic Penis Must Live With 2-Week Boner Before He Can Have Sex

Man With Bionic Penis Must Live With 2-Week Boner Before He Can Have Sex

And he was born without a penis, so he’s been waiting a LONG time

These Tostitos Bags Will Tell You When It Detects Alcohol on Their Breath

Just in time for the Super Bowl, Tostitos has released new bags that can help detect alcohol on a person's breath and if they have been drinking, the bag will bear a "don't drink and drive" warning and even provide the user with a $10 credit. The company does want to make it clear that the bag is not a breathalyzer and cannot detect alcohol levels, just alcohol consumption. Even so, it's a great way to add a little more safety to your Super Bowl party.

Why Do Sandwiches Always Come With A Pickle?

It's a question that has plagued no one, but at some point in their lives tens of millions of people have wondered to themselves "why does my sandwich always come with a pickle?"

These people have the right to know why there's always a pickle with their sandwich, and why deli pickles are so delicious you kinda want another one after you finish the first.
The pickle and sandwich connection can be drawn directly back to the Jewish delis in New York around the turn of the 20th century, when standard sandwich practices were being introduced.

These delis included a homemade pickle with the sandwich as a palate cleanser, but pickles soon became such a popular snack food that the Pickle Wars went down in the Lower East Side.
And since NY's Jewish delis had so much influence on all the other sandwich shops, delis, grinder and sub shops to come the pickle-sandwich pairing continued until it became the norm.
Read Why Does Your Sandwich Come With A Pickle? at mental_floss

Random Photos

Are You In Shape Or Just Thin?

Are You In Shape Or Just Thin?

Climate Change Is Impacting Food Spoilage

Climate Change Is Impacting Food Spoilage, and Technology Is Coming to the Rescue

To Prevent Species Extinction Local Communities Must Step Up

To Prevent Species Extinction Due to Dumbass Trump's Lack of Climate Action, Local Communities Must Step Up (Yes, This Means You)

Scientists Just Grew a Pancreas In a Rat to Stop Mouse Diabetes

Scientists Just Grew a Pancreas In a Rat to Stop Mouse Diabetes

Find out what that means for you

Why You Should Give Your Kid a Dog Instead Of a Sibling

Why You Should Give Your Kid a Dog Instead Of a Sibling

Take this into account next time he pleads for a brother

Calm Down Your Dog By Playing Him Reggae Music

Calm Down Your Dog By Playing Him Reggae Music

This scientific trick also works on your stoner pal

Swans Swim Through Ice

There's a thin layer of ice on top of the pond at Bradgate Park, in Glenfield, UK. But swans gotta swim, for some reason. This swan family follows dad single file as he breaks a path through the ice, bit by bit.

(YouTube link)

You may think it's more trouble than it's worth, but you are not a swan. It must be important to them.

Animal Pictures

Sunday, January 29, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be Seeing-Eye Dog Day ...!

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

Ol'Sourpus Hisself ... !

Today is - Curmudgeon's Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

Don't forget to visit our sister blogs Here and Here.

Today in History

1813		Jane Austin publishes Pride and Prejudice.
1861		Kansas is admitted into the Union as the 34th state.
1865		William Quantrill and his Confederate raiders attack Danville, Kentucky.
1918		The Supreme Allied Council meets at Versailles.
1926		Violette Neatley Anderson becomes the first African-American woman admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
1929		The Seeing Eye, America’s first school for training dogs to guide the blind, founded in Nashville, Tennessee.
1931		Winston Churchill resigns as Stanley Baldwin’s aide.
1942		German and Italian troops take Benghazi in North Africa.
1944		The world’s greatest warship, Missouri, is launched.
1950		Riots break out in Johannesburg, South Africa, over the policy of Apartheid.
1967		Thirty-seven civilians are killed by a U.S. helicopter attack in Vietnam.
1979		President Jimmy Carter commutes the sentence of Patty Hearst.
1984		Reagan announces that he will run for a second term.
1984		The Soviets issue a formal complaint against alleged U.S. arms treaty violations.
1991		Iraqi forces attack into Saudi Arabian town of Kafji, but are turned back by Coalition forces.

Rush for 'Barbie' vagina surprises plastic surgeons and leaves medical professionals stumped

A rush of women going under the knife for designer genitals has taken even plastic surgeons by surprise and divided medical professionals on the ethics and benefits of “labiaplasty”.
In 2015, more than 95,000 women worldwide underwent the procedure, according to data from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS).
Most often, labiaplasty involves trimming back the inner “lips” or labia minora flanking the vaginal opening, in a procedure that is also known as nymphoplasty.
It was the 19th-most popular surgical procedure in 2015, followed by “vaginal rejuvenation” — usually tightening of the vaginal canal — in 22nd place with just over 50,000 procedures.

Why LSD 'acid trips' last so, so long

Why LSD 'acid trips' last so, so long

An "emancipated dinnerbell"

A sundial cannon, sundial gun, noon cannon or meridian cannon, also noonday gun is a device consisting of a sundial incorporating a cannon with a fuse that is lit by an overhanging lens, concentrating the rays of the sun, and causing the cannon to fire at noon, when properly oriented along a north-south axis. The cannon sizes ranged from large to small depending on the location of their use. The household variety was used in estates to signal the time for the midday meal. Larger sizes were used in European parks to signal noon.
Note the lens is on an moveable frame so that it can be adjusted during the seasons.

How to make a realistic face mask

The embedded image is mask probably worn for a ceremonial dance for a Maya ruler, reconstructed from fragments found at an archaeological dig at the Maya capital city of Aguateca in Guatemala.

Although scholars have guessed that the masks were made of wood or other organic materials, the example from Aguateca is the first one ever found to reveal that at least some masks were created by soaking gauze-like textiles in clay and shaping them into the contours of a face. When the clay was fired, the textiles burned off, leaving a mask that was light and comfortable to wear.

From the archives of Archaeology Magazine.

The Three Deadliest Drugs Are All Legal

As Cops Keep Going After Pot, The Three Deadliest Drugs Are All Legal

Farmers aren't allowed to fix their own tractors

As reported in Modern Farmer:

This might be hard to believe for non-farmers, but owners of tractors aren't actually allowed to fix them, thanks to a set of laws designed to protect software intellectual property. In fact, the craziness of this goes even further: In a 2015 letter to the United States Copyright Office, John Deere, the world’s largest tractor maker, said that the folks who buy tractors don’t own them, not in the way the general public believes “ownership” works. Instead, John Deere said that those who buy tractors are actually purchasing an “implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle.”..
But what this has meant is that tractor owners can’t repair their own tractors—and if they do, they’re in violation of the DMCA. So, if a machine stops working, its owner can’t pop the hood, run some tests, and find out what’s going on; he or she is legally required to take the tractor to a service center (one owned by the manufacturer, since that’s the only entity allowed to analyze the tractor’s issues). This can be expensive and time-consuming, and more to the point, unnecessary—at least according to farmers in several states, who are lobbying to force tractor manufacturers make their diagnostic tools available to independent repair shops and owners.

Are high school AP classes a scam?

One columnist at The Atlantic thinks so:

Interestingly, the evidence providing the clearest positive argument for AP participation is that high performance in AP courses correlates with better college grades and higher graduation rates, especially in science courses. But that's faint praise. It's the same as saying that students who do best in high school will do better in college and are more likely to graduate.

My beef with AP courses isn't novel. The program has a bountiful supply of critics, many of them in the popular press (see here and here), and many increasingly coming from academia as well (see here). The criticisms comport, in every particular, with my own experience of having taught an AP American Government and Politics course for ten years.

He goes on to argue that

AP courses are not remotely equivalent to the college-level courses they are said to approximate.
Increasingly, students don't receive college credit for high scores on AP courses...
Increasing numbers of the students who take them are marginal at best...
Large percentages of minority students are essentially left out of the AP game...
Schools have to increase the sizes of their non-AP classes, shift strong teachers away from non-AP classes...
The AP curriculum leads to rigid stultification.

I sent the link to two friends who have been high school principals. Both of them disagreed with the premise.

"These were expensive to run because a teacher teaching five students sees fewer students in a day. One might make the case that this diverts resources from areas. But this does not only happen with AP courses."

"I never experienced students being encouraged to enroll in AP classes just so the class could reach an enrollment minimum."

"(our) district went out of its way to recruit black students into the AP programs."

"He doesn't like that many AP scores don't allow a student to earn credit, only exemption from a basic level course. My experience and opinion is that is not a big problem."

"In this day and age of whopping college costs, dual-enrollment fills for many kids a better, more intelligent slot than AP."

The arguments are fleshed out in more detail at The Atlantic and the links embedded there.

Mikhail Gorbachev's current worldview

Excerpts from a transcript of his speech at a recent ceremony, as reported by Time:

"The world today is overwhelmed with problems. Policymakers seem to be confused and at a loss. But no problem is more urgent today than the militarization of politics and the new arms race. Stopping and reversing this ruinous race must be our top priority. The current situation is too dangerous...
While state budgets are struggling to fund people’s essential social needs, military spending is growing. Money is easily found for sophisticated weapons whose
destructive power is comparable to that of the weapons of mass destruction; for submarines whose single salvo is capable of devastating half a continent; for missile defense systems that undermine strategic stability.
Politicians and military leaders sound increasingly belligerent and defense doctrines more dangerous. Commentators and TV personalities are joining the bellicose chorus. It all looks as if the world is preparing for war...
I recall a Politburo meeting in 1986 at which the defense doctrine was discussed. The proposed draft contained the following language: "Respond to attack with all available means." Members of the politburo objected to this formula. All agreed that nuclear weapons must serve only one purpose: preventing war. And the ultimate goal should be a world without nuclear weapons.
In modern world, wars must be outlawed, because none of the global problems we are facing can be resolved by war — not poverty, nor the environment, migration, population growth, or shortages of resources."

Fulltext at the link. Best comment I've seen: "The irony of it all if Gorbachev tells Trump to tear down that wall."

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