The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be National Bootleggers Day ...!
 

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Today in History

1601		The Treaty of Lyons ends a short war between France and Savoy.
1746		Charles Edward Stuart, the young pretender, defeats the government forces at the battle of Falkirk in Scotland.
1773		Captain James Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle.
1819		Simon Bolivar the “liberator” proclaims Columbia a republic.
1893		Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch, is overthrown by a group of American sugar planters led by Sanford Ballard Dole.
1852		At the Sand River Convention, the British recognize the independence of the Transvaal Board.
1912		Robert Scott reaches the South Pole only a month after Roald Amundsen.
1939		The Reich issues an order forbidding Jews to practice as dentists, veterinarians and chemists.
1945		The Red army occupies Warsaw.
1963		Soviet leader Khrushchev visits the Berlin Wall.
1985		A jury in New Jersey rules that terminally ill patients have the right to starve themselves.

Vinicunca (Rainbow Mountain), Peru

Located just 3 hours from Cusco, but comparatively unknown until recent years when climate change caused the overlying snow to melt and reveal the colorful formation.  More photos at Google Images.
Further discussion and relevant links at the EarthPorn subreddit.
Tip: "there are locals with horses that charge $20-30 to take you to the top."  Useful to know because the hike begins at an altitude of 14,000 feet and rises to 17,000 feet where the above photo was taken.

The "Children's Blizzard" of 1888

This week marks the anniversary of the "Children's Blizzard" (also known as the "Schoolhouse Blizzard."

When the storm hit, it caught so many settlers by surprise that between 250 and 500 people died that weekend, according to estimates by newspaper editors in Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakota Territory...
Carl Saltee, in Fortier, Minn., remembered that  “A dark and heavy wall builded up around the northwest coming fast, coming like those hevy [sic] thunderstorms, like a shot. In a few moments, we had the severest snowstorm I ever saw in my life with a terrible hard wind, like a hurrycane [sic], snow so thick we could not see more than 3 steps from the door at times.”
This was not a storm of drifting lace snowflakes, but of flash-frozen droplets firing sideways from the sky, an onslaught of speeding ice needles moving at more than 60 miles per hour. Even without the whiteout conditions — climate experts call this zero/zero visibility — many people couldn’t see because the microscopic bits of ice literally froze their eyes shut...
Schoolchildren, many of whom had left for school without coats, hats and mittens — the better to bask in the comparative warmth of a January thaw — were overcome by the blizzard. In many places, the storm made its debut just as students were walking back home from school. The air was not only filled with blowing ice, but temperatures plummeted to frightening lows. By the afternoon in Moorhead, it was 47 degrees below zero...

Read David Laskin's The Children's Blizzard.   It is a compelling, if sometimes unsettling, read.

Secrets of the Louvre Museum

The Louvre is easily the most famous museum in the world, but even a number of people who have visited don't actually know that much about the place itself. Whether you have been there or want to visit in the future, you'll want to check out these fascinating facts about the museum.

For example, did you know the original building dates back to the 12th century and that you can still see the remains of the moat inside the museum? Or that many of the pieces on display are only there thanks to plundering on the part of Napoleon Bonaparte? Or that there is now an official Da Vinci Code themed route to explore the museum?
Learn these facts and more at Travel and Leisure

Ringling Bros. Circus to End

Officials with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus have announced that the circus will close down in May of 2017. They cited declining ticket sales, operating costs, and changes in audience taste as the reasons. The circus was a combination of several earlier circuses that merged, with the oldest going back 146 years.

The circus, with its exotic animals, flashy costumes and death-defying acrobats, has been a staple of entertainment in the United States since the mid-1800s. Phineas Taylor Barnum made a traveling spectacle of animals and human oddities popular, while the five Ringling brothers performed juggling acts and skits from their home base in Wisconsin. Eventually, they merged and the modern circus was born. The sprawling troupes traveled around America by train, wowing audiences with the sheer scale of entertainment and exotic animals.
By midcentury, the circus was routine, wholesome family entertainment. But as the 20th century went on, kids became less and less enthralled. Movies, television, video games and the internet captured young minds. The circus didn't have savvy product merchandising tie-ins or Saturday morning cartoons to shore up its image.

Cost aside, audiences decided that carting wild animals from town to town for live performances is not right, clowns are scary, and its easier to watch other acts on video. However, more modern traveling live shows such as Cirque de Soleil continue to draw audiences.

Less-expensive injectable epi now available

But...

As reported by CBS Boston:

CVS is now selling a rival, generic version of Mylan’s EpiPen at about a sixth of its price, just months after the maker of the life-saving allergy treatment was eviscerated before Congress because of its soaring cost to consumers.
The drugstore chain says it will charge $109.99 for a two-pack of the authorized generic version of Adrenaclick, a lesser-known treatment compared to EpiPen, which can cost more than $600.

But here's what you need to know:

Clarification here, CVS cut the retail price of the existing generic for Adrenaclick (known as epinephrine).
This generic has been around for a while, but isn't an A/B rated generic so it's illegal for a pharmacy to dispense this if a prescription is written for EpiPen. We can dispense this if a prescription is written for Adrenaclick or Epinephrine.
Make sure your doctor writes a script for Adrenaclick or it is illegal for us to dispense this cheaper generic to you.

The injection device is different - that's why it can't be switched by the pharmacy for you.  In other words: "Adrenaclick.  Ask for it by name."

6 Best Natural Cold Remedies

6 Best Natural Cold Remedies

Businesses taking marijuana products into the mainstream

Here are the businesses taking marijuana products into the mainstream

Anne Frank's biography viewed as pornography

Gail Horalek, the mother of a 7th-grade child in Michigan in the US, has made international headlines by complaining that the unabridged version of Anne Frank's diary is pornographic and should not be taught at her daughter's school. At issue for Horalek is a section detailing Anne's exploration of her own genitalia, material originally omitted by Anne's father, Otto Frank, when he prepared the manuscript for publication in the late 40s.
I had to look up what age kids are in the 7th grade. They're 12 to 13! They're only about a year younger than Anne was when she wrote of her vagina: "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" There cannot be a 13-year-old girl on the planet who hasn't had a root around and arrived at this exact stage of bafflement...
Anne is going through puberty, and she describes her changed vagina in honest detail, saying, "until I was 11 or 12, I didn't realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn't see them. What's even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris." (Oh Anne, we've all been there.) She continues: "In the upper part, between the outer labia, there's a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That's the clitoris." It's beautiful, visceral writing, and it's describing something that most young women experience.
And yet I can understand that the junior Ms Horalek would have squirmed and wished herself elsewhere when this was read in class...
More in a column at The Guardian.

***

Some need to grow up. This Horalek person is one of them.

US and Russian spies both have a history of using sexual blackmail

US and Russian spies both have a history of using sexual blackmail

John Lewis Is a True American Profile in Courage

John Lewis Is a True American Profile in Courage

The Year Ahead in Wingnut Attacks on Reproductive Freedom

The Year Ahead in Wingnut Attacks on Reproductive Freedom

How 'Fake News' Exploded

How 'Fake News' Exploded—and How to Tell When the Label Is Misused

The Dumbass Trump Era Will Test Us

The Dumbass Trump Era Will Test Us—What Are You Willing to Risk?

Nativism: As American as Rotten Apple Pie

Nativism: As American as Rotten Apple Pie

Wingnuts Are Working To Make It LEGAL To Injure, Kill Protesters In North Dakota

Wingnuts really are a sick breed.

Continue Reading 

Kentucky’s Attack on Unions Provides a Glimpse into the Wingnuts’ Impending War on Workers

Kentucky’s Attack on Unions Provides a Glimpse into the Wingnuts’ Impending War on Workers

Mimicry (that's not a fish)

"In many respects, freshwater pearly mussels look like any other bivalve mollusc, but what sets some of them apart (notably Lampsilis spp.) is the unusual extension of their fleshy mantle that grows beyond the confines of the protective shell valves to wave around in the water. This fleshy protuberance can look astoundingly like a small fish and this is no coincidence because this fishy appendage is actually a lure to attract fish so they can be press-ganged into the mussel’s reproductive strategy. The lure is very convincing. Not only does it have markings that suggest eyes and skin patterning, but it is even moved by the mussel in a fish-like way. These details are more than enough to grab the attention of a real fish that mistakes the lure for a snack. The fish edges closer and makes a lunge for the fake prey nipping the membrane of a specialized brood gill the lure is concealing.  This releases the mollusc’s larvae, nasty-looking miniature versions of the adult, known as glochidia. These larvae are parasitic and they get drawn under the fish’s gill plates where they latch onto the blood-rich tissues of the gills..."
Further discussion and more examples here.

Animal Pictures