The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Quite True ...!
 

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Today is - National Chocolate Caramel Day 

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Today in History

1687		The French explorer La Salle is murdered by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
1702		On the death of William III of Orange, Anne Stuart, sister of Mary, succeeds to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1822		Boston is incorporated as a city.
1879		Jim Currie opens fire on the actors Maurice Barrymore and Ben Porter near Marshall, Texas. His shots wound Barrymore and kill Porter.
1903		The U.S. Senate ratifies the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda.
1916		The First Aero Squadron takes off from Columbus, NM to join Gen. John J. Pershing and his Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico.
1917		The Adamson Act, eight hour day for railroad workers, is ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1918		Congress authorizes Daylight Savings Time.
1920		The U.S. Senate rejects the Versailles Treaty for the second time.
1924		U.S. troops are rushed to Tegucigalpa as rebel forces take the Honduran capital.
1931		The state of Nevada legalizes gambling.
1935		The British fire on 20,000 Muslims in India, killing 23.
1936		The Soviet Union signs a pact of assistance with Mongolia against Japan.
1944		The German 352nd Infantry Division deploys along the coast of France.
1945		Adolf Hitler orders a scorched-earth policy for his retreating German armies in the west and east.
1947		Chiang Kai-Shek’s government forces take control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party.
1949		The Soviet People’s Council signs the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and declares that the North Atlantic Treaty is merely a war weapon.
1963		In Costa Rica, President John F. Kennedy and six Latin American presidents pledge to fight Communism.
1981		One technician is killed and two others are injured during a routine test on space shuttle Columbia.

Is Losing Your Phone as Stressful as a Terrorist Attack?

Is Losing Your Phone as Stressful as a Terrorist Attack?

Is it time to reexamine your relationship with technology?

The Rise and Fall of Saturday Morning Cartoons

Saturday morning cartoons were around when I was a kid in the 1960s, but in the 1980s, they were ramped up to define a generation. Every cartoon was designed to sell toys and cereal, and children who watched them learned how to immerse themselves in a "franchise."

(YouTube link)

But things got better in the '90s, so those same kids kept watching them. Now those kids of the '80s and '90s are the perfect age to market nostalgia to, as you can tell by the flood of movie remakes and whole forums dedicated to bygone shows. But their own children will never know what it was like to set aside one whole morning for week's worth of cartoons.

​Babies With 3 Biological Parents Could Be Born This Year

​Babies With 3 Biological Parents Could Be Born This Year

​Thanks to a regulation breakthrough in the UK, the first 3-parent child is on its way

The Lamest Ways to Say No to a Date

​These Are the Lamest Ways to Say No to a Date

There's a tactful way to reject another person, and then there's this

Other Men Don’t Last as Long in Bed as You Think

Other Men Don’t Last as Long in Bed as You Think

It's much shorter than what you've been led to believe

Sex Toy Ban Legal Fight Hits Federal Courts

Sex Toy Ban Legal Fight Hits Federal Courts

4 Out of 5 Kids in This Oklahoma City School Can't Read Analog Clocks

What time is it? Don't ask kids ages 6 to 12 in one Oklahoma City school to read analog clocks, because chances are, they can't.
Caitlin Carnes of Boys & Girls Club at Santa Fe South Elementary was working to teach kids in after-school program, when she realized that 4 out of 5 kids didn't have any ideas on how to read analog clocks:

"I think the exposure to technology, everyone's so used to seeing digital," Carnes told KFOR. "They all have cell phones and tablets so they don't have to look at a clock very often that's analog."

Here’s What Happens When Children Win A Science Contest In Dumbass Trump’s AmeriKKKa

Here’s What Happens When Children Win A Science Contest In Dumbass Trump’s AmeriKKKa

Unbelievable.

Even the World's Highest-Scoring Schools Need to Change

Why Even the World's Highest-Scoring Schools Need to Change

Hiding A.1. Steak Sauce Bottles in the Library

Jill Ralston of the Avon Lake Public Library shows off more than two dozens A.1. Steak Sauce bottles left hidden in the shelves. Photo: Bruce Bishop/ChronicleIt's a whodunit of the rarest of degree ... a real meaty mystery with high steaks: someone very saucy has been hiding bottles of A.1. Steak Sauce throughout the Avon Lake Public Library in Ohio, and nobody knows why.

Dan Cotton, the library’s page supervisor, said 28 of the 10-ounce bottles have turned up since he found the first one Jan. 11 hidden among the library’s newspapers.
No one has been spotted hiding the bottles, but it’s become almost a game among library staff to locate the bottles, which are typically left lying on their sides behind books on the shelf.
“It became something everyone wanted to find,” Cotton said. ...
“We mapped the first 12 to see if we could find a pattern, but we couldn’t find a discernible pattern,” Cotton said.

Brad Dicken of the Chronicle-Telegram has the nifty story. We need a steak-out to find the culprit!

3-D Printed Cheese

Would You Eat This 3-D Printed Cheese?

A team of nutritional scientists in Ireland has created a softer, springier version of the regular stuff

Bakers Jailed in Venezuela's New "Bread War" for Making Illegal Brownies

There's a new war of sorts in Venezuela.

Embattled President Nicolas Maduro has sent government inspectors and soldiers into the bakeries of the country's capital in search for illegal brownies (no, not that kind) and other pastries, as part of a new "bread war."
Breadmakers blamed the government for the shortage of wheat, and the government has struck back with a rule that 90% of wheat must be made into loaves of bread instead of pastries.
According to The Guardian:

During this week’s inspections, two men were arrested as their bakery was using too much wheat in sweet bread, ham-filled croissants and other products, the state superintendency of fair prices said in a statement sent to media on Thursday. ...
Another two were detained for making brownies with out-of-date wheat, the statement added, saying at least one bakery had been temporarily taken over by authorities for 90 days.
“Those behind the ‘bread war’ are going to pay, and don’t let them say later it is political persecution,” Maduro had warned at the start of the week.

I wonder what Marie Antoinette has got to say about Venezuela's anti-pastries rule.

This Small, Amazonian Population Proves Just How Unhealthy American Life Really Is

This Small, Amazonian Population Proves Just How Unhealthy American Life Really Is

Their diet and lifestyle has given them the healthiest hearts of any population to date

Places You Can Live for Under $1000 a Month

You probably know that the cost of living can vary from country to country and while income often goes down as the cost of living goes down, some people can earn the same income no matter where they live. If you are lucky enough to be in that second category, you might find your money will stretch a lot further in the countries featured in Travel and Leisure's list of countries you can live comfortably in for under $1000 a month.

Scientist Discovered the Secret of Breeding Four-Leaf Clovers ...

... And Was Surprised at the Public's Reaction 

Did you find a four-leaf clover this St. Patrick's Day? Was it Luck o' the Irish? ... Or was it science?
Four-leaf clover is rare: only about 1 in 10,000 clover plants grow four leaflets. But thanks to science, that may be changing.
Wayne Parrott, a researcher at the University of Georgia, has identified the area where the gene for the four-leaf trait is located in the genome of the common clover species. The gene itself is yet to be identified, Parrott pointed out to Inside Science, "You know it's inside this locked trunk and we don't have the key to open it."
Parrott didn't set out working on helping out St. Patrick's Day revellers - instead, he had focused on trying to breed clovers as ornamental plants. Unfortunately, rabbits love to munch on clovers, so Parrott's lab worked on creating rabbit-deterring clover which contained almost all four-leaf varieties.
You'd think that people would be happy to find Parrott's four-leaf clovers, but Parrott said that people's reaction was overwhelmingly negative. "We had taken the entire mystery and excitement out of it. The value comes from the fact that they're rare, and if they're not rare, it does take the fun out."

Puppies vs. Couches

These puppies want to be on the couch so bad! They're too young to jump and too short to climb, but they give it their all because the couch is where the humans sit!

(YouTube link)

Puppies will learn soon enough, with a little growth and a lot of practice, so enjoy them when they're little, and be sure to take video. Enjoy this compilation from MrFunnyMals.

Mythconceptions About Animals

You may not have known it, but there’s a myth out there about arachnid urine. We looked into that— and some other animals myths, too.

Myth: Wolves howl at the moon.
How it spread: People all over the world developed myths involving wolves and the moon. (In Norse mythology, for example, the wolves Skoll and Manegarm chase the sun and moon around the sky, and will do so for eternity.) It’s not hard to see why such myths came to be: Wolves are nocturnal, doing their hunting— and howling— at night. Over the eons people came to associate these feared and respected night hunters with that other great symbol of the night, the moon. Not only that, but wolves point their snouts to the sky while they howl, which makes them look like they are “howling at the moon.”
The truth: Wolves howl to communicate with other wolves, whether there’s a moon out or not. Scientists who study wolves say their howls can mean different things, including a call for the pack to gather, or a message to rival packs to stay away.

Myth: Peonies need ants to open their flowers.
How it spread: This is a popular myth among gardeners. It spread because it’s common to see ants swarming peony buds in the morning, and before and while they’re opening.
The truth: Peonies can open just fine without ants. Ants swarm the flowers because peonies secrete a nectar that ants love to eat. (The same myth is also associated with hibiscus flowers— and it’s untrue in that case, too.)
Myth: Elephants love peanuts.
How it spread: Peanuts became a popular food in the United States in the mid-1800s, and they became a staple treat at the many circuses traveling the country at the time. Around this same time, elephants started being introduced to circuses.
People walking around with bags of peanuts naturally tried to feed them to the elephants, and the elephants often ate them. So the idea spread: Elephants really like peanuts!
The truth: Elephantologists say elephants have no particular affinity for peanuts— they eat them simply because they’re offered. Elephants much prefer the foods they eat in the wild— primarily grasses, leaves, shrubs, fruit, and especially tree bark.

Myth: Camels store water in their humps. How it spread: This myth is thousands of years old, and probably came from a simple mistaken inference made by people observing some obvious camel characteristics: 1) camels can go for a long time without drinking water— about seven days on average; 2) when they finally get water they can drink enormous amounts— up to 30 gallons in one go; and 3) they have humps. Combine these things and it’s not too hard to see how this myth came to be.
The truth: Camels’ humps don’t store water, but are made up primarily of fat, which allows for another camel characteristic that you rarely hear about: they can go for just as long, or longer, without eating as they can without drinking— all because of that extra fat stored in their humps. The real reason they go so long without water is because their liver and kidneys are extremely efficient when it comes to water usage, which also accounts for the fact that camels can go many days without urinating. When they finally do go, their urine is as thick as syrup. Plus, camels’ red blood cells are oval, rather than circular, like most other mammals. This more streamlined shape allows the vital cells to continue to circulate even in a very dehydrated state, making them yet another key characteristic regarding the camel’s ability to go so long without water.
Myth: Bees make honey.
How it spread: This one spread because, well, bees do make honey.
The truth: However, only a small number of bees make beeswax hives and fill them with honey. In fact, there are only seven species of true honeybees— out of the approximately 22,000 species— on the planet. Several other species not considered true honeybees make and store honey, too, but not in the amounts that honeybees do. Some of the remaining bee species make tiny amounts of honey to feed to their young, but most make no honey at all and don’t even live in hives. (Most bees are solitary, and make nests in the ground.)

Myth: Elephants are afraid of mice. How it spread: This is another very old myth, with its first recorded mention going all the way back to AD 77, when Roman scholar Pliny the Elder wrote, “The elephant hates the mouse above all other creatures.” Pliny’s work was read and respected for centuries in the Western world, and the elephant and mice myth became “common knowledge,” even to this day.
The truth: Modern biologists have tested this myth numerous times, and elephants appear little more than bored at the sight of a mouse. Experts say the myth may come from the fact that elephants have poor eyesight and usually barely notice something as small as a mouse until it’s right on top of them, at which point they may be surprised by the tiny creature’s smell.
Extra: It should be noted the Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters also tested this myth in 2007. The two elephants they observed actually seemed putoff by the sudden appearance of a white mouse and went out of their way to walk around it. So maybe this needs more testing after all?

Myth: Some spiders have 10 legs.
How it spread: This has probably been around as long as people thought to count spider legs, and it’s still something that arachnologists are regularly asked about.
The truth: All known spider species— all 40,000 and more of them— have eight legs. The answer to why some people think they’re seeing 10 legs lies in basic spider anatomy: All spiders have pedipalps, a pair of appendages that grow from the front of their heads and are segmented in roughly the same way spiders’ legs are. Except they’re not legs— they’re mouthparts. Pedipalps are used for holding prey, not for walking. They’re also usually very short, much shorter than legs, though in some species, especially the tarantula, pedipalps can be as long or longer than the spiders’ legs. So sometimes it looks like spiders have 10 legs. Each year, rice blast fungus destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people.
Myth: Spiders can cause skin ulcerations similar to those caused by bites… just by peeing on you.
How it spread: According to Rod Crawford of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington, this myth started in Central America, and in recent years has made its way to the United States. And it originally had to do with horses, not humans. Crawford wrote: In Guatemala this myth (still going strong in 2008) centers on a tarantula species locally called araña de caballo (horse spider), which is said to cause severe hoof and leg trouble in horses and other livestock by urinating on them.

Animal Pictures