The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be Silly Sayings Day ...! 

 

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

  
Knight to Queen One ... !

Today is - National Chess 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 - Plestine - Saudi Arabia - Singapore - Sri Lanka - Taiwan Thailand - Tibet - United Arab Emirates - Uzbekistan - Vietnam - Yemen
Africa
Algeria - Chad - Congo - Egypt - Ethiopia - Ivory Coast - Kenya - Libya - Madagascar - Morocco  Mozambique - Nigeria - South Africa - Sudan - Tunisia - Zambia - Zimbabwe
The Pacific
Australia - French Polynesia - Guam - Marshall Islands - New Zealand - Philippines

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

Today in History

54		Nero succeeds his great uncle Claudius, who was murdered by his wife, as the new emperor of Rome.
1307		Members of the Knights of Templar are arrested throughout France, imprisoned and tortured by the order of King Philip the Fair of France.
1399		Henry IV of England is crowned.
1670		Virginia passes a law that blacks arriving in the colonies as Christians cannot be used as slaves.
1775		The Continental Congress authorizes construction of two warships, thus instituting an American naval force.
1776		Benedict Arnold is defeated at Lake Champlain.
1792		President George Washington lays the cornerstone for the White House.
1812		At the Battle of Queenston Heights, a Canadian and British army defeats the American who have tried to invade Canada.
1849		The California state constitution, which prohibits slavery, is signed in Monterey.
1903		Boston defeats Pittsburgh in baseball’s first World Series.
1904		Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams is published.
1942		In the first of four attacks, two Japanese battleships sail down the slot and shell Henderson field on Guadalcanal, in an unsuccessful effort to destroy the American Cactus Air Force.
1943		Italy declares war on Germany.
1944		Troops of the advancing Soviet Army occupy Riga, capital of Latvia.
1946		The Fourth Republic begins in France; it will continue to 1958.
1958		First appearance of Paddington Bear, now a beloved icon of children’s literature.
1967		First game of the fledgling American Basketball Association; Oakland Oaks beat Anaheim Amigos 134-129 in Oakland, Cal.
1972		Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashes in the Andes Mountains, near the Argentina-Chile border; only 16 survivors (out of 45 people aboard) are rescued on Dec. 23.
1976		Dr. F.A. Murphy at Center for Disease Control obtains the first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle.
1983		The Space Shuttle Challenger, carrying seven, the largest crew to date, lands safely at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
1990		The Lebanese Civil War ends when a Syrian attack removes Gen. Michel Aoun from power.
2010		After being underground for a record 69 days, all 33 miners trapped in a Copiapo, Chile, mine are rescued.

Farmer's Markets and Small Family Farms Are Essential to Our Future

The Many Ways Farmer's Markets and Small Family Farms Are Essential to Our Future

The Nation’s Opioid Epidemic Is Morphing — and Growing

How the Nation’s Opioid Epidemic Is Morphing — and Growing

In the Workplace, Incivility Begets Incivility

In the Workplace, Incivility Begets Incivility, New Study Shows

Incivil behaviors at work -- put-downs, sarcasm and other condescending comments -- tend to have a contagious effect, according to a new study by a management professor at the University of Arkansas and several colleagues. Incivil behaviors are less serious than...

There's an Arrest for Drug Possession Every 25 Seconds

There's an Arrest for Drug Possession Every 25 Seconds—And Marijuana Arrests Exceed Those for All Violent Crimes 

Time for Imperial Boredom

British photographers in India in the nineteenth century.

by Alice Shirell Kaswell

At its height, the British empire produced magnificent heaps of wealth and power. But according to historian Jeffrey Auerbach, the empire also generated staggering amounts of boredom.
In a copiously documented report in the journal Common Knowledge, Auerbach writes:

Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, British imperial administrators at all levels were bored by their experience traveling and working in the service of king or queen and country. Yet in the public mind, the British empire was thrilling -- full of novelty, danger, and adventure, as explorers, missionaries, and settlers sailed the globe in search of new lands, potential converts, and untold riches.

Aurebach’s study is: “Imperial Boredom,” Jeffrey Auerbach, Common Knowledge, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 283-305.
Auerbach is an assistant professor of history at California State University, Northridge. His interests are not limited to boredom. He has published on many other subjects, among them “The Homogenization of Empire,” “The Monotony of Empire,” and the inspirationally titled “The Impossibility of Artistic Escape.”

The imperial boredom report is filled with telltale evidence of administrators’ boredom. Those administrators range from the soon-to-be celebrated Winston Churchill (who at age 21 wrote that Indian life was “dull and uninteresting”) to the clerk who wrote this ditty:

From ten to eleven, ate a breakfast at seven;
From eleven to noon, to begin ‘twas too soon;
From twelve to one, asked “What’s to be done?”
From one to two, found nothing to do;
From two to three, began to foresee
That from three to four would be a damned bore.

Auerbach complains that, for generations,

Scholars have by and large perpetuated [a] glamorous view of the empire, portraying imperial men either as heroic adventurers who charted new lands and carried ‘the white man’s burden’ to the farthest reaches of the planet or as aggressors who imposed culturally bound norms and values on indigenous peoples and their ways of life.

Auerbach says he did his research by “reading against the grain of published memoirs and travel logs” and by digging into the unspectacular mutterings of private diaries and letters. His task was the more difficult, he argues, because “if people felt bored before the mid-eighteenth century, they did not know it.” This view of boredom, he points out, was persuasively developed by Patricia Meyer Spacks, whose 304-page book Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind titillated thrill-starved scholars in 1995.
After publishing the “Imperial Boredom” paper in 2005, Auerbach announced that he himself was writing a book about imperial boredom. He will need to expand considerably upon his current study, which is 23 pages long and includes only 76 footnotes. As of 2016, Professor Auerbach still lists this book on his resumé as “in progress.”

British administrators enduring tennis.

Perhaps, though, he has already done his finest work. Here, in just 47 words, is Auerbach’s take on imperial boredom:

The reality simply could not live up to the expectations created by newspapers, novels, travel books, and propaganda. As a consequence, notwithstanding some famous exceptions, nineteenth-century colonial officials were deflated by the dreariness of their imperial lives, desperate to ignore or escape the empire they had built.The reality simply could not live up to the expectations created by newspapers, novels, travel books, and propaganda. As a consequence, notwithstanding some famous exceptions, nineteenth-century colonial officials were deflated by the dreariness of their imperial lives, desperate to ignore or escape the empire they had built.

A Lifetime Ban from Tristan da Cunha

Simon Winchester visited the island of Tristan da Cunha, known as the most remote inhabited island in the world. He toured the island, met the people, and looked into its history. Then wrote a book about the islands of the Pacific, and included a story he knew about Tristan da Cunha. Twelve years went by, and Winchester was invited to take a cruise through the Pacific in exchange for telling stories about those places to the other passengers. He entertained them while informing them about places they were to stop.

Then on a Friday morning, during a half gale just north of the Antarctic convergence, I gave my talk about the history of Tristan. We arrived the following evening, and when we were comfortably at anchor off the Edinburgh mole, we were boarded, somewhat surprisingly, by a very large imperial policeman. He had a brief announcement to make: everyone would be permitted onto the island the following morning, but regrettably not—the ship’s passenger manifest had been radioed ahead—Mr. Winchester.
I had, he explained sternly, betrayed an island secret. I had been warned; I had actually been implored. But I had gone ahead, and now the islanders were every bit as hurt and upset as Kenneth Rogers had forewarned. The constable was implacable, immovable. And so the passengers, most of them greatly amused, filed past me down to the gangway, boarded their Zodiacs, and were swept off behind the riprap into Calshot Harbor—named for the village in Hampshire to where the islanders had been evacuated in 1961—and off to see the sights of Edinburgh. When they returned an hour or so later they shook their heads as one: why would anyone want to live there? And then they puzzled over my exclusion: it’s not as though you had killed someone.

Winchester was banned from ever going ashore at Tristan da Cunha for the rest of his life. That made him ponder his actions, and the actions of others in setting foot in exotic places and going against the wishes of the locals. Read the story that led to the ban, and how it is only one incident in a history of globetrotting rudeness, at Lapham’s Quarterly.

Wedding delayed when groom's mother got lost in the woods

A Massachusetts couple’s wedding day took a worrying turn on Sunday when the groom’s mother went missing in the woods of Landaff, New Hampshire, but state troopers were able to find the woman and reunite her with her family.The mother had been missing for four hours after she got “turned around and lost in the woods” near the property the family were renting, New Hampshire State Police wrote on their Facebook page.
The family grew concerned, and the wedding was delayed for several hours. “Troopers from Troop F and conservation officers from New Hampshire Fish and Game quickly mobilized to locate the mother of the groom,” police wrote.
They found her a few hours later and reunited the mother with her family, “safe and sound.” "The wedding was delayed for several hours, but the bride and groom will definitely have a story for the future. Congratulations to the Guarinos on their nuptials!" police added.

102-Year-Old Woman Crosses "Get Arrested" Off Her Bucket List

With all the stories circulating about cops killing kids and unarmed people it's nice to read a heartwarming story about police officers doing something good- like arresting an old lady.
Don't worry- the centenarian in question isn't a criminal about to spend the rest of her life behind bars, she's just a sweet old lady who wanted to cross "get arrested" off her bucket list.

102-year-old Edie Simms from St. Louis, Missouri has lived a life of generosity and goodness, but for some reason she's always been fascinated with the idea of getting handcuffed and thrown in the back of a cop car.

So Michael Howard, creative director of the 5 Star Senior Center to which Edie has been donating handmade items for nearly a decade, decided to repay her kindness by calling the cops.
Here's more on this unusual arrest:

Since one of the center’s volunteers is friends with a local police officer, the police department “offered to send a police cruiser to take her” to the center, Howard said.
Simms’ reaction was one of unbridled joy.“She said oh that’d be wonderful and said, ‘do you think that they’d put the handcuffs on me?’” Howard recalled.
Once in the back of the car, Howard said Simms was one proud passenger. While passing a county police officer, Howard recalled: “Edie held her hands up to show that she had the handcuffs on! She’s just such a neat lady.”

Woman rescued from drain pipe under library said that the devil had chased her in there

A woman told rescuers she got stuck in a drain pipe under a library because the devil had chased her.
Police Sgt. John Burt said the 26-year-old woman, whose socks were found in front of the PVC pipe entrance inside a manhole, had taken off her clothing and crawled about 25-30 feet into the pipe and was somewhere underneath the Pearl Public Library in Mississippi.
The woman was found when some boy scouts heard her yelling for help, Burt said, and officials were able to locate her by shining a light down the pipe, which was between a foot and a foot and a half in diameter. When they located her, the woman told authorities that she was stuck and couldn't breathe.
When they asked her how she got into the pipe, she told firefighters that the devil chased her in there. Burt said when the woman was rescued from the pipe at around 6:30pm on Monday, she was taken to the hospital to be checked out. Because of the nature of the situation, the woman's name is not being released.
There's a news video here.

Man thanks thief who stole his broken car stereo and left cash

A man from Perth, Australia, who had his car broken into last week has said "thank you" to the thief. On Saturday, Tom Drury's uncle notified him the back door of his 1994 Mazda hadn't been locked properly.Upon investigating, Mr Drury found his car been broken into, and the stereo removed. While many people would be frustrated and upset by a missing sound system, Mr Drury said the news wasn't at all bad.
"The stereo was broken, it didn't pick up radio stations and didn't read any discs, it was just rubbish," he said. "I had tried removing it not long before, but I gave up out of frustration. To get it out, I needed a special tool I didn't have, so when I saw that the stereo was removed, I couldn't help but laugh."
And that wasn't all. Mr Drury then noticed a $10 note and a number of coins had been left on the front drivers seat seat. "When I went to inspect it myself, I discovered $22.10," he said. "If I could say one thing to the thief, it would be 'thank you.' Thank you for paying me for a service I was going to pay someone else to do. And by the way, no refunds!"

Spectacularly drunk man has apologized after blowing up nightclub toilet

Police arrived at a nightclub on the outskirts of Amberg in Bavaria, Germany, at the weekend to discover an unusual surprise in the gents' lavatories.
Officers were left shocked when they were called to the club on the outskirts of the town in the early hours of Sunday morning. A 26-year-old man, revealed as Felix T., had thrown a firecracker into a toilet in the club, blowing it to pieces.
The force of the blast completely demolished the lavatory. “Fortunately, no one was injured,” police said. The damage costs, however, will be in the region of €500. And the police’s surprise didn’t stop there, the alcohol test had another shock in store.
The man's blood level clocked in at 5.24 permille, meaning a 0.524% blood alcohol content. For most people, a reading of 3.5 permille is life-threatening, and very few survive more than 5 permille, let alone still have the capacity to light a firecracker. Felix T. expressed his remorse: "I am very sorry that it got so out of hand. I will also settle the damage costs as soon as they have been confirmed."

Homeowner says intruder wore his sunglasses and slippers, then shot at him with his gun

A suspected home invader repeatedly shot at a homeowner in Clinton Township, Michigan, who fled his house after encountering the intruder, police said. The man wasn't hit by any of the eight bullets. Police said the man went home on his lunch hour to let his dogs outside. He noticed someone had tampered with his car, so he went inside to check on things.
Once inside, he saw a strange man in his home, wearing his sunglasses. "He said, 'I'm not stealing these,'" John Broderick said. "Then I looked down and he was wearing my slippers." Broderick ran to get his 9mm pistol, but it was gone. "I thought, 'Oh boy,'" Broderick said. "I just turned around and I ran like hell out of there."
As Broderick escaped into the garage, the invader fired three shots through the door. Broderick ran for his neighbor's house with the gunman about 30 feet behind him. "I got about halfway across the lawn, and the next thing I know, 'Pow! Pow! Pow!" Broderick said. "He shot off about eight rounds." Broderick hid at his neighbor's house and called 911.

YouTube link.

"I can't even explain it," he said. "Honestly, I thought I was done." When police arrived, the intruder, who is now in custody, told police that he was the homeowner. "He said he lived here and that I came in to rob him," Broderick said. Broderick was not injured. His wife Pam is still shaken up about his terrifying encounter.

More progress in building functional human tissues

More progress in building functional human tissues

Toward the ultimate goal of engineering human tissues and organs that can mimic native function for use in drug screening, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine, a team led by Jennifer A. Lewis, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at...

Five Impressive Space Exploration Technologies

There are plenty of problems associated with space travel and exploration, but there are also many minds working hard to solve those problems. Every day, NASA and its partners (which include many universities and corporations) are coming up with innovative ways to do what we want to do -and now, so are private space exploration companies. For example, we may soon be able to see much farther into the past than every before with NIRCam.

NIRCam stands for Near Infrared Camera, which refers to a collaboration between Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona to come up with an instrument capable of capturing images from billions and billions of years ago. While this can sound rather unbelievable, it is important to remember that heat was being generated throughout the universe at the time, which in turn, meant light shooting off in countless directions from countless places.
Combined with the limited speed of light as well as the continuing expansion of the universe, this meant that it is still possible to capture images from billions and billions of years ago so long as a camera is sensitive enough to pick up on that light as well as shielded from other light that can obstruct it from performing its intended function. Should the NIRCam prove to be a success, it could provide scientists with an incredible amount of information about the early universe, which remains one of the most mysterious and thus one of the most interesting periods known to us.

But that’s just the beginning. Read about other space exploration technologies you might not be familiar with at Money Inc.

A Strange History of Dog-Headed Men

We’ve had several articles about strange creatures described by explorers, often from accounts handed down instead of direct observation, and illustrated by artists who never saw the real thing. A tale that was a bit easier for people of the times to understand was that of the Cynocephali, a term meaning humans with the heads of dogs. This particular description of unknown groups of people came from all over the world, over a period of thousands of years.

In around 400 BC, the Greek physician Ctesias wrote an intriguing and detailed account of the Cynocephali of the mountains of India, which was at the time known as Indica. In his account he describes a tribe of people with the heads of dogs, who used a series of barks and snarls to communicate, although they could understand the language of humans, and who subsisted on raw meat. They were said to have teeth that were longer than those of dog’s, as well as nails that were long, curved and rounded. The tribe is reported to have lived by hunting, roasting their kills in the sun, as well as raising flocks of sheep and goats. They are also told of being fond of the fruit of the Siptakhora, and were known to cultivate this fruit for the purposes of trading it for bread, flour, and cotton, as well as swords, spears, bows and arrows.

Such people were also described hundreds of years later by Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, and even Christopher Columbus, although they may have just passed along legends they heard. Artists illustrated these tales along the way. Read about the Cynocephali through history at Mysterious Universe.

From unknown to beardog

From unknown to beardog: Findings rescue fossils from ‘trashbin’ genus

Large, ferocious-looking animals called beardogs — neither bears nor dogs — roamed the Northern Hemisphere between about 40 and 5 million years ago. But because so little data on their earliest members are available, their evolutionary relationships or phylogeny — and...

Virus carrying DNA of black widow spider toxin discovered

Virus carrying DNA of black widow spider toxin discovered

A tiny virus that may sting like a black widow spider. That is one of the surprise discoveries made by a pair of Vanderbilt biologists when they sequenced the genome of a virus that attacks Wolbachia, a bacterial parasite that has successfully infected not only black...

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

It's all so clear now ...! 

 

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

  
Trilobite ... !

Today is - National Fossil 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 - 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 - Plestine - Saudi Arabia - Singapore - Sri Lanka - Taiwan Thailand - Tibet - United Arab Emirates - Uzbekistan - Vietnam - Yemen
Africa
Algeria - Chad - Congo - Egypt - Ethiopia - Ivory Coast - Kenya - Libya - Madagascar - Morocco  Mozambique - Nigeria - South Africa - Sudan - Tunisia - Zambia - Zimbabwe
The Pacific
Australia - French Polynesia - Guam - Marshall Islands - New Zealand - Philippines

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

Today in History

1492		Christopher Columbus and his crew land in the Bahamas.
1576		Rudolf II, the king of Hungary and Bohemia, succeeds his father, Maximilian II, as Holy Roman Emperor.
1609		The song “Three Blind Mice” is published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.
1702		Admiral Sir George Rooke defeats the French fleet off Vigo.
1722		Shah Sultan Husayn surrenders the Persian capital of Isfahan to Afghan rebels after a seven month siege.
1809		Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, dies under mysterious circumstances in Tennessee.
1899		The Anglo-Boer War begins.
1872		Apache leader Cochise signs a peace treaty with General Howard in Arizona Territory.
1915		Despite international protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, is executed by Germans for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners.
1933		Alcatraz Island is made a federal maximum security prison.
1943		The U.S. Fifth Army begins an assault crossing of the Volturno River in Italy.
1949		Eugenie Anderson becomes the first woman U.S. ambassador.
1960		Inejiro Asanuma, leaders of the Japan Socialist Party, is assassinated during a live TV broadcast.
1964		1964 USSR launches Voskhod I, first spacecraft with multi-person crew; it is also the first mission in which the crew does not wear space suits.
1970		Nixon announces the pullout of 40,000 more American troops in Vietnam by Xmas.
1971		The House of Representatives passes the Equal Rights Amendment 354-23.
1984		The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonates at bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England, in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; 5 others are killed and 31 wounded.
1994		NASA loses contact with the Magellan probe spacecraft in the thick atmosphere of Venus.
1999		Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf seizes power in Pakistan through a bloodless military coup.
2000		Suicide bombers at Aden, Yemen, damage USS Cole; 17 crew members are killed and over 35 are wounded.
2002		Terrorist bombers kill over 200 and wound over 300 more at the Sari Club in Kuta, Bali

Birthday boy's balloon traveled 5,000 from north east England to Las Vegas

A boy’s birthday balloon traveled an incredible 5,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Las Vegas.
Cole Bell, nine, sent off a balloon for his birthday on July 16 from his home in Gateshead, north east England, and the helium balloon was found more than 5,000 miles away by a couple in Las Vegas. His mother Lois Bell, 32, said almost every year they send off a balloon with Cole’s name, age and other details.
Lois said: “We send off a helium balloon almost every year, I think we only missed maybe a few times. I didn’t expect to hear anything back.” Then, last Saturday a postcard arrived for Cole. “I got up for work and I saw the postcard put through the door. I don’t know anyone from Las Vegas.
“Cole was very excited and surprised it traveled so far. It is such a lovely gesture that they took the time to acknowledge it was his birthday and send a message back.” The postcard addressed from a Chase and Bernie said they found the balloon with Cole’s name on it while walking their dog. They ended their note by wishing Cole to have an awesome day.

Yes, old cannonballs can explode

I don't envy the people who lived through the most recent hurricane, but I do envy those who were able to access those beaches afterwards with their metal detectors.  They probably scooped up handfuls of gold doubloons.
But "today I learned" that cannonballs of the Civil War era are supposedly dangerous (?)

A bomb squad was at a South Carolina beach on Sunday after Hurricane Matthew apparently unearthed old Civil War cannonballs from the sand.
Charleston County Sheriff's spokesman Maj. Eric Watson said in a news release that the cannon balls were found on Folly Beach Sunday afternoon, but bomb squad members couldn't get to it immediately because of the rising tide.
Once the ocean level goes down, Watson said technicians would render the cannonballs safe. He warned residents might hear a small boom.

Why Columbus sailed SOUTH to the Americas

He sailed WEST, you say. Well... yes, but not exactly.
His goal (and his achievement) was to sail west and SOUTH. This is all explained in The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, by Nicolas Wey Gomez (M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Mass, 2008). [the page notations below are from this book]
Had Columbus actually sailed west, he would first have reached the Azores, and then a continuation on the same latitude would have brought him ashore near my cousin's home in New Jersey!
Instead, he headed southwest to the Canaries. Why the Canary Islands? They were Spain’s westernmost (and also southernmost) territory in the Atlantic and a suitable location for repairs and restocking. He then navigated west and southwest, “always following the sun, though slightly to the left.” On succeeding voyages his path followed “ever-steeper routes to the south." For the second voyage, he steered “far more to the left than on the first voyage.” And on his third voyage, “he pursued a journey toward the southern region, seeking the equatorial line.”(4)
After leaving the Canaries, Columbus reprimanded his pilots for allowing the ships to drift to the north. Carried by prevailing currents and winds “the sailors steered badly, declining toward the west by northwest and even toward the northwest; for which reason the Admiral scolded them many a time.”(396) He tried to travel directly west from the Canaries, and began veering south "the minute he felt reasonably confident that he was about to strike land."
The primary reason Columbus favored a southern route was that he believed precious resources were more likely to be found in hot regions. In his writings: “gold is generated in sterile lands and wherever the sun is strong.”(40)
He shared the belief held by Ptolemy and other geographers that places with equal latitude shared attributes.(49) Spices, medicines, and jewels were most often associated with the tropics. His proposal before departing was: “that by way of the West, toward the south, he would discover great lands, islands, and terra firma, the happiest of all, the richest in gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones and infinite peoples; and that in that direction he expected to reach land belonging to India…”(141)
It was also known that Cathay (China) had a temperate climate like Europe (per reports of Marco Polo and others) at that it was “in the line [latitude] of Spain.” India (and the islands of "the Indies") were known to be tropical.(46)
One can also note the advice given to Columbus that “all good things come from very hot regions whose inhabitants are black or dark brown...”(185)
All well-educated people of the time knew that the earth was spherical; this had been common knowledge since the time of Archimedes (250 BCE), or perhaps before that by anyone who had seen the shadow of the earth cross the moon during an eclipse. Columbus' sailors did not fear the edge of the earth; what they did fear was shallows, which they considered to be more likely in tropical waters where the heat evaporated the water.
Before he sailed to the Americas, Columbus had traveled to Ireland, where he had seen aboriginal people who had been discovered drifting on logs in the ocean – we know now that they were probably Inuit, but because of their facial physiognomy they were thought to be from Cathay (China).(355)
So sailing west to China was not an illogical plan. Where Columbus differed from others was that he thought it was also practical. Everyone else thought it was impossibly distant. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the distance west to China/India, and it was that false confidence of its proximity that led him to venture out and to believe that he had found the Indies when he reached the Caribbean.
I've added the "recommended books" tag to this post, although it certainly is not a book for everyone. At 600+ pages and with copious notes, it is a scholarly work, obviously the product of decades of work by this author. It also has excellent reproductions of early pre-Columbian maps.

Wait, Privacy Is Cool Again?

Wait, Privacy Is Cool Again?

Coulrophobia

Coulrophobia explained.
And the etymology:

A neologism, coined in the late 1980s or 1990s. Supposedly based on Ancient Greek κωλοβαθριστής ‎(kōlobathristḗs, “one who goes on stilts”) (from κωλόβαθρον ‎(kōlóbathron, “stilt”), from κῶλον ‎(kôlon, “limb”) + βαίνω ‎(baínō, “I go”), chosen for lack of an obvious Ancient Greek equivalent of "clown", combined with the -phobia ‎(“fear of”) suffix.

When women are more likely to lie

When women are more likely to lie

Would you tell a lie to help someone else? A new study says women won’t lie on their own behalf, but they are willing to do so for someone else if they feel criticized or pressured by others. In contrast, research by Prof. Laura Kray of UC Berkeley's Haas School of...

Females react differently than males to social isolation

Females react differently than males to social isolation

While male and female mice have similar responses to physical stress, research from the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary, Canada, suggests females, not males, feel stressed when alone. The findings, to be published in the journal eLife, provide...

American workers prefer set work schedules, but would take wage cuts to work from home

American workers prefer set work schedules, but would take wage cuts to work from home

Affordable child care and flexible work schedules have all been topics of debates in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Yet, according to a new study by Princeton University and Harvard University, the average American worker is indifferent to flexible work...

'Sexy knickers' explosives factory worker wins £25,000 following sacking over raunchy emails

A worker at an explosives factory has been awarded almost £25,000 after being unfairly sacked over raunchy emails with a supplier who nicknamed her "sexy knickers". Aileen Paterson, who worked in procurement for Chemring Energetics, was dismissed in January after 35 years' service with the firm who are based in Ayrshire, Scotland. It came after bosses discovered inappropriate messages between her and the managing director of supplier MTEC. On one occasion when the supplier referred to her nickname, she replied: "Aye and I have them on!! Lol xx." He wrote back: "Not if I was there, hon!! xxx." Ms Paterson, of Ardrossan, then added: "You are awful but I like you!!! xxx."
There were also other emails where Ms Paterson made a sexual reference to "edible sheathing" and she often referred to him as Honey or Hon and signed off with kisses. Bosses quizzed her about her relationship with the MTEC director but the married worker insisted the emails were just "banter". Ms Paterson was sacked by the firm when the emails were uncovered but eventually took her case to an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and breach of contract. Employment judge Lucy Wiseman awarded her a total of £24,526, saying: "I concluded that no other reasonable employer having regard to the extent of the misconduct in this case, and having satisfied itself there was no issue of preferential treatment, and no issue of a loss of trust and confidence in the employee, would have dismissed the claimant."
The tribunal heard that bosses were carrying out another investigation, unrelated to Ms Paterson, when they discovered the emails and suspended her. She was invited to a disciplinary meeting with the firm's planning manager Alison Ranachan on November 30 last year. The purchasing worker was shown the emails between her and the director, named only as Mr Arnott, and asked "whether she was a personal relationship with him and whether she considered the language used to be professional?". A written judgment on the case states: "The claimant told Ms Ranachan that she had known Mr Arnott for many years and regarded him as a dear friend. She was not in a personal relationship with Mr Arnott. The claimant explained the content of the emails as banter and that she had a bubbly personality."
Ms Paterson was also accused of encouraging Mr Arnott to put his account on hold with the firm due to delayed payments and making derogatory remarks about a colleague to him. She also admitted receiving a bottle of wine from him at Christmas and a bottle of champagne when she and her husband first got engaged. Following a disciplinary investigation, bosses wrote to Ms Paterson in January and dismissed her for gross misconduct. They found that the "email exchanges were unprofessional, contained sexual undertones and breached the respondent's code of business principles". Judge Wiseman accepted this, but rejected the claims that she encouraged MTEC to freeze their account with the firm and that she had made inappropriate remarks about a colleague. Ms Paterson, who is now working as a cleaner, ultimately won her case but had her payout reduced by 25 per cent as her conduct contributed to her treatment by Chemring.

This Persistent Myth About Native Americans Needs Debunking

This Persistent Myth About Native Americans Needs Debunking

Kenya tribal warriors join movement to end 'beading' of girls for sex

by Tonny Onyulo

In this remote, deeply traditional corner of north-central Kenya, Faith Lekupanai sits on a stone, her baby ensconced in her arms, resting her tiny frame against the only tree stump on her homestead and talking about her child.
Miss Lekupanai, 14, has a baby as a result of being “beaded” — a common practice among the Samburu community living in this region. In the semi-nomadic tribe’s tradition, a close family relative will approach a girl’s parents with red Samburu beads and place the necklace around the girl’s neck on behalf of a warrior from the tribe. When that happens, the warrior can engage in sexual intercourse with the girl — some as young as 6 — even when the warrior does not intend to marry her.
“I was beaded when I was 7 years of age,” said Miss Lekupanai, who is colorfully dressed in a red shawl, bright beaded necklaces and a headdress. “I began immediately having sex with a warrior who was 15 years my senior. It was very painful, but you can’t refuse. Our culture dictates such behavior.”
Now these girls are getting help from an unexpected quarter: Activists led by some warriors are stepping up to demand an end to the tradition.
John Leadismo, a Maasai warrior, is leading the fight against beading.
“We cannot allow this practice to continue hurting our young girls as we watch,” he said. “Most of these girls are traumatized, and some end up dying during the abortion procedure. 
“We will respect our culture as Samburu people, but we are not going to allow cultural practices [that hurt] our people to continue,” he said.
Josephine Kulea, 30, has gained international attention for her efforts running the Samburu Girls Foundation to curb the practice of beading. The foundation is credited with helping over 1,000 girls in Kenya and other African countries escape forced marriages.
The practice “is dying out around the cities because more people there have embraced education,” she told the website News Deeply. “But there are a few other areas where it is still very common, and as much as we try to spread awareness that it’s wrong, people feel it’s still part of our culture. Some girls feel it makes them beautiful because someone has given them these beads.”
Miss Lekupanai’s story is common, and thousands of Samburu girls who are ineligible to be married have been beaded in the dry heartland of northern Kenya, 350 miles from the capital, Nairobi.
It’s a paradox: The intricately beaded necklaces have become a virtual symbol of modern Kenya, but they also have come to mean hardship and regret for many Samburu girls.
After a girl is beaded, her mother builds a small hut outside their home where the male relative or warrior visits the beaded girl to engage in sexual activity at any time. The practice is cherished, although pregnancy as a result is not.
“The sad thing with this practice is that you are not allowed to get pregnant, and yet there are no preventive measures,” Miss Lekupanai said. “However, in the end, most girls get pregnant and the problems begin.”
Pregnant girls are forced to abort in crude and makeshift ways because access to health care is minimal.
“I almost died trying to abort three pregnancies,” Miss Lekupanai said. “The father of these [aborted] babies later abandoned me and looked for another small girl, whom he then beaded.”
If the pregnancies are carried to full term, the girls are forced to abandon their babies in the bush to be eaten by wild animals. A baby born out of wedlock is an outcast.
“I left my baby along the Ewaso Ng’iro river so that lions could eat it,” said 20-year-old Josper, who was 12 when she killed her child. “It hurts me a lot when I remember what I did, but I was advised by the elders to do it.”
In spite of the movement to end beading, Samburu elders are fueling the practice.
James Lesimate, 78, argues that beading has helped prevent promiscuity among girls in the region, a narrative that is supported by every elder in the community.
“We need to respect and protect our culture,” he said. “There is no way we are going to abandon this practice of beading, because it is part of us.”
Some women lament the practice.
“I can’t give birth. I can’t bear a child,” said Joyce Lenatilia, who had two abortions by age 12. “I was told that I might have terminated both pregnancies with the use of strong herbs, and so I can’t give birth again.
“I’m now an outcast, and everyone ridicules me,” she said. “I can’t talk to other women since I have no child. I’m now living alone without a child, and nobody wants to marry me.”
Mr. Leadismo said beading can spread HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. He also notes that scores of women are unable to bear children because of damage to their reproductive systems from multiple abortions.
With the help of a local charity called the Samburu Girls Foundation as well as the Pastoralist Child Foundation, some girls have become aware of their rights and are trying to resist the practice.
The foundations have rescued hundreds of girls and are helping them go to school to find ways to earn a living after being shunned by their communities.
The activists have also managed to educate some elders.
As a result, Miss Lekupanai was able to keep her child.
“I was allowed to carry my last pregnancy to full term after elders and warriors were educated on the need to respect our rights,” she said. “I’m now happy — I have a child.”

Why Body Cameras Won't Solve the Problem of Police Violence Against Black People

Why Body Cameras Won't Solve the Problem of Police Violence Against Black People

Teacher charged with assault after writing 'focus' on student's forehead

A teacher who had just started working for the school system in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has resigned after he was charged with misdemeanor assault and battery of a student.
Daniel Board, a 46-year-old maths teacher, got upset with an eighth-grade student at Landstown Middle School “because of questions that he asked and not focusing in class” on Sept. 16, according to a criminal complaint filed on Monday.
Board grabbed the back of the boy’s head and wrote “focus” on his forehead, the criminal complaint stated. The boy was not allowed to wipe the word off his face until he completed his work, the document said. The school system found out about the incident on Sept. 19 and began an investigation, said Eileen Cox, a district spokeswoman.

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Board, who started working for the schools in August, was placed on unpaid administrative leave on Sept. 28, Cox said, and he submitted his resignation Thursday. The school educates students from sixth to eighth grade. Board’s first court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 3 in Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court. The student’s family declined to comment.

Man arrested after couple ordered food at drive-through then passed out before collecting it

A South Carolina man is facing a number charges after police said he and a female companion passed out in their car at the drive-through of a McDonald’s in Marathon, Florida. The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office say that Kevin Yonson, 28, was behind the wheel of a white Ford with the woman in the passenger seat. They ordered food about 10:30pm on Tuesday but didn’t drive up to the window to pay to get their meal. So a McDonald’s employee went outside to find out what was going on and saw them asleep in the car, still at the ordering speaker. He called the Monroe Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Christopher Schwartz wrote in his report that when he approached the car, he saw the “female asleep, mouth open, with drool coming down her face.” He tried to wake her but she “continued to sit with her eyes closed.” She finally woke up and “looked at me as if she had no idea where she was.” She then shook Yonson awake. Schwartz told her stand behind the car; by that time, Deputy Garrett Bragg already had Yonson at the back of the car. Both smelled of alcohol, Schwartz wrote.
Bragg asked Yonson to go through a field sobriety test. At first he agreed, then decided not to. He got combative and was yelling, Schwartz wrote. The deputy wrote that Yonson resisted being handcuffed. At one point, Bragg and Sgt. Nick Whiteman “grabbed” Yonson and “secured” him against the car. Schwartz then tried walking him to his cruiser but Yonson “lost his balance and stated I pushed him over.” After a minor scuffle, the police got Yonson into Schwartz’s cruiser. It turns out that Yonson isn’t who he told police he was. He didn’t have a driver’s license and initially gave his last name as Johnson, then admitted to who he really is.
Yonson is a registered sex offender in West Virginia stemming from a Feb. 9, 2015, conviction there. He hadn’t registered in Monroe as a sex offender, as required by law. He also has three drunk-driving convictions in South Carolina, one in 2008 and two last year. The woman was taken back to her hotel. Yonson, however, was booked into the county jail, where he remains on $25,000 bond, charged with felony driving under the influence (fourth or subsequent offense), failing to register as a sex offender, resisting arrest, driving with a suspended license, battery on a law officer and giving false information to a police officer. He is scheduled to appear before Acting Circuit Court Judge Ruth Becker in Marathon on Oct. 27.

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Jupiter’s spooky sounds

Listen to Jupiter’s spooky sounds

When a NASA spacecraft made its first full orbit around Jupiter, a University of Iowa instrument on board recorded haunting sounds befitting the Halloween season. The UI instrument was listening to Jupiter’s auroras, light shows similar to the northern and southern...

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Why We're OK with Eating Pigs, but Not Dogs

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