Wal-Mart and Home Depot Used the Same Actors and Scripts for Their Anti-Union Propaganda Videos

Oops! Looks Like Wal-Mart and Home Depot Used the Same Actors and Scripts for Their Anti-Union Propaganda Videos

Man accused of firing rifle on boat following alleged 'mutiny' by passengers

A man from Florida Keys was arrested on Thursday after he fired a gun on his boat during an argument with the passengers, Monroe County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Becky Herrin said. Tobias Bybee, 38, of Marathon, was fishing and having drinks with four friends at sunset Thursday when they got into an argument. Bybee got his rifle, struck one of his friends in the throat with the stock of the gun and fired several shots, scaring the others, who thought Bybee was going to shoot them, Herrin said.
While they were on their way to shore, one of the passengers called 911 to report the incident. When Bybee arrived, he was met by a deputy who placed him under arrest. Herrin said Bybee told the deputy that he fired the gun because there had been a "mutiny on board the vessel."
Herrin said two guns were found on the boat. Bybee, who is a felon, faces four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, one count of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.

Man threatened employees at closed store with rifle for not fixing his phone

A 59-year-old Florida man was arrested on Monday morning after allegedly threatening employees of a phone store that hadn't yet opened for the day with a gun. Wayne Cannon, from Bronson, arrived at the store in Gainesville and demanded to have his cell phone fixed, according to police. He became enraged when told by employees that he'd have to wait until the store opened,
Cannon then retrieved a rifle from his car and started threatening employees and a nearby bystander, police spokesman Ben Tobias later said. When police arrived at the store, they found a single-shot shotgun in Cannon’s car in plain sight and a loaded .22-calibre revolver on the front passenger seat under some papers.
Cannon also threatened to kill the officers assigned to the call once he gets out of jail, police said. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill and carrying a concealed weapon (unlicensed firearm), according to Alachua County jail records. He remains at the jail on a $200,000 bond.

Random Photos

Western Contact With China Began Long Before Marco Polo

China and the West were in contact more than 1,500 years before European explorer Marco Polo arrived in China, new findings suggest. Archaeologists say inspiration for the Terracotta Warriors, found at the Tomb of the First Emperor near today's Xian, may have come from Ancient Greece.
They also say ancient Greek artisans could have been training locals there in the Third Century BC. Chinese historians recorded much earlier visits by people thought by some to have been emissaries from the Roman Empire during the Second and Third Centuries AD.

Stone Age artifacts emerging from glaciers

YouTube link.

In the past we wrote Retreating glaciers and melting ice yield treasures, about discoveries in the Alaksan Yukon, and in 2012 Artifacts from retreating glaciers showed a 4th century A.D. wool garment found in Norway.  The video embedded above, via Science Nordic, shows an additional example from Norway’s Jotunheimen range.

Two trillion galaxies in 'observable' Universe

Two trillion galaxies in 'observable' Universe: NASA

Past Climates More Important to Species’ Distribution than Modern Climate

Past Climates More Important to Species’ Distribution than Modern Climate

The legacy of paleoclimate on modern biodiversity patterns is the subject of a new study by a team of researchers that includes UMass Amherst anthropologist Jason Kamilar. Their startling finding, that past climates are more important to the structure of mammal...

Jumping spiders can hear at a distance

Jumping spiders can hear at a distance, new study proves

While jumping spiders are known to have great vision, a new Cornell study proves for the first time that spiders can hear at a distance. The discovery runs counter to standard textbook wisdom that claimed spiders could only detect nearby sounds. A study published...

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of  
Carolina Naturally

Today also happens to be Be Bald and Be Free Day ...! 

 

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

  
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man ... !

Today is - Spider-Man Day

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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

1066		William of Normandy defeats King Harold in the Battle of Hastings.
1651		Laws are passed in Massachusetts forbidding the poor to adopt excessive styles of dress.
1705		The English Navy captures Barcelona in Spain.
1773		Britain's East India Company tea ships' cargo is burned at Annapolis, Md.
1806		Napoleon Bonaparte crushes the Prussian army at Jena, Germany.
1832		Blackfeet Indians attack American Fur Company trappers near Montana's Jefferson River, killing one.
1884		Transparent paper-strip photographic film is patented by George Eastman.
1912		Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is shot and wounded in assassination attempt in Milwaukee. He was saved by the papers in his breast pocket and, though wounded, insisted on finishing his speech.
1930		Singer Ethel Merman stuns the audience when she holds a high C for sixteen bars while singing "I Got Rhythm" during her Broadway debut in Gershwin's Girl Crazy.
1933		The Geneva disarmament conference breaks up as Germany proclaims withdrawal from the disarmament initiative, as well as from the League of Nations, effective October 23. This begins German policy of independent action in foreign affairs.
1944		German Field Marshal Rommel, suspected of complicity in the July 20th plot against Hitler, is visited at home by two of Hitler's staff and given the choice of public trial or suicide by poison. He chooses suicide and it is announced that he died of wounds.
1947		Test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier aboard a Bell X-1 rocket plane.
1950		Chinese Communist Forces begin to infiltrate the North Korean Army.
1962		Cuban Missile Crisis begins; USAF U-2 reconnaissance pilot photographs Cubans installing Soviet-made missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
1964		Rev. Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating a policy of non-violence.
1966		Montreal, Quebec, Canada, opens its underground Montreal Metro rapid-transit system.
1968		US Defense Department announces 24,000 soldiers and Marines will be sent back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours of duty.
1968		Jim Hines, USA, breaks the "ten-second barrier" in the 100-meter sprint at the Olympics in Mexico City; his time was 9.95.
1969		The British 50-pence coin enters the UK's currency, the first step toward covering to a decimal system, which was planned for 1971.
1983		Prime Minister of Grenada Maurice Bishop overthrown and later executed by a military coup.
1994		Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for establishing the Oslo Accords and preparing for Palestinian Self Government.
1998		Eric Robert Rudolph charged with the 1996 bombing during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; It was one of several bombing incidents Rudolph carried out to protest legalized abortion in the US.
2012		Felix Baumgartner breaks the world record for highest manned balloon flight, highest parachute jump, and greatest free-fall velocity, parachuting from an altitude of approximately 24 miles (39km).

Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize In Literature

A surprise from Sweden...

The Swedish Academy has announced the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan
"for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition".

It was certainly an untraditional choice, and the first Nobel in Literature won by an American since 1993. The oddsmakers had predicted a half-dozen other possible winners, so Dylan will be a surprise. The award comes with 8 million kroner, or about $900,000. -

5 Ways to Eat Healthier Even When You’ve Failed Before

5 Ways to Eat Healthier Even When You’ve Failed Before

Apparently fed-up construction sign displayed 'Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah' message

A construction sign in front of the Cincinnati Music Hall had apparently had enough.
The sign read "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah" on Monday evening, giving the impression it, or whoever was behind it, was tired of life.
The Ohio Department of Transportation and the police were seemingly unaware of the message.
ODOT said that none of the overhead signs on the interstates seemed to be tampered with and were unaffected. The sign gave no further comment other than "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah." It is not known what the sign's original message read.

Traveling Through Transylvania With 'Dracula' as a Guide

Luke Spencer went on a quest to trace the steps of Jonathan Harker, the protagonist of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Harker went from Munich to Transylvania to purchase land for a client. While this trip sounds like a fun time, it was also a research project. Bram Stoker never went to Transylvania himself, but he did plenty of research, so Spencer wanted to see how accurate his descriptions were. The first thing he found out was that places that existed (or not) in 1897 aren’t necessarily easy to find today. For one thing, Transylvania is no longer a country, but a region of Romania. And that wasn’t the only name that changed. 

My first stop on the vampire trail was meant to be the Hotel Royale, where Harker stayed the night in the old city of Klausenburg. But looking at an atlas today, there is no city by that name.
Located roughly halfway between Budapest, Hungary, and Bucharest, Romania, the city shed the name Stoker knew it by after World War I, when Transylvania became part of the Kingdom of Romania. Today it’s known as Cluj-Napoca, and it’s a bustling, bohemian university town.
The Hotel Royale doesn’t exist today, and maybe it never did. But nestled near the train station is an historic inn that claims to have been the inspiration for Bram Stoker. The Hotel Transilvania, located on Ferdinand Street, is one of the oldest in the city, and has been an inn since the Middles Ages.
When the Klausenburg railway station was built in 1870, the venerable old hotel went by another name, the Queen of England—perhaps a regal sounding inspiration for a Hotel Royale.

That was only the beginning. What he found was charming, and even spooky in parts. Read about the retracing of Dracula at Atlas Obscura.

Tussie-Mussies

Have you ever heard of a tussie-mussie? Spellcheck certainly hasn’t. Before cities had adequate fresh water and sewers, when horses filled the roads, the air was full of the foul smells of body odor and worse. A tussie-mussie was a fancy container that 18th- and 19th-century ladies could carry sweet-smelling flowers in to fight the ambient stench. Collector Irene Deitsch, who wrote Tussie-Mussies: A Collector’s Guide to Victorian Posy Holders, tells us about them.   

In her book, Deitsch organizes her tussie-mussies by their materials—sterling silver, silverplate, gold, ivory, glass, porcelain, mother-of-pearl, straw—as well as their styles—handheld vs. lapel pin, bosom bottle vs. three-legged tripod. While some of these objects may be admired for their beautiful enameling or intricate etching, many are also windows into the courtship customs of privileged young ladies during the Victorian Era, particularly in England. “Some have flirting mirrors on them,” Deitsch says, “so a young women carrying a tussie-mussie could see who was behind her.” Others sport small flat surfaces holding thin sheets of ivory, upon which the names of gentlemen desiring a dance would be written.

Learn more about tussie-mussies and how they were used, and see a gallery of lovely examples, at Collectors Weekly.

Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John Stumpf is 'retiring'

Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO John Stumpf is 'retiring'

With a Platinum parachute ...

The All-Woman City Council of 1920

The state of Oregon extended the right to vote to women in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment guaranteed that right to all American women. In 1920, the small city of Yoncalla, Oregon, elected a woman mayor and put women in all the city council slots. They were prominent citizens already; some were the spouses of the incumbents they replaced. The municipal election became a sensation in the national press.

The story of the women spread: They had held secret meetings, in which they voiced frustration with the current administration. Upset by broken sidewalk planks and misaligned outhouses, they had hatched a plan to run for office themselves. And, because they were elected just two months after women in the United States received the right to vote, their new administration made headlines all the way to the East Coast. Most publications treated it like a coup d’état: “Campaign secretly organized,” Morning Oregonian declared; “Sex uprising in Yoncalla,” asserted The New York Times.

The real story behind the election of five women is murkier. Local sources believe that the previous council just gave up their part-time unpaid jobs to let the women give it a try. The women, who were used to unpaid work, set out to fix the town’s problems. Read about the all-woman Yoncalla city council at the Atlantic.

Veterans Live in More Diverse Neighborhoods than Civilian Counterparts

Veterans Live in More Diverse Neighborhoods than Civilian Counterparts

When members of the U.S. military leave the service, they tend to settle in neighborhoods with greater overall diversity than their civilian counterparts of the same race, according to a new study by a UConn sociologist published in the November edition of the journal...

Racist pilot has passenger removed from United flight because he's ‘uncomfortable’ with her hat

Racist pilot has passenger removed from United flight because he's ‘uncomfortable’ with her hat

Secret Nazi cabal uncovered after Colorado teen kills himself to prove his commitment to killing Jews

Secret Nazi cabal uncovered after Colorado teen kills himself to prove his commitment to killing Jews

One cabal member wrote, “You can hang Jews on trees, shoot them right in the knees. Gas as many as you please.”

Pennsylvania youth pastor demands divorce after raping and impregnating 15-year-old girl

Pennsylvania youth pastor demands divorce after raping and impregnating 15-year-old girl

Wesley Ryan Blackburn, who served until last week as youth pastor at Faith Brethren Bible Cult in New Paris, was charged with 84 felony counts of statutory sexual assault, 84 misdemeanor counts of indecent assault and one felony count of corruption of minors.

Pennsylvania Cult Demonstrates How To Deal With A Child-Molesting Pastor

While many cults defend pastors who have raped or molested children in their congregations, a cult in Pennsylvania is showing them what doing the right thing looks like.

Continue Reading 

Teacher accused of distracting cashier while student stole case of beer

A teacher from Reston, Virginia, has been arrested along with a student from her school after they were caught on surveillance camera stealing a case of beer from a gas station, according to the Fairfax County Police Department.
Police arrested Fabiana Alicia Ciammaichella, 30, of Reston, who is a Spanish teacher at South Lakes High School, as well as a sophomore from the school, 18-year-old Adelmo Ernesto Arias Guillen, also of Reston. Both face drug, alcohol and larceny charges.
Police say that on Monday at around 11pm, video footage shows Ciammaichella distracting a cashier while Guillen steals a case of beer and then leaves. Ciammaichella followed soon afterwards, picking up Guillen in her car and then driving away, the police report states.
Police later found Ciammaichella at her home along with Guillen, the stolen beer and a "variety of illegal narcotics," the report notes. "Fairfax County Public School officials are aware of this incident and have suspended Ciammaichella," the report adds.

Man arrested after shooting at 'zombie' and nearly striking a man asleep in his home

A man from North St. Paul, Minnesota, has been arrested after a bullet he allegedly intended to take out a zombie ended up nearly striking a man asleep in his home. Police who were summoned at about 5am on Saturday were told by the resident he was awakened by a gunshot and the sound of glass breaking in his room. Investigators determined the bullet had entered through a window, ricocheted near the head of the man’s bed, and struck a second wall.
Just outside the residence, police noted 24-year-old Ryan Mathew Stanislaw walking with an AR-15 rifle slung over his neck. “I’m out here making sure my neighborhood is safe,” he told officers, allegedly smelling of alcohol. “I didn’t see the cops, so I figured I’d do something.” Stanislaw told police that he was shooting at “a zombie” up the road.
His rifle was taken. It had green-tipped Hornady .223-calibre bullets, which are marketed as zombie-killing bullets. "Each round is loaded with a special, neon green, polymer-tipped Z-Max bullet that delivers devastating expansion and was specifically designed for zombie elimination." The complaint says that Stanislaw’s mother claimed he had no history of mental illness. He had been convicted of making terroristic threats in Ramsey County last month.

Man arrested for DUI used a pig's ear in attempt to deceive alcohol monitor

A man from Alberton, Montana, arrested on Friday and charged with what would be his eighth DUI allegedly put a pig’s ear and a piece of buckskin between his leg and an alcohol monitoring bracelet to avoid detection. John Walker Jr., 45, made his initial appearance in Missoula County Justice Court on Tuesday on his latest felony charge. According to a court affidavit, a sheriff’s deputy was called to Interstate 90 near Huson on Friday after receiving a report of a man passed out in the driver’s seat of his truck. When the officer knocked on the window, Walker woke up. The deputy said he had difficulty speaking, his eyes were watery and he smelled of alcohol. Walker made conflicting claims about where he was going to or coming from and admitted to drinking earlier in the day, the affidavit said. The deputy reported there were several empty beer cans and something that appeared to be a liquor bottle in the truck. Walker was unable to stand and refused to participate in two field sobriety tests. He also refused to provide a breath sample. The officer obtained a warrant to collect a blood sample.
In court on Tuesday, deputy county attorney Brittany Santorno asked for a $25,000 bail for Walker, adding that he had allegedly been wearing an alcohol monitoring bracelet at the time of his arrest, put there after a previous DUI charge. Santorno said Walker had placed a pig’s ear and a piece of buckskin between his leg and the sensor to prevent it from detecting alcohol in his system. According to a court affidavit, Walker has six prior DUI convictions dating back to 1995. He also has a seventh open felony DUI case in Missoula County after being arrested in August 2015.
In that case, a person called 911 after allegedly seeing Walker vomit on himself and pass out in his vehicle. He pleaded guilty to the felony DUI in June. On Tuesday, public defense attorney Johnna Sutton asked for a $5,000 bail, saying Walker was set to be sentenced on his 2015 offense soon and didn’t want a larger bail to hold him from going to treatment at the Department of Corrections. Acting Justice of the Peace Darla Keck set a $50,000 bail, twice the amount the prosecutor had requested, saying she found the thought Walker put into avoiding detection 'unbelievable.' “I think that the safety of the public is paramount,” she said.

Plant diversity could provide natural repellent for crop pests

Plant diversity could provide natural repellent for crop pests

A new study has unveiled why a field with a variety of plants seems to attract fewer plant-eating insects than farm land with just one type of crop. Scientists and farmers have puzzled over this pattern that makes protecting crops from pests a challenge. Research...

Dinosaurs couldn’t sing

Dinosaurs couldn’t sing

The oldest-known vocal organ of a bird has been found in an Antarctic fossil that is related to ducks and geese and lived during the age of the dinosaurs, more than 66 million years ago. The discovery of the Mesozoic Era vocal organ -- called a syrinx -- and its...

Animal Pictures

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:
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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
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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."