CAROLINA NATURALLY

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Wingnuts plan to reintroduce Anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ bill supported by Dumbass Trump

Wingnuts plan to reintroduce Anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom’ bill supported by Dumbass Trump

Citing “momentum” from the November elections, wingnuts are once against eyeing a bill that would allow anyone to deny services to LGBT people.

***

Sometimes you have to wonder at the reasoning (or lack thereof) that these closeted idiots always are pursuing things detrimental to themselves ...

Link Dump

Earthquakes on a sphere 2001 – 2015

Rare Photos on Pinterest

Underated movies of 2016 & where to see them

Presidential Yacht rusting away & trash filled

Insane homes from around the world

Women Goes to City Council About the McRib

How much it costs to commute in major US cities

5 Facts About Pearl Harbor and USS Arizona

Boat called ‘Nap Tyme’ collides with Ferry

Ridiculous Purchases Made By Super Rich Celebrities

Don’t let me see you in the St. Louis Evening Whirl

13.8 billion years ago the universe EXPLODED into life Cutting through space time like a celestial knife Through butter and Bringing with it every permutation And combination of events that […] Continue reading this post … Read more

Going Tooth-to-Tooth with Dinosaurs

Move over, hyenas and saber-toothed cats; scientists have discovered a mammal with an even stronger bite. San Diego State University biologist Eric Ekdale was part of a team of researchers who describe in a new … Read more

Man Punches Kangaroo To Save Dog, Controversy Ensues

Kangaroo bucks can be mighty aggressive, threatening the lives of people and pets and scaring the wits out of anyone they hop after, which is why people pack heat when they're out in the wilds of AustraliaBut zookeeper Greig Tonkins clearly doesn't need a gun to handle himself, and when his dog's life was threatened by an ornery kangaroo he came to the dog's defense and boxed the 'roo right back.

(YouTube Link)

Now it's easy to judge Greig for punching the kangaroo, but consider this:
a) kangaroos have been known to kill other animals
b) Greig has worked with kangaroos for six years at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo so he knows a thing or two about dealing with kangaroo bucks
c) the roo had his dog in a headlock, so he reacted as if his dog's life were in danger.
d) many Australians would have simply shot the thing even after the dog was freed, since Australians "cull" about 5 million kangaroos a year to keep the population managable,
As you can see, there is no black and white when it comes to Greig's actions, and I don't know about you but I would have done the same thing in a heartbeat to save my dog's life.

Monkeys may technically be able to talk ...

Monkeys may technically be able to talk (but this will make you glad they don't)

They're physically capable, and boy do they sound terrifying

Animal Pictures

Saturday, December 10, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

The 10th Xmas Tree ...!

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

Award Most Sought ... !

Today is - Nobel Prize Day

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Today in History

1817		Mississippi is admitted as the 20th state.
1861		Kentucky is admitted to the Confederate States of America.
1862		The U.S. House of Representatives passes a bill creating the state of West Virginia.
1869		Governor John Campbell signs the bill that grants women in Wyoming Territory the right to vote as well as hold public office.
1898		The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Paris, ceding Spanish possessions, including the Philippines, to the United States.
1917		The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the International Red Cross.
1918		U.S. troops are called to guard Berlin as a coup is feared.
1919		Captain Ross Smith becomes the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
1941		Japanese troops invade the Philippine island of Luzon.
1941		The siege of Tobruk in North Africa is raised.
1943		Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill that postpones a draft of pre-Pearl Harbor fathers.
1943		Allied forces bomb Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.
1949		150,000 French troops mass at the border in Vietnam to prevent a Chinese invasion.
1950		Dr. Ralph J. Bunche becomes the first African-American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1977		On UN Human Rights Day, the Soviet Union places 20 prominent dissidents under house arrest, cutting off telephones and threatening to break up a planned silent demonstration in Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Soviet newspapers decry human rights violations elsewhere in the world.
1978		President of Egypt Anwar Sadat and Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1983		Democracy is restored to Argentina with the assumption of Raul Alfonsin.
1989		Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announces the establishment of Mongolia’s democratic movement that changes the second oldest communist country into a democracy.
1993		The Wearmouth Colliery in Sunderland, East England, closes, marking the end of the County Durham coalfield, which had been in operation since the Middle Ages.

Editorial Comment

In blog news ...
Our readership is growing and we appreciate our readers, thank you.
We have decided on a couple of minor updates to the daily postings for the new year, neither of which will be noticed by the vast majority of our readers but we're going ahead with them anyway.
One major decision was made to continue to not post comments.
There are just too many spam postings posing as comments and not enough time or inclination to wade through the morass to find the pearl(s) of legitimate comments. (That along with the trolls trying to pervert and subvert this blog just like all other blogs and websites they slither onto.)
In other words ...
Scissors and tape in hand - Today is "Xmas present wrapping day", at least according to the Mrs., it is ... so it's wrapping we go.
The fireplace is roaring and the dogs are jumping in to rolls of wrapping paper and spreading them around the room even before the first snip is snipped so you know if the presents are not wrapped just right the dogs get the credit.
Remember, as always ....

Have Fun and Be Happy

World Record Rube Goldberg Contraption Lights Up Xmas Tree

The municipal Xmas tree in Riga, Latvia, was switched on by a process that took 412 steps and ten minutes to complete. The video is much shorter because the part where they brewed coffee was condensed, and there may have been other shortcuts for the video.

(YouTube link)

You have to imagine how frustrating all the tests were for this, and how nervous the builders must have been to make it perform perfectly, not just for the waiting crowd outside, but in front of Guinness judges. The company Scandiweb sponsored the record-setting chain reaction that Guinness has enshrined as the World's Largest Rube Goldberg Machine.

How "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" Became a Holiday Staple

The most despised song from my entire radio career (1982-2006) was "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." It wasn't because there was anything inherently wrong with the song, except for the dead grandmother. What ruined the song for me was the dozens of requests for it every hour, even right after I had played it. Every hour, every December, for decades. Every year, a new cohort of children decide that's the one Xmas song they want to hear. Now it's a Xmas classic, with its own history.

It begins, like all Xmas fables should, with a blizzard. It was December 1978, and a San Francisco veterinarian named Elmo Shropshire, a.k.a. Dr. Elmo, was booked at the Hyatt in Lake Tahoe with his then-wife, Patsy. The couple had a comedy-bluegrass duo called Elmo & Patsy, and just before taking the stage, they got a visit from one Randy Brooks, a Texas singer-songwriter who’d played the hotel before them and gotten stuck there by the snow.
"I was never what I’d consider to be much of a singer," Dr. Elmo tells mental_floss from his home in California. "I always sang novelty songs, so it didn’t matter if I could sing or not. At the time, we were doing a lot of funny songs. Randy saw our show and said, 'I’ve got this song I think would be perfect for you.'"

That was the very beginning. It took years for the song to really take off, but when it did, it changed everything for Dr. Elmo. Read the story from the man who made it at mental_floss.

Why do Dwarves Sound Scottish and Elves Sound Like Royalty?

When parents tell stories to their children, we get an image of fantasy creatures that's all our own. Later we become more attuned to the pop culture depictions of them, like the elves from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the dwarves (or dwarfs) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But in 2016, mentions of these characters are most likely to make us think of Lord of the Rings. The movie version, where hobbits, orcs, elves, dwarves, and men all have their distinctive accents.

Throughout The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the reams of related histories Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth, he established whole societies, histories, and languages for a handful of races that still inform how they are depicted today. Elves are ancient, beautiful, and have pointy ears; dwarves are short, tough, and love to use axes; orcs are filthy brutes who live for destruction.
Of course the original readers couldn’t hear what Tolkien’s creatures sounded like, but the intense focus he placed on developing their languages gave people a pretty good idea. “Tolkien was a philologist,” says Olsen.“This is what he did. He studied language and the history of language and the changing of language over time.”
Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures and histories to speak them, often taking inspiration from the sound of an existing language. In the case of the ever-present Elvish languages in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men and hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.

Tolkien was only partially responsible for the accents of his creations. He did establish that they sounded different from each other, but what those languages sound like changed over time as various interpreters added their own ideas. Did you know that Tolkien imagined dwarves sounding like Israelis? Read about the evolution of fantasy characters and how they speak at Atlas Obscura.

6 Unsettling Mysteries of the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War saw the death of a half-million people between 1936 and 1939, but outside of Spain, it gets little space in history books because of World War II. That's also why many war crimes and shady dealings did not get proper documentation or an adequate investigation at the time. In the decades since, these mysteries remain. For example, what really happened to Dick Sheepshanks?

Dick Sheepshanks was a 27-year-old Reuters war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, and his life was the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. Sheepshanks headed for Spain in 1937 with several other journalists to cover Franco’s Nationalists, but he was killed in December in the Republican shelling of the village of Cudete. When news of his death reached London, Sir Roderick Jones (who headed the Reuters News Agency and unknowingly shared a love interest with Sheepshanks) paid him all the tributes as befitted a national hero.
Then things get weird. According to some who had known him – including Jeanne Stourton, the aforementioned love interest – Sheepshanks had become suspicious of one of his fellow journalists, and the only one of the group to survive: Kim Philby. If that name sounds familiar, it’s for good reason – Philby went on to gain infamy as Britain’s most notorious traitor during the Cold War.
According to Stourton, Sheepshanks had grown increasingly suspicious of Philby’s motivations, and Philby took it upon himself to take Sheepshanks out of the picture. A comparison between eyewitness reports and photographic evidence has raised a number of unanswered questions, and it’s been suggested that Philby may have had a hand in the attack. What exactly happened to the Reuters journalists remains undetermined, and the death of Ernest Richard Sheepshanks has become a compelling Spanish Civil War mystery.

Read about five other such mysteries from the Spanish Civil War at Urban Ghosts.

The Real Story Behind The Myth Of Area 51

What exactly goes on inside of Area 51 has led to decades of wild speculation. There are, of course, the alien conspiracies that galactic visitors are tucked away somewhere inside. Well, there are no aliens at America's most famous top-secret military base, but what is there is just as interesting.

“BRAAAM!”: The Sound that Invaded the Hollywood Soundtrack

The sound is a bit reminiscent of a foghorn blast, but was actually recorded with brass instruments and piano. You heard it in the 2010 movie Inception, and in almost every movie trailer since then. It's known in the business as "BRAAAM!” How in the world did one discordant blast become so ubiquitous in Hollywood? A good bit of the credit goes to composer Hans Zimmer.

Part of it is the way his soundtracks are put together: Zimmer’s approach resembles the sampling we’re used to from pop music — themes are not simply repeated by musicians, but instead montaged by the composer. Over the last few decades Zimmer has created something of a cottage industry that churns out soundtracks at a Herculean clip: In 1989 he founded Media Ventures, which was later rechristened Remote Control Productions, a kind of soundtrack workshop where Zimmer and about forty collaborators crank out sample-based soundtracks that are largely created in-studio (their combined list of credits is too staggering to list here). If you’ve ever wondered why Batman Begins sounds like Pirates of the Caribbean, which sounds like The Da Vinci Code, Remote Control is the reason.

But that isn't the whole story. To understand, you need to know more about how Hollywood scores are designed, and how they evolved over the past few decades.

GoPro Video Footage From Inside A Dishwasher

We knew people would use GoPro cameras to film every kind of physical activity imaginable, but the GoPro is showing us so much more than extreme sports and stunts.They're letting us take a look inside stuff like never before, satisfying our curiosity with video footage from inside places where full grown adults simply won't fit- like inside a dishwasher while it runs through a full wash cycle.

(YouTube Link)

YouTuber Bito posted this video he shot with his Hero3 GoPro camera a few years back, and all I have to say is- fill that dishwasher up before you run it, Bito, or you're wasting water!

A Blueprint to Stop the Hemorrhaging of Jobs from the U.S.

A Blueprint to Stop the Hemorrhaging of Jobs from the U.S.

Dictionary.com's Word Of The Year Is ...

... xenophobia.

Victoria's Secret Catches Woman Shoplifting, So They Throw Out Two Innocent Black Customers

Victoria's Secret Catches Woman Shoplifting, So They Throw Out Two Innocent Black Customers

The Criminalization of Black Homelessness

The Criminalization of Black Homelessness

Firefighter Charged With Arson, Blames Black Lives Matter

Welcome to Dumbass Trump's AmeriKKKa!

Famed Holocaust Attorney Sues Over FBI Electioneering

Famed Holocaust Attorney Sues Over FBI Electioneering: It Could 'Lead To Impeachment'

E. Randol Schoenberg, an attorney renowned for recovering artworks stolen by Nazis during the Holocaust, filed a lawsuit against the FBI this week to get answers about why Director James Comey falsely suggested that Hillary Clinton committed a crime just days before the 2016 election.

Voting Rights Activists Pursue Federal Lawsuit in Wisconsin

Voting Rights Activists Pursue Federal Lawsuit in Wisc. After Discovering Way to Hack Into Ballot Scanners

What The Fahrenheit?

When winter looms, we start to pay more attention to the thermometer. The Fahrenheit thermometers in the U.S. are altogether confusing for folks in most of the rest of the world.

YouTube link

Do Vegetarians Really Live Longer Than Meat Eaters?

Do Vegetarians Really Live Longer Than Meat Eaters?

Animal Pictures

Friday, December 9, 2016

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally

The 9th Xmas Tree ...!

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

So weary ... !

Today is - Weary Willie Day

You want the unvarnished truth?

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

Today in History

536		Having captured Naples earlier in the year, Belisarius takes Rome.
1861		The U.S. Senate approves establishment of a committee that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.
1863		Major General John G. Foster replaces Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio.
1867		The capital of Colorado Territory is moved from Golden to Denver.
1872		P.B.S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of Louisiana.
1900		The Russian czar rejects Boer Paul Kruger’s pleas for aid in South Africa against the British.
1908		A child labor bill passes in the German Reichstag, forbidding work for children under age 13.
1917		The new Finnish Republic demands the withdrawal of Russian troops.
1940		The British army seizes 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
1941		Franklin D. Roosevelt tells Americans to plan for a long war.
1948		The United States abandons a plan to de-concentrate industry in Japan.
1949		The United Nations takes trusteeship over Jerusalem.
1950		President Harry Truman bans U.S. exports to Communist China.
1950		Harry Gold gets 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
1955		Sugar Ray Robinson knocks out Carl Olson to regain the world middleweight boxing title.
1960		The Laos government flees to Cambodia as the capital city of Vientiane is engulfed in war.
1990		Lech Walesa is elected president of Poland.
1992		U.S. Marines land in Somalia to ensure food and medicine reaches the deprived areas of that country.

How power of positive thinking works

Having an optimistic outlook on life — a general expectation that good things will happen — may help people live longer, according to a new study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. … Read more

Scientists Shed New Light on How the Brain Processes & Maintains What We Don’t See

A team of scientists has mapped out how our brains process visuals we don’t even know we’ve seen, indicating that the neuronal encoding and maintenance of subliminal images is more substantial than previously thought. “Our … Read more

You're more likely to get an STD if you like to go bare down there

A new study done at the University of California, San Francisco shows there is a positive correlation between people who regularly groom their pubic hair and those who have been infected with STDs . Among those who were classified as non-groomers, about 8 percent reported ever being infected with an STD, and among groomers 14 percent reported being infected by an STD .

Read more

11 Foods You Should Never Refrigerate

11 Foods You Should Never Refrigerate

Penzeys Spices CEO Rips Dumbass Trump Brand Of Hate, Business Soars

"Cooking Trumps Racism"

Pope Francis BLASTS Wingnuts For ‘Sin’ Of Spreading Fake News, Equates It To Eating Feces

Pope Francis BLASTS Wingnuts For ‘Sin’ Of Spreading Fake News, Equates It To Eating Feces

Pope Francis is once again speaking the truth, and “christian” religio-wingnuts are going to hate him even more for it. This time it concerns...

Compelling Theory for How the U.S. Empire Could Devolve Into Fascism and Then Collapse

One Sociologist's Compelling Theory for How the U.S. Empire Could Devolve Into Fascism and Then Collapse

Internet rips ‘draft-dodging coward’ Gingrich for praising Japanese ‘brilliance’ in Pearl Harbor attack

Internet rips ‘draft-dodging coward’ Gingrich for praising Japanese ‘brilliance’ in Pearl Harbor attack

"My great-uncle died defending USA. I guess he was no match for Japan's 'professional brilliance' .@newtgingrich"

Sandy Hook ‘truther’ arrested for making death threats against father of slain boy

Sandy Hook ‘truther’ arrested for making death threats against father of slain boy

A Florida woman who believes that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was an event staged by the government has been indicted for making threats.

Vandals break into NFL player’s home and scrawl ‘Go back to Africa’ and ‘KKK’ on walls

Prosecutors quietly drop charges against white firefighter who threatened black couple with a gun

Prosecutors quietly drop charges against white firefighter who threatened black couple with a gun

“He’s walking over with his gun and badge, saying, ‘I’ve got the right to kill you niggers,’” Curtis recounted.

First Somali Refugee Elected In American History Subjected To Islamophobic Attack

This is absolutely disgusting

Continue Reading

White teen could face charges over ‘repulsive’ video targeting black student

‘Look at that nigger’: White teen could face charges over ‘repulsive’ video targeting black student

District Attorney John Morganelli of Pennsylvania described the video’s content as “repulsive” after seeing it for the first time on Wednesday, Dec. 7. “I was outraged by it. It was repulsive. It was very insulting,” Morganelli said.

Ohio's 'Unconscionable' Heartbeat Bill Is 'Designed to Punish Women'

Destroying Roe v. Wade: Ohio's 'Unconscionable' Heartbeat Bill Is 'Designed to Punish Women'

Venus Flytraps Need Protection From Poachers In North Carolina

Venus flytraps aren't generally thought of as plants worth stealing, and since they're seen as a novelty addition to a garden it doesn't seem like they'd be worth much money.

But the Venus Flytrap is an endangered species due to over-collection so there's real money to be made by poaching Flytraps, and therefore poaching has become a family tradition passed down for generations.
The Venus Flytrap is native to swampy areas in North and South Carolina, and the only place in the world where it grows wild is a 75 mile radius around Wilmington, where it has been protected by state legislation since 1956.

In fact, poaching has become such a big problem conservationists are afraid the Flytraps will be picked into extinction by poachers, who often sell the plants on the black market for about 25 cents each.The poachers aren't above stealing this rare plant by the thousands from greenhouses and nurseries in the area too, and it's estimated there are only about 35,000 plants remaining in the wild.

Read Venus Flytraps Need Protection From Poachers In North Carolina here

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