Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Renowned French historian detained for 10 hours by US customs officials
A French historian was detained for 10 hours
by US customs officials this week while on his way to an academic
conference in Texas. Henry Rousso, 62, a specialist in the history of
World War II has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris and Columbia University
in New York.
Dumbass Trump’s Deportation War Will Cost the Economy Trillions of Dollars
Undocumented workers contribute 3 percent of GDP, or nearly $5
trillion in economic growth” that will vanish with Dumbass Trump’s “military
action” against Mexican workers.…
Monday, February 27, 2017
The Daily Drift
Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.
Polar Light ... !
You want the unvarnished truth?
Today in History
| 425 | Theodosius effectively founds a university in Constantinople. | |
| 1531 | German Protestants form the League of Schmalkalden to resist the power of the emperor. | |
| 1700 | The Pacific Island of New Britain is discovered. | |
| 1814 | Napoleon‘s Marshal Nicholas Oudinot is pushed back at Barsur-Aube by the Emperor’s allied enemies shortly before his abdication. | |
| 1827 | The first Mardi-Gras celebration is held in New Orleans. | |
| 1864 |  |
|
| 1865 | Confederate raider William Quantrill and his bushwackers attack Hickman, Kentucky, shooting women and children. | |
| 1905 | The Japanese push Russians back in Manchuria and cross the Sha River. | |
| 1908 | The forty-sixth star is added to the U.S. flag, signifying Oklahoma’s admission to statehood. | |
| 1920 | The United States rejects a Soviet peace offer as propaganda. | |
| 1925 | Glacier Bay National Monument is dedicated in Alaska. | |
| 1933 | The burning down of the Reichstag building in Berlin gives the Nazis the opportunity to suspend personal liberty with increased power. | |
| 1939 | The Supreme Court outlaws sit-down strikes. | |
| 1942 | British Commandos raid a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast. | |
| 1953 | F-84 Thunderjets raid North Korean base on Yalu River. | |
| 1962 | South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem is unharmed as two planes bomb the presidential palace in Saigon. | |
| 1963 | The Soviet Union says that 10,000 troops will remain in Cuba. | |
| 1969 | Thousands of students protest Nixon‘s arrival in Rome. | |
| 1973 | U.S. Supreme Court rules that a Virginia pool club can’t bar residents because of color. | |
| 1988 | Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win a medal at the Winter Olympics. | |
| 1991 | Coalition forces liberate Kuwait after seven months of occupation by the Iraqi army. |
Baba Singh and His Turban
Baba Avtar Singh may be the wearer of the largest turban in the world. It is his pride and joy, but is too large for Singh to get around in buses and cars, so he rides a motorcycle -barefoot. The turban weighs 187 pounds, and takes several hours to construct.
That's 700 yards of fabric, not to mention the weight of the decorations. Enjoy this video of Baba Singh from Great Big Story
Sure, We’d Support This Cauliflower-and-Kale Burger From KFC
This clean-eating menu item might be fake, but it still earns our endorsement
Tennessee Preacher Rapes Teenage Student After Binding Her with Rope
by Chris Harris
A
Tennessee preacher and teacher’s assistant has been accused of binding
and then raping one of the teenage girls from his school, though his
defense attorney says he is innocent and “has not committed any crime.”
Law
enforcement alleges otherwise: Officials say Mike Ulmer, 53, picked up
the victim, 18, from Chester County High School on Feb. 16 and brought
her to his home in Henderson, Tennessee.
Ulmer
serves as a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Henderson, and court
records show the victim was paid to clean his house.
She
is a student at Chester County, where Ulmer also worked, though
a source tells PEOPLE he was suspended from his teacher’s assistant
position on Feb. 17, moments before he was taken into custody.
The
day before Ulmer was arrested, authorities allege he directed the
teen to do some cleaning in his office, which is contained within a
detached garage on his property.
The
victim told investigators that Ulmer allegedly used a rope to bind her
wrists in the garage. He then wove the rope through a hook in the
ceiling, she claimed, which prevented her from escaping.
According to court records, she told police Ulmer allegedly sexually assaulted her after she was bound.
He has been charged with rape, sexual battery and assault, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
The assault charge was filed on Thursday, after the same victim told police she had been abused by Ulmer nearly four months ago.
Court
documents allege that in November, he asked the girl if he could “put
his fingers in her mouth” as he was driving her home.
She
refused, but that allegedly didn’t stop Ulmer: Authorities claim he
jammed his fingers into the girl’s mouth before pulling over behind a
lumber yard, where the victim said he “was holding her head down in his
lap and forced her mouth open.”
Investigators
say the victim recorded the alleged incident on her cell phone and that
Ulmer can be heard in audio from the incident ordering the girl to open
her mouth.
The girl can also allegedly be heard on the recording asking him to stop.
Ulmer has been released on $250,000 bond and is due back in court on May 9.
Neither
Ulmer’s church nor the local school district responded to requests for
comment. His defense attorney, Mark Donahoe, tells PEOPLE he intends on
vigorously fighting the charges.
“We maintain that Mike did nothing wrong,” Donahoe says.
This Is One Of the Earliest Signs You’re Getting Old
Here’s a test you can take to see if it’s already affecting you
Dumbass Trump Will Use Every Weapon to Stamp out the Grassroots Resistance
And as with everything he does he will fail.
Mary Jane
9 Out Of 10 People Don’t Survive Sudden Cardiac Arrest.
Find out why this heart problem is so deadly—and how you can up your odds of surviving it
The Scary Health Condition Sleeping Too Long Can Signal
Your time snoozing might be saying something important about your brain
Ginormous Facts About Coconut Crabs
Coconut crabs are also extremely antisocial critters, living up to the "hermit" title better than most of their hermit crab cousins, so if you see a coconut crab waving at you it's trying to tell you to stay away!
Sunday, February 26, 2017
The Daily Drift
Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally
Carolina Naturally is read in 210 countries around the world daily.
Aw Nuts ... !
You want the unvarnished truth?
Today in History
| 364 | On the death of Jovian, a conference at Nicaea chooses Valentinan, an army officer who was born in the central European region of Pannania, to succeed him in Asia Minor. | |
| 1154 | William the Bad succeeds his father, Roger the II, in Sicily. | |
| 1790 | As a result of the Revolution, France is divided into 83 departments. | |
| 1815 | Napoleon and 1,200 of his men leave Elba to start the 100-day re-conquest of France. | |
| 1848 | Karl Marx and Frederick Engels publish The Communist Manifesto in London. | |
| 1871 | France and Prussia sign a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles. | |
| 1901 | Boxer Rebellion leaders Chi-Hsin and Hsu-Cheng-Yu are publicly executed in Peking. | |
| 1914 | Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky carries 17 passengers in a twin engine plane in St. Petersburg. | |
| 1916 | General Henri Philippe Petain takes command of the French forces at Verdun. | |
| 1917 | President Wilson publicly asks congress for the power to arm merchant ships. | |
| 1924 | U.S. steel industry finds claims an eight-hour day increases efficiency and employee relations. | |
| 1933 | Ground is broken for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. | |
| 1935 |  |
|
| 1936 | Japanese military troops march into Tokyo to conduct a coup and assassinate political leaders. | |
| 1941 | British take the Somali capital in East Africa. | |
| 1943 | U.S. Flying Fortresses and Liberators pound German docks and U-boat lairs at Wilhelmshaven. | |
| 1945 | Syria declares war on Germany and Japan. | |
| 1951 | The 22nd Amendment is added to the Constitution limiting the Presidency to two terms. | |
| 1964 | Lyndon B. Johnson signs a tax bill with $11.5 billion in cuts. | |
| 1965 | Norman Butler is arrested for the murder of Malcom X. | |
| 1968 | Thirty-two African nations agree to boycott the Olympics because of the presence of South Africa. | |
| 1970 | Five Marines are arrested on charges of murdering 11 South Vietnamese women and children. | |
| 1972 | Soviets recover Luna 20 with a cargo of moon rocks. | |
| 1973 | A publisher and 10 reporters are subpoenaed to testify on Watergate. | |
| 1990 | Daniel Ortega, communist president of Nicaragua, suffers a shocking election defeat at the hands of Violeta Chamorro. | |
| 1993 | A bomb rocks the World Trade Center in New York City. Five people are killed and hundreds suffer from smoke inhalation. |
Editorial Comment
The wingnuts continue to spew their bile and venom in their hatred of
anything American all the while desperately claiming to 'Love America'.
The American people ARE speaking and speaking loudly and firmly.They are not pleased with the theft of their country.
Meanwhile on the Dark Side ...
The madness of the lunatic fringe is only getting deeper.
Hate, bigotry, racism, xenophobia, belligerence, lying, ignorance, stupidity, intolerance, and all manner of negative traits and phobias - not what America is but what AmeriKKKa is.
Now the world is witnessing the mass insanity of the deranged and deluded .. it is not a pretty sight.
It has not changed so we reprise the opening here.
In blog news ...
We report the truth.
We do not shy away from it.
Wingnuts don't like us for it and we could not give a flying rat's ass about what they feel - but we digress.
We posted about the most recent wingnut peccadillo involving one of their own wanting to boink little boys as they are wont to do and the perverts howled - boy did they howl ... each and every one defending the wingnut pervert Milo and accusing everyone else of being the real perverts. But what do expect they are perverts after all.
As to the other burr in the wingnut trolls asses ... illustrations that accurately portray them as they truly are - how dare we post actual photographs of the subject of an individual post ... of all the gall.
Tough titties. We will post actual photos of a post's subject matter in every case we can. We will from time to time use an editorial cartoon or a generic photo when no proper photo is available, however when we do so anyone with a functioning brain cell can tell a cartoon when they see one (with wingnuts that is not the case ... they cannot) and we include a disclaimer within the post of generic photos stating that they are such (something else wingnuts cannot comprehend).
In other words ...
Working too hard on the garden this year so we are going to take a few days and let time stop while sit on the front porch before we move to the back porch and remember what life was like when all was right in the world.
Remember, as always ....
Have Fun and Be Happy
The phrase "Flash in the pan" explained
The flash pan or priming pan is a small receptacle for priming powder, found next to the touch hole on muzzleloading guns. A small amount of finely ground gunpowder is placed in the flash pan and ignited. The flash of flame travels through the touch hole igniting the main charge of propellant inside the barrel.
The ignition of the main charge from the flash pan was not a guaranteed
operation, however, and sometimes it failed. In those cases the spark would flash in the pan, but the gun would fail to fire. This led by the end of the 17th century to the expression “flash in the pan” to mean a failure after a brief and showy start, or momentary sensation of no real importance.
Archaeologists hunt for long-lost tomb of Scottish king
Archaeologists and virtual reality artists want to digitally recreate the court of King James I of Scotland in Perth, around 40 miles (64 kilometres) from Edinburgh, and try to find the king’s tomb buried beneath the modern-day city.
Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
Vikings
settled in Greenland from 985 CE to somewhere around 1424, then all
written records of them vanished. The conventional wisdom is that they
flourished in the northern island during the Medieval Warm Period, then
could not adapt to the cold after the eruption of the Indonesian volcano
Lombok caused global cooling. The changed conditions devastated the
Viking's livestock and crops, while the Inuit survived because they
lived off seafood. But did those Vikings really die out? Konrad
Smiarowski is leading an excavation in Greenland that paints a different
picture.
If the Vikings adapted to Greenland's conditions like the Inuit did, why did the Vikings disappear from the historical record? Scientists have differing theories, as laid out in an article at Smithsonian.“Probably about 50 percent of all bones at this site will be seal bones,” Smiarowski says as we stand by the drainage ditch in a light rain. He speaks from experience: Seal bones have been abundant at every site he has studied, and his findings have been pivotal in reassessing how the Norse adapted to life in Greenland. The ubiquity of seal bones is evidence that the Norse began hunting the animals “from the very beginning,” Smiarowski says. “We see harp and hooded seal bones from the earliest layers at all sites.”
A seal-based diet would have been a drastic shift from beef-and-dairy-centric Scandinavian fare. But a study of human skeletal remains from both the Eastern and Western settlements showed that the Vikings quickly adopted a new diet. Over time, the food we eat leaves a chemical stamp on our bones—marine-based diets mark us with different ratios of certain chemical elements than terrestrial foods do. Five years ago, researchers based in Scandinavia and Scotland analyzed the skeletons of 118 individuals from the earliest periods of settlement to the latest. The results perfectly complement Smiarowski’s fieldwork: Over time, people ate an increasingly marine diet, he says.
Nazi-grave robbers are not Nazi grave-robbers
The distinction is explained at Bloomberg Business Week:
“In Latvia, it is normal for you to have dead soldiers on your yard,” Esmits said. “When people came back to their homes after the war, they saw there was a dead soldier here and a dead soldier there, and they just buried them.”..
During the final months of World War II, Latvia was the site of especially bloody battles between German and Soviet forces. Approximately 350,000 Nazis were cut off here from the rest of the German line in the autumn of 1944, in what became known as the Courland Pocket. In the months that followed, about 100,000 of them were killed...
... in recent years, the often illicit market in Nazi memorabilia has
intensified, creating a new class of diggers across eastern Europe
that
is at odds with Esmits’s work. Of particular interest are relics... Some
$50 million in military memorabilia is sold each year, according to an
estimate by the Guardian, and Nazi items fetch a premium...
For the Volksbund, grave robbing remains a persistent problem, especially in Russia and Ukraine. “Grave robbers blight our work,” Kirchmeier says. Many illegal diggers dutifully give over information to officials if they come across a dead body, he says, but others “open graves and then take out anything they can sell—steel helmets, pieces of equipment, medals, belt buckles, personal mementos belonging to the dead, sometimes even the skull, leaving the rest of the bones on the forest floor.”
Yngve Sjodin, a Norway-based militaria seller who sometimes digs with Legenda, says he was confronted with a “black digger” during one of his first digs for soldiers in Latvia, in 2014. “He screamed at us that it was his forest,” he says, “and started attacking the guy next to me.” He adds, “The driving force for the black diggers is money, which they need to survive, or party, or whatever.” Much more at Bloomberg.
“In Latvia, it is normal for you to have dead soldiers on your yard,” Esmits said. “When people came back to their homes after the war, they saw there was a dead soldier here and a dead soldier there, and they just buried them.”..
During the final months of World War II, Latvia was the site of especially bloody battles between German and Soviet forces. Approximately 350,000 Nazis were cut off here from the rest of the German line in the autumn of 1944, in what became known as the Courland Pocket. In the months that followed, about 100,000 of them were killed...
For the Volksbund, grave robbing remains a persistent problem, especially in Russia and Ukraine. “Grave robbers blight our work,” Kirchmeier says. Many illegal diggers dutifully give over information to officials if they come across a dead body, he says, but others “open graves and then take out anything they can sell—steel helmets, pieces of equipment, medals, belt buckles, personal mementos belonging to the dead, sometimes even the skull, leaving the rest of the bones on the forest floor.”
Yngve Sjodin, a Norway-based militaria seller who sometimes digs with Legenda, says he was confronted with a “black digger” during one of his first digs for soldiers in Latvia, in 2014. “He screamed at us that it was his forest,” he says, “and started attacking the guy next to me.” He adds, “The driving force for the black diggers is money, which they need to survive, or party, or whatever.” Much more at Bloomberg.
FCC chair to block implementation of stricter broadband privacy rules
The rules approved by the FCC in October in a 3-2 vote were aimed at protecting sensitive personal consumer data.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai believes all companies in the “online space should be subject to the same rules, and the federal government should not favor one set of companies over another,” spokesman Mark Wigfield said in a statement.
Pai plans by March 2 to delay the implementation of the rules, which subject companies to stricter oversight than websites under Federal Trade Commission rules, the spokesman said. Such a temporary stay is a first step toward permanently preventing the rules from taking effect.
The rules would subject broadband internet service providers to more stringent requirements than websites like Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc or Alphabet Inc’s Google.
Providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using certain user data for advertising and internal marketing. They would be required to get consent for details like precise geo-location, financial information, health information, children’s information, Web browsing history, app usage history and communication content.
For less sensitive information such as email addresses or service tiers, consumers would be able to opt out.
Wingnut commissioners including Pai, said in October the rules unfairly give websites the ability to harvest more data than service providers and dominate digital advertising.
FCC chair to block implementation of stricter broadband privacy rules
Son of boxer Muhammad Ali detained at Florida airport because of his Arabic-sounding name
The power to arrest peaceful demonstrators
Claiming people are being paid to riot, [Arizona] wingnut state senators voted to give police new power to arrest anyone who is involved in a
peaceful demonstration that may turn bad — even before anything
actually happened...
But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated. And what’s worse, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, is that the person who may have broken a window, triggering the claim there was a riot, might actually not be a member of the group but someone from the other side...
But the real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association — and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated. And what’s worse, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, is that the person who may have broken a window, triggering the claim there was a riot, might actually not be a member of the group but someone from the other side...
But Kavanagh, r-Fountain Hills, said that chilling effect is aimed at a very specific group of protesters.
“You now have a situation where you have full-time,
almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public
disorder,’’ he said.
“A lot of them are ideologues, some of them are anarchists,’’ Kavanagh continued. “But this stuff is all planned.’’
There’s something else: By including rioting in
racketeering laws, it actually permits police to arrest those who are
planning events. And Kavanagh, a former police officer, said if there
are organized groups, “I should certainly hope that our law enforcement
people have some undercover people there.’’
Classic black ops. You plant your people in a peaceful group, have your
guy perform an illegal violent act, then arrest all the others.
More details at the Arizona Capitol Times.
More at new subreddit: r/esist.
"r/esist is a sub dedicated to compiling resources and fostering discussion to help resist the damage the Dumbass Trump junta is doing to our country and the world."
There's a "Biotwang" emanating from the Mariana Trench
YouTube link.
After months of speculation, scientists have finally identified the most
likely source of a creepy audio recording from the deepest part of the
ocean... [it] features five different sounds ranging from metallic to biological, and has been nicknamed the Western Pacific Biotwang...
While these sounds are entirely unique in the scientific record, the
best clue Nieukirk's team had for identifying them was an equally
bizarre recoding from 2001, made in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef...
Known as the minke whale 'Star Wars' call, it sounds just as alien as
this more recent recording, and the researchers say that based on
similarities of frequency and structure, the Western Pacific Biotwang
likely comes from the same type of animal.
It's easy to understand how ancient mariners would get creeped out by
sounds echoing through the wooden hulls of their vessels in mid-ocean at
night.
Our Lady of Strays
The Territorio de Zaguates
is a home for abandoned and stray dogs on a farm in Costa Rica. Lya
Battle keeps around 300 dogs, saved from the streets or euthanasia, on
ten acres of her family farm because she loves them.
So in this article at Outside you get both the story of Battle's family and the story of Costa Rica's largest dog shelter. -One could be forgiven for thinking that as a dog lover (or “dog slut,” as she laughingly describes herself), Lya Battle is out of control. But out of control is a matter of perspective. Especially considering how it was that Lya became renowned as the Mother Teresa of Mutts, the mistress of a place called Territorio de Zaguates (roughly translated as “kingdom of strays”), a situation that might never have happened the way it did if one day her father, who she adored, had not shot her mother, who she did not.
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