These subtle factors are actually signaling your brilliance
Monday, March 13, 2017
What Type of Porn User Are You?
You may want to examine your, uh, viewing habits a bit more closely after reading this
This Patient's Brain Stayed Active for 10 Minutes After Death
Doctors are at a loss to explain what happened
Bacon, Soda and Not Enough Nuts May Be Killing You
A new study links bacon and other processed meats to half of all heart disease-related deaths in the country
Car Stolen Twice; Owner Tracks It
This
car theft story contains so many astonishing things about our modern
world that it's hard to know where to start. Ben Yu is a startup
founder, living in San Francisco's Mission District, and he has a Mini
Cooper. The car has suffered constant break-ins and vandalism, and then
it was stolen -twice. While Yu waited hours to file a police report, he
also tracked the car's movements on his GPS.
First off, the modern technology involved in this story is staggering. He rents out the car, so the key must be left in it. Yet it can be tracked. And locked and unlocked without a key. And disabled remotely, under certain circumstances. This tech ran into real world low-tech problems with both police bureaucracy and life in a high crime area. Then there's the absurdity of a tech-savvy startup founder who can't afford to live in a safe neighborhood and must rent out his vehicle for extra money. Yu framed his Facebook story as a problem with law enforcement, but it can also be told in the context of the limits of technology or the insane cost of living in San Francisco. You can read the entire chronology at Buzzfeed, where you'll also see a video of Yu and Harris tracking the second theft.Meanwhile, his car ran out of gas a whole city away in Brisbane, CA. The thief left it on the side of the road and stole the key.
He retrieved the car with no gas and no key… Then it got jacked again on Thursday.
According to his Facebook, Yu woke up at 8:15 am on Thursday and found that his car had been stolen again from almost the exact same spot. He guessed it was the same perpetrator as Wednesday’s theft because that person would have already had a key.
How that happened: If you’re letting people rent your car through Getaround, you leave your keys in your car, and the Getaround app locks the doors and disables the engine in case of a break-in. Yu’s friend Travis Herrick had been using the Mini, and Herrick had used the normal key to lock the car instead of the Getaround app, though he still left the spare key in the car for renters. When the thief broke in for the second time, they could start the car and make away with it because the app hadn’t hobbled the engine.
Welcome to Pleistocene Park
Sergey
Zimov has a dream to take a chunk of the Siberia tundra back to the
last Ice Age, to the Pleistocene era, when giant mammals roamed the
earth. Zimov and his son Nikita founded Pleistocene Park twenty years
ago, and since then have stocked it with bison, musk oxen, wild horses,
reindeer, and other grass-eating beasts. But to really move the
ecosystem back to the way it was, they need the tree-trampling talents
of woolly mammoths.
The possibility of cloning a mammoth Jurassic Park-style has been in the news for years, but finding viable mammoth DNA still eludes us. But there's another possibility: designing a cold weather elephant species by tweaking the genes of existent elephants. Read about this research and about the development of Pleistocene Park at the Atlantic.Pleistocene Park is named for the geological epoch that ended only 12,000 years ago, having begun 2.6 million years earlier. Though colloquially known as the Ice Age, the Pleistocene could easily be called the Grass Age. Even during its deepest chills, when thick, blue-veined glaciers were bearing down on the Mediterranean, huge swaths of the planet were coated in grasslands. In Beringia, the Arctic belt that stretches across Siberia, all of Alaska, and much of Canada’s Yukon, these vast plains of green and gold gave rise to a new biome, a cold-weather version of the African savanna called the Mammoth Steppe. But when the Ice Age ended, many of the grasslands vanished under mysterious circumstances, along with most of the giant species with whom we once shared this Earth.
Nikita is trying to resurface Beringia with grasslands. He wants to summon the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem, complete with its extinct creatures, back from the underworld of geological layers. The park was founded in 1996, and already it has broken out of its original fences, eating its way into the surrounding tundra scrublands and small forests. If Nikita has his way, Pleistocene Park will spread across Arctic Siberia and into North America, helping to slow the thawing of the Arctic permafrost. Were that frozen underground layer to warm too quickly, it would release some of the world’s most dangerous climate-change accelerants into the atmosphere, visiting catastrophe on human beings and millions of other species.
10 Plants That Can Actually Help You De-Stress
Don’t worry, you can reap the bennies even if you don’t have a green thumb.
Sunday, March 12, 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.
Vikings ... !
You want the unvarnished truth?
Today in History
| 1496 | The Jews are expelled from Syria. | |
| 1507 | Cesare Borgia dies while fighting alongside his brother, the king of Navarre, in Spain. | |
| 1609 | The Bermuda Islands become an English colony. | |
| 1664 | New Jersey becomes a British colony. | |
| 1789 | The United States Post Office is established. | |
| 1809 | Great Britain signs a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country. | |
| 1863 | President Jefferson Davis delivers his State of the Confederacy address. | |
| 1879 | The British Zulu War begins. | |
| 1884 | Mississippi establishes the first U.S. state college for women. | |
| 1894 | Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time. | |
| 1903 | The Czar of Russia issues a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout the land. | |
| 1909 | British Parliament increases naval appropriations for Great Britain. | |
| 1911 | Dr. Fletcher of the Rockefeller Institute discovers the cause of infantile paralysis. | |
| 1912 | Juliet Low founds the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia. | |
| 1917 | Russian troops mutiny as the “February Revolution” begins. | |
| 1930 | Gandhi begins his march to the sea to symbolizes his defiance of British rule in India. | |
| 1933 | President Paul von Hindenburg drops the flag of the German Republic and orders that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side. | |
| 1933 | President Roosevelt makes the first of his Sunday evening fireside chats. | |
| 1938 | German troops enter Austria without firing a shot, forming the anschluss (union) of Austria and Germany. | |
| 1939 | Pius XII is elected the new pope in Rome. | |
| 1944 | Great Britain bars all travel to neutral Ireland, which is suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany. | |
| 1945 | Diarist Anne Frank dies in a German concentration camp. | |
| 1959 | The U.S. House of Representatives joins the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii. | |
| 1984 | Lebanese President Gemayel opens the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war. | |
| 1985 | The United States and the Soviet Union begin arms control talks in Geneva. | |
| 1994 | The Cult of England ordains women priests. |
Dumbass Trump junta teams up with Big Pharma to block drug pricing transparency
Days after Dumbass Trump met with pharmaceutical
industry CEOs at the Dumbass Trump White House, the Securities and Exchange Commission
endorsed drug companies’ moves to block the resolutions on pricing
increases.
NC Students Terrorize Minorities In Disgusting KKK Video
‘Didn’t you used to be a girl?’
‘Keep your knees together’
Saturday, March 11, 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.
Here comes Johnny ... !
You want the unvarnished truth?
Today in History
| 537 | The Goths lay siege to Rome. | |
| 1649 | The peace of Rueil is signed between the Frondeurs (rebels) and the French government. | |
| 1665 | A new legal code is approved for the Dutch and English towns, guaranteeing religious observances unhindered. | |
| 1702 | The Daily Courant, the first regular English newspaper is published. | |
| 1810 | The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise. | |
| 1811 | Ned Ludd leads a group of workers in a wild protest against mechanization. | |
| 1824 | The U.S. War Department creates the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Seneca Indian Ely Parker becomes the first Indian to lead the Bureau. | |
| 1845 | Seven hundred Maoris led by their chief, Hone-Heke, burn the small town of Kororareka in protest at the settlement of Maoriland by Europeans, in breach with the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. | |
| 1861 | A Confederate Convention is held in Montgomery, Ala., where the new constitution is adopted. | |
| 1863 | Union troops under General Ulysess S. Grant give up their preparations to take Vicksburg after failing to pass Fort Pemberton, north of Vicksburg. | |
| 1865 | Union General William Sherman and his forces occupy Fayetteville, N.C. | |
| 1888 | A disastrous blizzard hits the northeastern United States. Some 400 people die, mainly from exposure. | |
| 1900 | British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury rejects the peace overtures offered from Boer leader Paul Kruger. | |
| 1905 | The Parisian subway is officially inaugurated. | |
| 1907 | President Teddy Roosevelt induces California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation. | |
| 1930 | President Howard Taft becomes the first U.S. president to be buried in the National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. | |
| 1935 | The German Air Force becomes an official organ of the Reich. | |
| 1941 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the Lend-Lease Act which authorizes the act of giving war supplies to the Allies. | |
| 1942 | General Douglas MacArthur leaves Bataan for Australia. | |
| 1965 | The American navy begins inspecting Vietnamese junks in hopes of ending arms smuggling to the South. | |
| 1966 | Three men are convicted of the murder of Malcolm X. | |
| 1969 | Levi-Strauss starts to sell bell-bottomed jeans. | |
| 1973 | An FBI agent is shot at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. | |
| 1985 | Mikhail Gorbachev is named the new Soviet leader. | |
| 1990 | Lithuania declares its independence from the Soviet Union. |
Americans oppose bathroom laws limiting transgender rights
Hey, religio-wingnuts - it ain't working. We are not distracted nor do we care where anyone goes to the restroom ... JUST WASH YOUR HANDS.
10 Things We’ll See in 10 Years
Some people at NASA think we’ll discover alien life by 2025. What will life on Earth be like then?
1. WE’LL FINALLY DISCOVER WHO THE MONA LISA WAS.
The
identity of Mona Lisa has long been a mystery. Some think Leonardo da
Vinci modeled his masterpiece on his mother; others, on a secret male
lover. In fact, one art historian identified her just a few decades
after the painting was completed as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the
wife of a wealthy cloth merchant who commissioned the piece to a
then-broke da Vinci. (The fact that the artist named his work La Gioconda
was a big clue.) Now, thanks to radiocarbon dating, this hunch may
finally be confirmed. Researchers believe they may have found
Gherardini’s remains in a convent in Florence. If the carbon-14 tests
confirm that it’s her, scientists will also do DNA tests to determine
the color of her eyes, skin, and hair. With that information, they’ll
be able to confirm if she is the world’s most famous half-smiler.
2. GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT LINES? ANCIENT HISTORY.
The question “Paper or plastic?” will be a distant memory in the not-so-distant future. The Food Marketing Institute predicts that by 2025, customers will no longer wait in lines to check out at grocery stores. Just like a car zipping through an electronic tollbooth, shoppers will walk out the door and a “frictionless checkout” will automatically account for products in their carts. Also coming soon: stores with moving walls. With a flick of a switch, businesses will be able to change their floor plans and turn into restaurants in the evenings or farmers’ markets on Saturday mornings.
3. THE STRONGEST ROBOTS WILL BE MADE FROM...ONIONS.
The
identity of Mona Lisa has long been a mystery. Some think Leonardo da
Vinci modeled his masterpiece on his mother; others, on a secret male
lover. In fact, one art historian identified her just a few decades
after the painting was completed as Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo, the
wife of a wealthy cloth merchant who commissioned the piece to a
then-broke da Vinci. (The fact that the artist named his work La Gioconda
was a big clue.) Now, thanks to radiocarbon dating, this hunch may
finally be confirmed. Researchers believe they may have found
Gherardini’s remains in a convent in Florence. If the carbon-14 tests
confirm that it’s her, scientists will also do DNA tests to determine
the color of her eyes, skin, and hair. With that information, they’ll
be able to confirm if she is the world’s most famous half-smiler.2. GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT LINES? ANCIENT HISTORY.
The question “Paper or plastic?” will be a distant memory in the not-so-distant future. The Food Marketing Institute predicts that by 2025, customers will no longer wait in lines to check out at grocery stores. Just like a car zipping through an electronic tollbooth, shoppers will walk out the door and a “frictionless checkout” will automatically account for products in their carts. Also coming soon: stores with moving walls. With a flick of a switch, businesses will be able to change their floor plans and turn into restaurants in the evenings or farmers’ markets on Saturday mornings.
Here’s
the thing about today’s robots: They’re wimps. Even the most powerful
can lift only half their weight. Worse, they’re inflexible and their
movements are herky-jerky. But that wouldn’t be the case if we could
outfit them with lightweight, smooth-moving, and super-strong
artificial muscles. In fact, a machine equipped with robo-biceps could
lift 80 times its own weight! The problem is, artificial muscles are
expensive. For years, scientists have been trying to make them with
costly polymers. But in May 2015, researchers at the National Taiwan
University discovered a material so cheap, it literally made them tear
up: onions. When they coated onion cells with gold and zapped them with
electricity, the cells, like human muscles, bent and contracted. Is
it too soon to imagine this sort of technology someday powering robots
that will carry us piggyback to work while reading us the news and
serving us milkshakes?4. THE INTERNET MAY HAVE MET ITS DOOM.
In
2012, archaeologists dug up the remains of King Richard III. Laser
scans and analysis taught scientists and historians more about the
15th-century ruler than they ever imagined, revealing how he died as
well as clues about his lifestyle and diet (he enjoyed peacock and
swan). Academics like Francis Thackeray of the University of the
Witwatersrand in Johannesburg are hoping to perform the same techniques
on Shakespeare’s bones. An analysis could unearth secrets about the
Bard’s own death, diet, and health—and whether he smoked weed. In 2001,
fragments of clay pipes containing traces of cannabis were discovered
in Shakespeare’s garden. (Hemp was used for rope and clothing in the
Elizabethan era, so it follows that some of the plant was used for
medicine and pleasure.) Of course, researchers may have trouble digging
him up. Shakespeare’s epitaph reads: "Bleste be the man that spares
thes stones, and curst be he that moves my bones."6. ...AND POT COULD BECOME A LEGAL, LUCRATIVE CAREER.
By
2020, legal marijuana could be a $35 billion industry in the U.S. A
study by ArcView Market Research suggests that as many as 18 states
could legalize recreational pot use, while nearly twice that may
legalize it for medical use. And that means jobs! The current medical
and leisure industry—worth about $3 billion—employs between 46,000 and
60,000 people. That number is only going to get, well, higher. From
horticulturalists to procurement officers to dispensary owners, the
number of positions that could grow out of a prospering pot industry
could make marijuana one of the hottest job prospects for college grads
(at least the ones who can muster the will to get off their beanbag
chairs).7. WE’LL BE FLYING ON FUNGUS.
Those leaves you rake every fall may fuel your vacation. Researchers at Washington State University have discovered that under certain conditions, a black fungus named Aspergillus carbonarius ITEM 5010—which thrives in decaying leaves, soil, and fruit—can be used to create hydrocarbons that could help make jet fuel, which is a blend of petroleum products. (Intriguingly, the fungus creates the most hydrocarbons when it munches on oatmeal.) Not only would this be cost-effective, it would also eliminate the need for complex chemical processes used to make fuels, since the fungus does the work itself. Researchers hope Aspergillus carbonarius will start to fuel flights within the next five years.
8. WE WILL HAVE SURVIVED YET ANOTHER CICADA PLAGUE.
9. ART’S MOST TRAGICOMIC MEME WILL BE ERASED.
10. DARK MATTER WILL BE EXPOSED.
Magic May Not Be Real, But This School of Witchcraft Sure Is
Smithsonian Scientists Retrace the Mysterious Circumstances of an 1866 Death
Robert
Kennicott was a well-liked and respected young naturalist for the
Smithsonian Institution in its early days, when naturalists actually
lived in the museum together. He was dedicated to collecting specimens
for the institute, up until his untimely death at age 30. Kennicott's
bones will be put on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Natural History on March 10 as part of an exhibit called “Objects of
Wonder.” For Kennicott, that might be the ultimate honor. But his story
did not end with his death. Over a hundred years after burial,
Kennicott's coffin was exhumed for examination to determine the exact
cause of death.
The mystery begins with Kennicott’s death on May 13, 1866. He had been on another long mission to the Yukon—this time for the Western Union Telegraph. He was the only person who had lived in Russian America, and was to help that company find a route to lay a cable connecting the United States with Europe via the Bering Strait. Kennicott and two fellow naturalists also planned to collect rare specimens, but they arrived just below the Arctic Circle as winter began in 1865. They made a grueling trip to Fort Nulato on the Yukon River, 500 miles from any other fort, in temperatures as low as 60 below zero.Kennicott's family never really bought the idea that he had committed suicide. In 2001, forensic anthropologist Kari Bruwelheide and the museum’s division head for physical anthropology Doug Owsley performed a thorough examination and a chemical analysis to find out why he died. In analyzing Kennicott's remains, they also got a glimpse at the chemicals that 19th century people were exposed to, both accidentally and medicinally (such as lead, strychnine, and mercury), and the effects of diseases that were common at the time. Read the story of Robert Kennicott at Smithsonian.
By spring, Kennicott intended to begin his own work as a naturalist. But he didn’t show up for breakfast that day, and his men found him dead by the bank of the river near the fort. Rumors began that he had committed suicide by swallowing the strychnine he often carried to preserve specimens. His friends spent eight months on a journey to bring Kennicott’s body back. He was buried in January 1867 at The Grove, in an airtight metal coffin.
The Men Who Volunteered to Be Poisoned by the Government
Harvey
Washington Wiley of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of
Chemistry was concerned about the unrestricted contents of food that
Americans were buying. So when he sent out a call for volunteers, 12
young men, mostly poorly-paid clerks, answered the call. They must have
been hungry, because they didn't run for the hills as soon as they found
out what kind of six-month experiment they'd signed up for.
The results of those experiments led to the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. The experiments lasted for five years, although the squad of volunteers changed. Read what those young men went through in the name of science and safety at mental_floss.Wiley’s staff would put borax in their butter, milk, or coffee. Formaldehyde would lurk in their meats, copper sulfate and saltpeter in their fruit pies. Wiley would begin at low doses and then ratchet up the amount until one or more of the men complained of debilitating symptoms, like vomiting or dizziness. Those people would then be excused from the program until they felt well enough to resume. In the event a subject died or became seriously ill, he would waive the right to pursue legal remedy against the government.
The year was 1902. With funding and consent from Congress, Wiley was about to embark on an experiment he dubbed the “hygienic table trials,” but it was the Washington news media that came up with the nickname that would stick: They called his volunteers "the Poison Squad."
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