CAROLINA NATURALLY

Monday, November 22, 2010

The Daily Drift

The Daily Drift

Today's horoscope says:
Ready for the pace of life to pick up -- considerably?
Good, because opportunities for growth are going to come your way in fast and furious style, and you, of all signs, won't want to miss out on a single one.
Of course, opportunities won't get you anywhere if you don't know what you're doing -- but you do.
Congratulations.
It's called being in the right place at the right time -- with the right qualifications.

Some of our readers today have been in:

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Rome, Lazio, Italy

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Paris, Ile-De-France, France

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Sittard, Limburg, Netherlands

Prague, Hlavni Mesto Praha, Czech Republic

Hanau, Hessen, Germany

Bilbao, Pais Vasco, Spain

Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

London, England, United Kingdom

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Annecy, Rhone-Alpes, France

Kassel, Hessen, Germany

Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany

Augsburg, Bayern, Germany

Derby, England, United Kingdom

as well as Singapore, Philippines, Romania, Japan, Sweden, Brazil and in cities across the United States such as Hopewell Junction, Monessen, Ephrata, Covina and more.

Today is:

Today is Monday, November 22, the 326th day of 2010.

There are 39 days left in the year.

Today In History November 22

Today's unusual holiday or celebration is:

There isn't one.

Don't forget to visit our sister blog!

U.S. boy stages protest in China

13-year-old U.S. boy stages protest in China

A Miss. teen barely had time to unfurl his banner before Tiananmen Square police sprang into action.

His mission

Also:

Paris Rising

Photo: CFuga under a Creative Commons license.

One of the striking things about Paris is that, for a major city whose metropolitan area includes nearly 12 million people, there are very few buildings more than five or six stories tall. Since 1977, soon after the construction of the 689 foot tall Tour Montparnasse, a building that sticks out like a sore thumb and is widely disliked by Parisians, there has been a height limit of 121 feet on all new buildings. (The Eiffel Tower, at 1,063 feet, is by far the tallest structure in the city.) But on Tuesday, Le Monde reported, the Paris City Council voted to raise the height limit to a revolutionary 590 feet, meaning that in the next few years, the Paris skyline will have a growth spurt.

Article continues: Newly Freed from Height Limits, Paris Skyline Ready to Rise

Twelve Abandoned Skyscrapers

Skyscrapers are a huge investment to build, are placed on pricey urban real estate, and contain lots of rental space, so you might be surprised that any are completely unused. Some are victims of poor planning; others are abandoned when the area suffers financial decline. Some of the older towers are unsafe due to age or toxic materials. The building shown here is Michigan Central Station in Detroit, built in 1913.

See twelve such empty buildings at Web Urbanist.

What guests won't tell you

What your holiday guests won't tell you

If a neighbor has a blinking light display, put up blackout shades so guests can sleep.

Don't be shy about rules

Also:

How to save $100 a month

Four ways to save $100 every month

Two frugal experts reveal how to shave 15 percent off your monthly utility bills.

Cut costs silently draining your wallet

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World's best places to retire

Best places in the world to retire

Some locales off the beaten path — like Nicaragua — are scenic and ultra-affordable.

Expat-friendly countries

Also:

Best jobs for working alone

Jobs for people who don't like people

If you prefer working alone, these seven fields offer the best opportunities.

Average salaries up to $84,000

Also:

Most dangerous U.S. cities

St. Louis tops list of dangerous cities

A controversial study names America's most crime-ridden areas, leading locals to cry foul.

Safest city

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America's priciest suburbs

America's most expensive suburbs

Families often flee the city in search of cheaper housing, but that's not the case here.

Where homes can top $1 million

Also:

'Salad Spinner' house for sale

Unique 'Salad Spinner' house for sale

A Beverly Hills mansion turns heads for its unique architecture — and its whopping price tag.

See the photos

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Culinary DeLites

Cooking with Thermite

Oh no! The family will be here anytime and you forgot to cook the turkey! What to do? I don’t think the Butterball hotline has the solution you’re looking for. What heats up faster than a microwave? Thermite! No, we don’t advocate trying this, but you can watch the magic of thermite cook a turkey in under thirty seconds in this video.
And yes, they eat it.

Full Story

Fixes for 10 Thanksgiving-dinner mistakes

If your turkey is still frozen, you'll defrost the bird faster by soaking it in a cold bath.

'What size turkey do I buy?'

Also:

Ziggy

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Rate My Backscatter

You had to know this was coming.

Bad Cops

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New York cop arrested for trying to purchase huge quantities of illegal drug

Oregon mom sues police and school district after her third-grade son is allegedly knocked to the ground and handcuffed by cops

Georgia police officer charged with felony theft by taking

Kansas city to pay $925,000 to man injured during 2006 arrest

Fired Indiana cop gets 15-year sentence on child porn charge

Colorado police officer gets probation in road rage incident

The farce that is the TSA

It would help if TSA's "fact vs myth" didn't include a myth of its own

From TSA's blog (it's not entirely clear to me why the TSA has a "blog," but whatever):

Myth: Pat downs for certain individuals are limited to the head and neck.

~~Fact~~(Myth): No one is exempt. Everyone is subject to the same screening. TSA is sensitive to religious and cultural needs, but everyone must be screened effectively. Administrator Pistole echoed those sentiments on MSNBC’s Hardball recently.

Well that's utterly and completely untrue. And even more untrue.

TSA removes shirt of young boy during 'pat down'

You will notice the TSA wearing the blue shirts (the current uniform) so this is recent enough. If the purpose of this "enhanced pat down" is to make people feel safer during their travels, maybe stripping down a young boy in front of others is not going to help.

Why Americans have turned on the TSA

Post-9/11 public goodwill has vanished as increasingly invasive airport searches enrage travelers.

'A tipping point'

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Amputee forced to remove prosthesis, expose residual limb, be separated from 4yo son

These stories just keep getting worse and worse. And this incident apparently took place earlier this year, before the "enhanced" procedures went into place:

"I had just been put in the Plexiglas screening booth," said Peggy. "My 4-year-old son was made to sit across from me, crying because they would not let him touch me. Everyone was looking at us. Then the TSA agent asked for my prosthetic leg. I knew they could wand my leg, but he insisted on taking it from me. And if that wasn't humiliating enough, he asked for the liner sock that covers my residual limb, saying I had to give it to him. I felt pressured to give him my liner even though it is critical to keep it sanitary. I was embarrassed to have my residual limb exposed in public."

Amputee Coalition of America Calls for Improved Screening Procedures for TSA

2 million mile air traveler says TSA pat downs are 'blatant sexual harassment'

Isn't it surprising that she doesn't want to sacrifice her privacy so someone who never flies can have the illusion of air safety? As someone who has flown to fifty countries and six continents, I'm with her.

"This past weekend I was in Phoenix, the weekend before I was in Las Vegas, the weekend before I was in Vancouver," she said. "I do not fly for pleasure at all, pleasure is staying home."

Briles has two double knee implants, so she always "rings" at the metal detector. After a few recent trips, the TSA, she feels, is intimately familiar with her. She has been checked several times recently by the TSA, and one of those times was a private session.

"I really don't know who marked the box and said, 'Yes, now let's really touch them.' Let's turn from feeling where they would go on the back of their hand and going down - now they're doing full frontal, where they run their hands over your breasts, they will cup your breast, they're going inside your collar," Briles said. "If anyone pulled what TSA is doing, they would be sued and fired for just blatant sexual harassment."

And credit should be also given to Senator George LeMieux who said he would never want his wife to be touched the way the TSA is touching people. It's about time everyone in Congress and the White House (including the Cabinet) goes through both procedures.

The truth be told

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Teabaggers and and other repugicans now claiming Thanksgiving is a lesson in socialism

You know who else used to rewrite history to their own political advantage?
The Soviets.
These guys are amazing.
And of course, as always, the historians say they're completely wrong.
And it's not just the Teabaggers, it's Dick Armey, their patron, and Lush Dimbulb.
It's modern wingnuttery that passing this lie.

From the NYT:

In the Tea Party view of the holiday, the first settlers were actually early socialists. They realized the error of their collectivist ways and embraced capitalism, producing a bumper year, upon which they decided that it was only right to celebrate the glory of the free market and private property.

Historians quibble with this interpretation.

Bradford did get rid of the common course — but it was in 1623, after the first Thanksgiving, and not because the system wasn’t working. The Pilgrims just didn’t like it. In the accounts of colonists, Mr. Pickering said, “there was griping and groaning.”

“Bachelors didn’t want to feed the wives of married men, and women don’t want to do the laundry of the bachelors,” he said.

The real reason agriculture became more profitable over the years, Mr. Pickering said, is that the Pilgrims were getting better at farming crops like corn that had been unknown to them in England.

As for Jamestown, there was famine. But historians dispute the characterization of the colony as a collectivist society. “To call it socialism is wildly inaccurate,” said Karen Ordahl Kupperman, a historian at New York University and the author of “The Jamestown Project.” “It was a contracted company, and everybody worked for the company. I mean, is Halliburton a socialist scheme?”

They're not just idiots. These people are dangerous.