The Daily Drift

Everybody hurts ...

Some of our readers today have been in:

Glasgow, Scotland

Bangkok, Thailand

Warsaw, Poland

Moscow, Russia

Edinburgh, Scotland

Kulim, Malaysia

Phatthaya, Thailand

San Salvador, El Salvador

Monteria, Colombia

Jakarta, Indonesia

Fort-De-France, Martinique

Medellin, Colombia

Krakow, Poland

Cape Town, South Africa

Amsterdam, Netherlands

London, England

Klang, Malaysia

Kathmandu, Nepal

Kuantan, Malaysia

Belgrade, Serbia

Kluang, Malaysia

Sanaa, Yemen

George Town, Malaysia

Johannesburg, South Africa

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Jerudong, Brunei

Today in History

1184		King Magnus of Norway is defeated by his rival, Sverre.
1215		King John signs the Magna Carta.
1381		The English peasant revolt is crushed in London.
1389		Ottoman Turks crush Serbia in the Battle of Kosovo.
1607		Colonists in North America complete James Fort in Jamestown.
1752		Benjamin Franklin and his son test the relationship between electricity and lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm.
1775		George Washington is named Commander in Chief by Congress.
1779		American General Anthony Wayne captures Stony Point, New York.
1836		Arkansas is admitted into the Union as the 25th state.
1846		Great Britain and the United States agree on a joint occupation of Oregon Territory.
1849		James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States, dies.
1862		General J.E.B. Stuart completes his "ride around McClellan."
1864		The Battle for Petersburg begins.
1866		Prussia attacks Austria.
1877		Henry O. Flipper becomes the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
1898		The U.S. House of representatives approves the annexation of Hawaii.
1916		President Woodrow Wilson signs a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America.
1917		Great Britain pledges the release of all Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
1920		Three African Americans are lynched in Duluth, Minnesota, by a white mob of 5,000.
1928		Republicans, convening in Kansas City, name Herbert Hoover their candidate for President.
1932		Gaston Means is sentenced to 15 years for fraud in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
1940		The French fortress of Verdun is captured by Germans.
1944		U.S. Marines begin the invasion of Saipan in Pacific.
1947		The All-Indian Congress accepts a British plan for the partition of India.
1958		Greece severs military ties to Turkey because of the Cyprus issue.
1964		The last French troops leave Algeria.
1977		The first general election in Spain since 1936 results in victory for the UCD (Union of Democratic Centre).

The Beatles - 50 Years On

 

On Jan. 1, 1962, The Beatles flunked an audition at Decca Records in London. Label executive Dick Rowe's brush-off: "Guitar groups are on the way out."

It was an inauspicious start for the group that would soon dominate global society and a downbeat Day 1 in the year that saw the scrappy Liverpool lads evolve into the Fab Four who forever altered the course of pop music.

No other entertainers in history have been as popular, as influential, as important or as groundbreaking. The best-selling act ever sold 600 million albums worldwide and racked up 20 No. 1 U.S. singles, a Billboard record that still stands. The band hijacked the entertainment media and transcended music to become a chapter in world history.

Its members had political clout, spiritual authority, cultural sway and the ears of the planet.

More

Betsy Ross had 3 husbands, and other flag facts

 

Thursday was Flag Day, marking the date in 1777 when Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes.
 More

A 150-year-old Photographic Mystery

The Museum of the Confederacy is asking for your help in identifying the people in eight Civil War-era photographs. They are hoping that someone might see a family resemblance or have other photographs of or information about these folks. Even if you don’t recognize them, it’s awesome to imagine that you knew them.

See the whole collection at Buzzfeed.

Photoshop before there was Photoshop

NY Daily News posted a fine gallery of old timey altered photos. Above, "Lincoln's head was placed atop South Carolina politician John Calhoun's body in this 1860 photo. Interestingly enough, Calhoun died in 1850." At left, the powerful Benito Mussolini would never require the services of a horse handler! "Historic photos that have been altered"

Ten Bizarre Questions You Have To Answer To Get Into Yale's Secret Societies

After it was reported about the shocking growth of Yale's secret societies, The Yale Herald offered to pass along the full results of its campus-wide survey on Yale's secret clubs.

 More

Are the repugicans just incompetent or are they trying to sabotage the economy

Rhetorical question. Forget I asked.

While I'm not so sure the repugican leadership isn't thinking "let's tank the economy," I'm positive that for the past four years they've been thinking: "If we pass x, y, and z it will help the economy which will help Obama's re-election, so we have to block any legislation that helps his re-election."

Of course, they're the same thing - destroying the economy and stopping Obama from being re-elected - but in politics, it's all too easy to make a disconnect between the two, and thus repgicans can hold themselves harmless for a very real, and effective, four-year strategy to harm the American economy.

From Michael Cohen in the Guardian:

Beyond McConnell's words, though, there is circumstantial evidence to make the case. The repugicans have opposed a lion's share of stimulus measures that once they supported, such as a payroll tax break, which they grudgingly embraced earlier this year. Even unemployment insurance, a relatively uncontroversial tool for helping those in an economic downturn, has been consistently held up by repugicans or used as a bargaining chip for more tax cuts. Ten years ago, prominent conservatives were loudly making the case for fiscal stimulus to get the economy going; today, they treat such ideas like they're the plague.

Traditionally, during economic recessions, repugicans have been supportive of loose monetary policy. Not this time. Rather, repugicans have upbraided Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, for even considering policies that focus on growing the economy and creating jobs.

And then, there is the fact that since the original stimulus bill passed in February of 2009, repugicans have made practically no effort to draft comprehensive job creation legislation. Instead, they continue to pursue austerity policies, which reams of historical data suggest harms economic recovery and does little to create jobs. In fact, since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, repugicans have proposed hardly a single major jobs bill that didn't revolve, in some way, around their one-stop solution for all the nation's economic problems: more tax cuts.

US family wealth down nearly 40% since crash

Why is the financial pain limited to the 99%? Wall Street pay has declined, but it's fair to see that most Americans would gladly live on their income level, even in it's current state. Our failure to address this problem only reinforces the argument that neither party represents middle class America.

 Bloomberg:

The average American family lost 38.8 percent of its wealth from 2007 to 2010, with the biggest losses concentrated among households with the most assets tied to their homes, a Federal Reserve study shows.

Median net worth declined to $77,300 in 2010, an 18-year low, from $126,400 in 2007, the central bank said in its Survey of Consumer Finances. Mean net worth fell 14.7 percent to a nine-year low of $498,800 from $584,600, the central bank said today in Washington.

What Americans Spend on Groceries

Tired of high grocery bills? Quit griping! According to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans are actually spending less of our money on groceries than we did 30 years ago.
Lam Thuy Vo of NPR's Planet Money blog explains:

We now spend a much bigger share of our grocery money on processed foods, which includes things like frozen dinners, canned soups and snacks. We spend much less on meat, largely because meat is much cheaper than it was 30 years ago.

More at NPR's Planet Money Blog.

Health News

Some 30% of American working adults sleep less than six hours-thus quadrupling their risk of stroke.

Getting less than six hours of sleep per night? It may be time to rethink your schedule.
 More 

Hitchhiker writing book about 'The Kindness of America' shot by stranger in drive-by shooting

So much for the 'Kindness' part

A West Virginia man is recovering and another man is in jail after what authorities described as a random shooting on Saturday night near Glasgow. Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier said that on Saturday night, Raymond Dolin, 39, was sitting on the side of Highway 2 a few miles west of Glasgow and waiting for a ride when a man drove up in a maroon pickup, shot him and drove off shortly before 6 p.m.

Dolin, from West Virginia, is hitchhiking across the country and writing a memoir called "The Kindness of America," Meier said. He was able to flag down a passer-by for help and is now recovering at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital in Glasgow. Authorities from several counties, the Montana Highway Patrol, the Bureau of Land Management and Fort Peck tribal officials began a large manhunt for the driver of the pickup.

They learned the man had asked for directions from a nearby resident before heading east. Tribal officers spotted the pickup in Poplar and Roosevelt County Sheriff's deputies were able to track it Culbertson, where they arrested the driver, 52-year-old Charles Lloyd Danielson III, of Washington, in connection with the shooting about four hours after it happened.

Meier said there doesn't appear to be any connection between Dolin and Danielson. "It’s totally random," he said. "These two gentlemen did not know each other. They’d never seen each other and we don't know of a motive. We don’t know why this happened." Danielson is being held at the Roosevelt County Detention Center on suspicion of felony assault with a weapon and driving under the influence.

There's a news video here.

New Driver Side Mirror Eliminates the Blind Spot

Of course, you could have such a mirror already. It would just be curved enough to cover the blind spot to the rear and left of the driver. But that curve would also distort the image, leaving the driver uncertain about the location of objects in the mirror. Thankfully, Drexel University mathematician R. Andrew Hick’s patented new design solves that problem:

Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver’s side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks’s mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable. [...]
“Imagine that the mirror’s surface is made of many smaller mirrors turned to different angles, like a disco ball,” Hicks said. “The algorithm is a set of calculations to manipulate the direction of each face of the metaphorical disco ball so that each ray of light bouncing off the mirror shows the driver a wide, but not-too-distorted, picture of the scene behind him.”
Hicks noted that, in reality, the mirror does not look like a disco ball up close. There are tens of thousands of such calculations to produce a mirror that has a smooth, nonuniform curve.

More

Car Thief Tried to Steal Judge’s Car

Ooh, the nerve of some people! Judge Lillian Sing of San Francisco released a convicted auto thief with some stern warnings, only to get this as payback:

Phillip Bernard was in Community Court on Tuesday for a check of his progress while on probation for an auto burglary conviction.
Bernard, who is homeless, had missed an earlier appearance and had failed to follow his probation requirements. "I wasn't too happy with him," Sing said.
But Community Court is set up to get people help, not send them to jail for minor infractions. So Sing let him off with a stern admonishment.
"I told him he had better get into a harm reduction program and get going with a job search," Sing said.
No sooner did Sing's gavel go down, however, than Bernard exited the Polk Street courtroom, went around to the alley in back, pulled out a weighted sock and smashed the rear passenger window of a car, police said.
As fate would have it, a couple of beat cops were passing by. They nabbed Bernard, ran the car's plate and bingo - up popped the judge's name.

More

Man Steals Cars with Stolen Tow Truck

A Florida man was accused of stealing a tow truck and using it to swipe other cars.

More

From the newswire

Man flees crash and leaves kids, wife

A Texas man is behind bars after he reportedly fled the scene of a crime, leaving behind his children and pregnant wife -- who is expecting their 10th child.

 More

Drunk man slept in wrong house

Authorities in western New York say a 20-year-old man thought he was sleeping on his friend's couch when state troopers woke him up over the weekend.

 More

News of the Bizarre

Lungs found on Los Angeles sidewalk

On Sunday, a Los Angeles woman found what appear to be a pair of lungs on the sidewalk. Wonder if (ahem) someone coughed them up. L.A. County Coroner's Office spokesman Ed Winter, told the L.A. Times that he found the situation “a little strange.” "Lungs on sidewalk: Officials unsure if organs are human's or animal's"

Australian coroner agrees that dingo took baby in 1980 case

The eyes of Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton and her ex-husband, Michael Chamberlain, welled with tears as the findings of the fourth inquest into the disappearance of their 9-week-old daughter, Azaria, were announced in court.

 More

Greek who slapped woman on TV sues

The Greek extreme-right party spokesman who caused an uproar last week by slapping one female politician on live TV and throwing a glass of water on another has sued the two women as well as the television channel that hosted the news show.

 More

He's in the wrong so HE sues?! Typical repugican Nazi ... blaming others for their actions.

The Maeklong Railway Market

Welcome to the Mae Klong railway market in small town Thailand. The town of Mae Klong is about 72 kilometers, or a casual 1 drive, south west of Bangkok.
Eight times a day, the shopkeepers have to interrupt their business, quickly pull down the roofs of their shops, drag their goods inside, then stand against their shop fronts breathing in — to let a train go through. That’s right, a train. A big, steel, commuter train traveling quite fast, straight through the middle of the mall.