CAROLINA NATURALLY

Friday, May 2, 2014

The Daily Drift

Gee whiz Charlie Brown ...!

Carolina Naturally is read in 198 countries around the world daily.

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Today is - Tuba Day

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our reader today have been in:

The Americas

Mishawaka, Wasilla, Alachua, Bithlo, Auke Bay, Modesto, Omaha, Tucson, Charlotte, Cullowhee, Apex, Payson and Sparta, United States

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Downsview, Byward Market, Ottawa, Sioux Lookout, Pikangikum, Thunder Bay, Britannia, Montreal, Vancouver and Saint John's, Canada

Caracas and Barquisimeto, Venezuela

Managua and Tipitapa, Nicaragua

Zapopan, Mexico

Luquillo, Puerto Rico

Europe

Kharkiv, Ukraine

Skopje, Macedonia

Surami, Georgia

Ivrea, Due Carrare, Milan and Pescara, Italy

Dartford, Chester, Kent and Gosport, England

Athens, Greece

Magenta, L'ancienne-Lorette, Paris and Lyon, France

Budapest, Hungary

Stavanger, Norway

Adjud and Bucharest, Romania

Malaga, Madrid, Vinaros and Algeciras, Spain

Moscow, Vladivostok, Ryazan and Kazan, Russia

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Wyszkow, Poland

Kongens Lyngby and Frederiksberg, Denmark

Belgrade, Serbia

Dublin, Ireland

Berlin, Germany

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Asia

Jodhpur, Kolkata, Bangalore, Thiruvananthpuram, Shillong, Mumbai, Jalandhar, Suratgarh, Chandigarh, Bhubaneshwar and New Delhi, India

Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur and Kota Bahru, Malaysia

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Kirtipur, Nepal

Lat Krabang and Bang Rak, Thailand

Tokyo, Japan

Jakarta, Indonesia

Shiraz, Iran

Africa

Pretoria and Cape Town, South Africa

Cairo, Egypt

The Pacific

Makati, Quiapo and Manila, Philippines

Woolloongabba and Sydney, Australia

Today in History

1670		The Hudson Bay Company is founded.
1598		Henry IV signs Treaty of Vervins, ending Spain's interference in France.
1668		Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of Devolution in France.
1776		France and Spain agree to donate arms to American rebels fighting the British.
1797		A mutiny in the British navy spreads from Spithead to the rest of the fleet.
1798		The black General Toussaint L'ouverture forces British troops to agree to evacuate the port of Santo Domingo.
1808		The citizens of Madrid rise up against Napoleon.
1813		Napoleon defeats a Russian and Prussian army at Grossgorschen.
1863		Stonewall Jackson smashes Hooker's flank at Chancellorsville, Virginia.
1865		President Andrew Johnson offers a $100,000 reward for the capture of Confederate President
1885		King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State.
1890		The Territory of Oklahoma is created.
1919		The first U.S. air passenger service starts.
1923		Lieutenants Okaley Kelly and John Macready take off from New York for the West Coast on what will become the first successful nonstop transcontinental flight.
1941		Hostilities break out between British forces in Iraq and that country's pro-German faction.
1942		Admiral Chester J. Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese will attack Midway Island, visits the island to review its readiness.
1945		Russian forces take Berlin after 12 days of fierce house-to-house fighting.
1946		Prisoners revolt at California's Alcatraz prison.
1968		The U.S. Army attacks Nhi Ha in South Vietnam and begins a fourteen-day battle to wrestle it away from Vietnamese Communists.
1970		Student anti-war protesters at Ohio's Kent State University burn down the campus ROTC building. The National Guard takes control of campus.

Apple Maps Discovers ‘Loch Ness Monster'

World Discovers Apple Maps

Could Apple Maps finally have discovered the existence of the Loch Ness monster? And, as a result, could the world finally recognize the existence of Apple Maps?

A satellite image (left) from Apple's version of Google Maps shows a mysterious white blob, with what appear to be a pair of flippers at its side, underneath the waters of Loch Ness in Scottish Highlands.

According to the totally-non-biased “experts” at the Official Loch Ness Monster Fan Club, a six month study has concluded the image is “likely” proof of the fabled monster's existence.

‘We've been looking at it for a long time trying to work out exactly what it is. It looks like a boat wake, but the boat is missing. You can see some boats moored at the shore, but there isn't one here. We've shown it to boat experts and they don't know what it is,” club president Gary Campbell told the Daily Mail. “Whatever this is, it is under the water and heading south, so unless there have been secret submarine trials going on in the loch, the size of the object would make it likely to be Nessie.”

Deep-sea biologist Andrew David Thaler said otherwise on Friday after taking a few minutes out of his day on Friday to study the image. Ironically, he used Google Earth to discredit the fan club's months of hard, analytical work.

“The accompanying image is a low-resolution satellite image of a boat wake, available, apparently, only on Apple Maps. There's really not deconstruction needed, it's a boat wake,” Thaler wrote on his blog.

He even found a handy-dandy GIF made from higher-resolution satellite images of what he believes is the very boat that created the wake in question.

While proving his point about the monster-sized boat wake, he also proved that Google is far better resource for monster hunters hunting monsters on their smartphone.

“Apple doesn't have it's own imaging satellites. The fact that the image only shows up in Apple Maps, not Google, is due to Apple either using a slightly different image set to stitch together a picture of the loch, or has a less robust algorithm for dealing with artifacts,” Thaler explained.

“Both the boat in the northern picture and the ‘ghost boat’ in the monster picture are about 20 meters long. There are no 20-meter long catfish. There are no whale sharks in Loch Ness (how would they survive in freshwater?). It's a boat,” Thaler continued. “If something looks exactly like a boat wake, in a place where there are plenty of boats, when a similar boat can actually be seen in the same region, it's a boat.”

'Animal Architecture,' an awesome new photo book about the structures critters create

'Animal Architecture," by Ingo Arndt and Jürgen Tautz, with a foreword by Jim Brandenburg, is a beautiful new science/photography book exploring the mystery of nature through the "complex and elegant structures that animals create both for shelter and for capturing prey."
Arndt is a world-renowned nature photographer based in Germany, whose work you may have seen in National Geographic, GEO and BBC Wildlife.
Above, a grey bowerbird's bower in Australia's Northern Territory. "The grey bowerbird goes to extreme lengths to build a love nest from interwoven sticks and then covers the floor with decorative objects. The more artful the arbor, the greater the chance a male has of attracting a mate."
"Arndt’s photographs display wonders such as the colourful mating arenas of bowerbirds in West Papua and the fantastic nests created by ants in Africa," says publisher Abrams and Chronicle.
"Studio photographs supplement the images from Arndt’s journey and offer close-up views of the nests, mounds and webs constructed by the animals. Features both breathtaking photography and scientific insight into animal behavior."
I spotted the book via a Guardian photo gallery, which you should check out here.