Free Republic

(My first thread, hope I'm doing this right!)

Every once in a while, a book not so much lands on your desk as lobs itself like a hand grenade, exploding preconceived wisdoms and shattering the bones of the status quo. Save The Males is such a book. It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years. American author Kathleen Parker's courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.

Fans of Doctor Who and Star Trek have been told to lay off autograph hunting at the stage door of the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford, where David Tennant and Patrick Stewart are thesping it up in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet. The ban comes after fans apparently started turning up at the venue with "bags" of Who goodies, hoping to get Tennant's mark on their memorabilia. The RSC declared: "Due to the huge amount of interest in the RSC's current production of Hamlet, only Royal Shakespeare Company or production related memorabilia will be signed by members of the...

Christian protests put Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials film trilogy in doubt By Stephen Adams Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 18/07/2008 The future of the film trilogy based on Phillip Pullman's books His Dark Materials is in doubt after the controversial author said he did not know if the sequel to The Golden Compass would be made. The first in the trilogy, which starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, was dogged by accusations from American religious groups that it was anti-Catholic and even sought to "destroy God". British author Pullman admitted such objections may have hit US box office sales.... The...

The reporter who wrote the hit piece on Fox News explains that he had a tough past and was plagued by crack and alcohol abuse.

Paris in the month of May was in full aphrodisiac bloom. The girls were swinging along the boulevards in their short, flowery skirts, their hair flowing loose behind them. On the radio, the singer Tino Rossi - France's answer to Rudolph Valentino - belted out his latest romantic favourite. But a few short weeks later, on June, 14, 1940, the German army marched into the capital and occupied it for four years. France has never forgotten its humiliation - or its bewilderment - in having to adjust to a life of close proximity to the old enemy, with all the...

I was privilaged to review Obama: The Man Behind The Mask by Andy Martin, who "generally recognized as the founding father of the anti-Obama research and commentary movement on the Internet. You may also remember that Andy urged Hillary to TAKE IT TO THE CONVENTION! She did not heed his advice. While the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune were asleep at the wheel, Andy Martin was letting the world know "Who Barry O is," but "just the facts" as Detective Friday says. Andy tells you why until Lynn SWEET caught Obama's scent that "Tony's guy" got a pass for...

Christopher Lee offers his voice for Smaug… won’t go back to NZ. July 13th, 2008 by Compa_Mighty In a bittersweet note, forummer DiveTwin reports this note that appeared in Cinematical:

In a blockbuster New York news conference Monday, July 14th, Andy Martin asks: "Why has Barack Obama been lying for decades about the 'marriage' of his parents when he knew full well he was lying? There was no marriage. How can anyone vote for Obama for president when Obama is so cowardly he can't tell the truth to the American people?" Andy Martin's book and writing begin to impact the presidential campaign. ~snip~ Legendary Chicago Internet columnist and Obama author Andy Martin will hold a New York news conference Monday, July 14th to drop the first of several bombs on...

A rare white stag has been observed on the west coast of the Highlands. The animal has been seen with other red deer by a member of the John Muir Trust, which has kept its location a secret to protect it from poachers. The killing of a white stag on the Devon and Cornwall border last year sparked outrage. Fran Lockhart, partnership manager for the trust, caught the young Highland deer on camera. She described it as "ghost-like". She said: "I am thrilled to know that there is a white stag roaming free out there in the Scottish Highlands and...

Has anybody read A.N. Wilson's "biographies" Jesus and/or Paul: The Mind of an Apostle I was just cruising around Amazon books and spotted these. I wondered if they were any good.

SF author, critic, and poet Thomas M. Disch, born 1940, died July 4, 2008, of suicide in his New York City apartment. Ellen Datlow reports that Disch had been depressed for several years, especially by the death of long-time partner Charles Naylor, and worries of eviction from his rent-controlled apartment. Biographical details shortly.

Us Weekly reports in its new issue, on newsstands tomorrow, that Madonna's seven-year marriage to Guy Ritchie has stalled out – and the singer has been hosting late-night visits from New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez at her Central Park West apartment in New York City. A ringless and grim-faced Ritchie, 39, arrived in New York City from London yesterday after several weeks apart from his family. A source tells Us that the $28-million-a-year Rodriguez, 32, has made numerous solo nighttime visits to Madonna, 49, at her spacious home and would sneak out "as late as midnight." Says the source, "All...

Hey, I've been reading a few conservative books lately, including: - God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley; - Save the Males, Kathleen Parker; - Feminists Say the Darndest Things, Mike Adams; - When Character Was King, Peggy Noonan; and, - America: The Last Best Hope, Vol. II, William Bennett. I was just wondering if anyone here has any particular recommendations? I can highly recommend all five of the above -- and particularly Bennett -- as a good read. Buckley can be a little dense to read at times, but he was always sharp. Mike Adams is pretty irreverent,...

We here at Comic Book Resources are very sad to report that artist Michael Turner has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 37. Aspen Comics’ Vince Hernandez told CBR News Saturday morning that Turner passed away Friday night at 10:42 Pacific Time at Santa Monica Hospital in Calfiornia. The news spread quickly at Wizard World Chicago, during what would have otherwise been a riotous night at the hotel bar, the mood suddenly turned somber with remembrances of Turner from friends and acquaintances. A minute of silence will be observed during Wizard World Chicago Saturday afternoon. Turner is...

THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR The Making of the Radical Behind Perestroika By Christopher Shulgan McClelland & Stewart, 359 pages, $34.99 Christopher Shulgan has done an excellent job in documenting Yakovlev's career in the Soviet government and describing his exceptional role in the events that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. But he skirts over one of the most significant episodes of Yakovlev's life - his chairmanship, beginning in 1988, of the Commission to Rehabilitate Victims of Political Repression. While he went to great efforts in disclosing the crimes of Lenin and Stalin, Yakovlev stopped short of looking into the repressions...

Professor John P. Maher reviews "July 1914: Soldiers, Statesmen, and the Coming of the Great War: A Brief Documentary History." Edited by Samuel R. Williamson and Russel Van Wyk. 2003. Bedford / St Martin's Press. A commonplace in recent books on the Balkans is to draw parallels between 1990s Serbia and the Third Reich. Williamson and Van Wyk confirm the consensus view that that Germany and Austria-Hungary started the Great War, but fail to pursue another parallel. They say nothing about activities of Germany and Austria in the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. But policy and press in those...

AMD Expands The Ultimate Visual Experience AMD today expanded The Ultimate Visual Experience™ for North America with the ATI All-In-Wonder™ HD, combining award-winning ATI Radeon™ Premium graphics and ATI TV Wonder™ HD tuner technology card in one PCI Express® 2.0 solution. As the newest multimedia powerhouse to join the long line of All-In-Wonder offerings, ATI All-in-Wonder HD transforms the PC into a highly immersive digital video recorder for HDTV1 and analog TV, plus expands the realm of exceptional gaming with cinematic HD graphics for mainstream PCs. Blu-ray™ disc playback can be enjoyed in full HD glory (1080p) thanks to ATI...

Jewish Prisoners Executed at the Babi Yar RavineYesterday, I posted a thread here regarding Patrick J. Buchanan’s new book, the controversy surrounding it and included a photo taken at Babi Yar near the city of Kiev, Ukraine.  This was the site of a horrific slaughter by Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen officers of 34,000 Jewish men, women and children in September of 1941.  Accompanying my text was a photograph I mistakenly described as a mass of corpses.  On further research this morning, spurred by commenter Bantam, I discovered the photo had been miscaptioned at the site where it was originally found.  The photo...

Sometime later, after the events of 1968, I would look back at Hayden’s Bratislava speech as a turning point not only in the short history of the New Left but also in the history of American radicalism. Protesting against America’s wars has an honorable tradition, running from Thoreau to Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas. But starting with Hayden and continuing in the turbulent outbursts of 1968, that tradition of legitimate democratic opposition morphed into outright collaboration with the enemy.

FReeps have such great taste! So, I thought I would put this out there. One of my favorite things to do during the summer months is read to my children before they go to sleep. Actually, I do this year round, but particularly enjoy reading to them during the summer months. At times we get carried away with some of the great children’s lit available ~ with Mom finally coming up tho the bedrooms at 10:30 to shut down the evening's activities. At which point we may have to get real quiet and me straining my eyes. It’s great to...

Petrostate By Marshall Goldman (Oxford, 244 pages, $27.95)Russia, with its huge natural-gas reserves, uses its monopoly on east-west pipelines to promote Russia's political interests -- and reacts toughly when challenged. Marshall Goldman sets out these disturbing truths in "Petrostate," a bleak and yet spirited account of Russia's energy politics. The West, Mr. Goldman makes clear, should be wincing at its own vulnerability. The story, as Mr. Goldman tells it, starts with the first oil boom in the czarist era, when Russia and America together produced 97% of the world's oil. Foreign companies were booted out of the Soviet Union by...

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. 'One sometimes gets the impression,' he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, 'that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England'. Orwell was making an observation. But today a whole body of academic research shows he was correct: your politics influence the manner in which you live your life. And the news is not so good for those on the political Left. There is plenty of data that shows...

PALMDALE - A stubby, star-spangled spacecraft made history in June 2004 in the skies over Mojave as the first privately funded manned space program. The story of SpaceShipOne and the people behind its success - notables such as aerospace designer Burt Rutan and mogul Sir Richard Branson - has been told in a variety of forums, but a new book brings it all together and offers a look at the more technical aspects of the program. "SpaceShipOne: An Illustrated History" chronicles the development and successful spaceflights of the Mojave-based project which ushered in the possibility of space travel for the...

I noticed that Wikipedia has announced the death of science fiction writer, Algis Budrys, author of "Rogue Moon" and other works. At the moment, no MSM sources have mentioned this. However, several blogs have. Wikipedia article

Congratulations. You've graduated from high school. We knew you would. No, really. Now that you have the diploma, we can admit it. We knew it would happen all along. We don't have statistics for this graduating class yet. But during the 2006-'07 school year, exactly one student dropped out of either middle school or high school in Mequon or Thiensville, according to the Department of Public Instruction. That's one out of more than 2,200. There was slightly more anarchy in places like Cedarburg and Slinger and Port Washington, where dropouts numbered four or five per district. West Bend, which has...

Having seen a few stories addressing a potential new Cold War, can anyone recommend a good book or two about the actual Cold War? I realized that my knowledge about it is lacking, and I'd like to read a non-liberal (ha, is it possible?) version of the Cold War history. I was born when it was "ending" and my high school and college courses mentioned it only fleetingly. Thanks for any suggestions!

For those (like me) sick of hearing about McClellan's new book, here is one from former Army Ranger captain Nate Self that may be this year's Lone Survivor. There is a great video about it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LH9eiT-0H8 It's all about the resuce on Robert's Ridge, one of the first and bloodiest battles of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. The helicopter carrying Self's team of Army Rangers was shot down and the ensuing battle cost many American lives. His story has been on Dateline and this book goes into detail about the two wars being fought by our soldiers--overseas against terrorists...

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a tell all book heavily critical of the Bush Presidency. Do you believe McClellan is: Deliberately betraying President Bush Just trying to tell the truth Willing to say anything to make a buck

She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs - her daughter, Rebecca, 38. Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises - a mother.

JERUSALEM: Shakespeare was actually a Jewish woman who had disguised to get her work published in Elizabethan London where original literature from women was not acceptable, an expert has contended. The woman, Amelia Bassano Lanier Bassano, was of Italian descent and lived in England as a Marrano. She has been known only as the first woman to publish a book of poetry ( Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum in 1611) and as a candidate for "the dark lady" referred to in the sonnets, daily Ha'aretz reported. The theory rests largely on the circumstances of Bassano's life, which John Hudson, an expert...

Book review of... Moral Clarity By Susan Neiman (Harcourt, 467 pages, $27) The seemingly endless contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is, among other things, a referendum on that perennial question: What ails the American left? Is the problem a failure to offer clear alternatives to the corporate coziness of the Republicans, or is it a lack of cultural and religious sympathy with the heartland? Is it a matter of substance or style, of insufficiently "progressive" policies or bicoastal swagger? To this stale discussion Susan Neiman brings a new thought: The problem with our liberal elites, she insists, is...

My daughter must choose one of three books for summer reading. I believe the first two are about racism and the last one about dropping the atomic bomb. Has anyone read any of these books? Any comments or recommendations? Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Hiroshima by John Hersey

Sir Ian McKellen returns to the big screen in The Hobbit film By Nick Squires in Sydney Last updated: 1:28 PM BST 25/05/2008 Sir Ian McKellen will reprise the role of Gandalf the wizard for two films to be made based on Tolkien's classic book The Hobbit, it has been confirmed. The two movies - The Hobbit and a sequel which has yet to be named - will be filmed in New Zealand and released in 2011 and 2012. Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum with the help of digital wizardry, will also return for the Hobbit film, but...

There must be a lot of SF fans here. Who are you favorite authors or books? What are you currently reading?I enjoy SF books that focus on character development over hard scifi themes. Robert Silverberg, IMO, is about the best there is. I also enjoy Gardner Duzois' short stories--some gut-wrenching stuff. Jack Vance's are also very entertaining. Orson Scott Card is pretty good too.I am currently reading Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan...it's kind of slow and hard to follow. Not likely to read his other novels.I have enjoyed some, but not all, of Niven and Pournelle's works.

Robert Asprin (1946-2008) On May 22, 2008, Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He had been in good spirits and working on several new projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very weekend. He is survived by his mother, his sister, his daughter and his son, and his cat, Princess, not to mention countless friends and fans and numerous legendary fictional characters. He will be greatly missed.

Saul Bellow’s prophetic 1970 novel captured New York’s unraveling and remains a cautionary tale. As Bellow understood, the “anything goes” culture of the 1960s produced an “anything goes” city, where disorder and crime flourished, as in the Times Square of that era.Fear was a New Yorker’s constant companion in the 1970s and ’80s. We lived behind doors with triple locks, some like engines of medieval ironmongery. We barred our ground-floor and fire-escape windows with steel grates that made us feel imprisoned. I was thankful for mine, though, when a hatchet turned up on my fire escape, origin unknown. Nearing our...

i experienced this disaster in chengdu,it is much more horrible than you heard from midia,chengdu citizens suffered frighten more that real threat.but this earthquake make dujiangyan\wenchuan\towns of mianyang\deyang vanish from map forever.thousands of hundreds of people lost their residents and sufferring from thirsty and stave.local people,chinese,good people from overseas help suffered without hesitate---that makes me moving .i want to say thanks to all the people who care about wenchuan earthquake and wish god bless all of you who gave your helping hand to the suffered.

Books are one of our greatest resources, but many times in history books have been written which are misleading or untrue. In some cases this has lead to widescale death and destruction and evil governmental regimes. This is a list of ten of the worst books of this type - books that have done more harm than good. The common thread in all of these books is deception - invariably not intentional, but the consequences are the same regardless. 10 Malleus MaleficarumHeinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, 1486 On the list because: It inflamed witch hunts across Europe Malleus Maleficarum (The...

By Mike Celizic TODAYShow.com contributor updated 10:45 a.m. ET, Thurs., May. 15, 2008 After a “roller-coaster life” that she says includes a childhood of abuse at the hands of her mother and a rape at gunpoint by her husband and two other men — a roller coaster that took her from the pinnacle of sports stardom to turmoil and ignominy — Tonya Harding says she’s at peace. And she wants people to know that she’s not the cartoon figure that she’s been portrayed to be. “I am just a person who has led a roller-coaster life my whole entire life,”...

(Madison fire displaces 28 during finals) More than two dozen Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity members who were forced to flee their burning house in Madison now face finals week without their computers or books. None of the 28 fraternity members living at the house on Langdon St. near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus were injured in the fire, which was discovered late Monday by a police officer who saw a glow coming from the back of the building. But the residents lost their possessions in the blaze that destroyed the house and caused an estimated $750,000 in damage during the...

A while back, a friend at work told me that Gregory Peck (Atticus Finch) and Mary Badham (Scout Finch) corresponded until Mr. Peck died and that in that time he always called her "Scout" and she always called him "Atticus." That got me curious and I checked it out on IMDB and my search for To Kill a Mockingbird I found this ENTRY for what appears to be a remake from 1997. Anybody know if this really was done, or if it was a WIP that got the kibosh because of the utter stupidity? I'm thinking maybe it was an...

Page last updated at 11:37 GMT, Wednesday, 7 May 2008 12:37 UK Juno star Page to play Jane Eyre Ellen Page received an Oscar nomination for her role in Juno Juno star Ellen Page has signed up to play Jane Eyre in a new adaptation of the Charlotte Bronte novel. The role would mark the first period piece for Page, who has agreed to be in several contemporary films since her Oscar-nominated performance in Juno. BBC Films has said it will be developing the production, although a director has yet to be named. The 1847 novel tells the epic love...

I just started reading PHANTOMS by Dean Koontz, and I came upon something that doesn't make sense to me. The main character, Jenny Paige, walks into a sheriff's substation, where she sees a dead deputy's revolver on the floor next to his body. She checks the cylinder to see that three rounds were fired. On closer inspection of the floor, she sees three expended cartridges. My question is: if it's a revolver, shouldn't the spent cartridges remain in the cylinder? I always thought only an automatic expends the cartridge after a round is fired. Is this is a mistake by...

I just started reading PHANTOMS by Dean Koontz, and I came upon something that doesn't make sense to me. The main character, Jenny Paige, walks into a sheriff's substation, where she sees a dead deputy's revolver on the floor next to his body. She checks the cylinder to see that three rounds were fired. On closer inspection of the floor, she sees three expended cartridges. My question is: if it's a revolver, shouldn't the spent cartridges remain in the cylinder? I always thought only an automatic expends the cartridge after a round is fired. Is this is a mistake by...

Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of The Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling's hugely successful novel series, is just a "rearrangement" of her own material. Rowling "feels like her words were stolen," said lawyer Dan Shallman. Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender's Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling. A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training...

I'm trying to find the title and author of a fictional book I read 13 years ago. The book was written from a Soviet Tank Commander's point of view during a Soviet Invasion of west Germany. If anyone can help me out, I wouldgreatly appreciate it.

Howard Zinn's 'People's History of American Empire" shows U.S. as bad guy "A People's History of American Empire" (Howard Zinn: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Co) Howard Zinn is famous for his 1980 book, "A People's History of the United States." If history is usually written by the victors, Zinn tells it from the view of the oppressed, be they workers exploited by robber barons or minorities denied due rights. It's basically the same story here, but with cartoons. This is an illustrated history of America's often deadly meddling around the globe. ....The villain in this book is the United States....Zinn...

Nouns: accused addiction alligator amazement anchovies assassination backing bandit bedroom bump buzzers courtship critic dauntless dawn design dickens discontent embrace employer engagements excitements exposure eyeball fixture futurity glow gust hint immediacy investments kickshaws leapfrog luggage manager mimic misgiving mountaineer ode outbreak pageantry pedant perusal questioning reinforcement retirement roadway rumination savagery scuffles shudders switch tardiness transcendence urging watchdog wormhole zany Verbs: besmirch bet blanket cake cater champion compromise cow denote deracinate dialogue dislocate divest drug dwindle elbow enmesh film forward gossip grovel hobnob humour hurry impedes jet jig label lapse lower misquote negotiate numb pander partner petition puke rant reword secure...

ERNEST Hemingway and Hollywood had a tempestuous relationship - but his utter hatred of the movies made from his famed novels is now just coming to light. In "The Good Life According to Hemingway," out next month, A.E. Hotchner, who traveled the globe with him, bares a series of never-before-published slaps Hemingway took at the film business. When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in "A Farewell to Arms" and he'd pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: "If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs....