Free Republic

In order for the memos to be “valid”, Killian would have had to: 1) Reject perfectly good, regular typewriters that were available to his unit and in general, that typed all other documents at the time. 2) Make extraordinary efforts to get equipment that – it is virtually certain – weren’t commonly available at that time. 3) Want to create (and thought about creating) 6 documents that were totally different from any others at the time. 4) Make documents that were different from any other then-contemporary documents. 5) Go through extreme Rube Goldberg contortions to make the documents (which even...

Thirty-five years ago when his swift boat on patrol in Vietnam was under heavy fire from the shore, John Kerry turned his craft right into the fire, beached the boat, chased down the enemy, and killed him. Now, Kerry ... is under a different kind of attack. ... (A) group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) has taken to the airwaves in three battleground states with an ad claiming that Kerry lied to get his first Purple Heart and his Bronze Star." snip Now, any political consultant worth his retainer would say that for any candidate--much less a...

Nano-transistor self-assembles using biology A functional electronic nano-device has been manufactured using biological self-assembly for the first time. Israeli scientists harnessed the construction capabilities of DNA and the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes to create the self-assembling nano-transistor. The work has been greeted as "outstanding" and "spectacular" by nanotechnology experts. The push to shrink electronic circuits to ever smaller dimensions is relentless. Carbon nanotubes, which have remarkable electronic properties and only about one nanometre in diameter, have been touted as a highly promising material to help drive miniaturisation. But manufacturing nano-scale transistors has proved both time-consuming and labour-intensive. The team,...

Nanotechnology Plan Headed to President Technology could create $1 trillion global market WASHINGTON, D.C. - The House gave final approval on a plan to invest nearly $4 billion in research and development into nanotechnology. The bill, a top Science Committee priority for the year, is now cleared for approval by the President, who is expected to sign the bill. Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) applauded passage saying, "The idea behind this bill is simple yet powerful - the American economy will grow bigger if America's scientists and engineers focus on things that are smaller. The U.S. is the leader...

Will al-Qaeda bring the royal house down? The Riyadh attack, believed to be the work of bin Laden’s supporters, was a challenge to the ruling House of Saud, finds Trevor Royle. Now they must decide whether to appease or confront the critics The bombs which ripped through the Muhaya residential compound in Riyadh last week did more than kill 17 innocent civilians, most of them workers from Lebanon and other Arab countries. They sent a powerful signal that Saudi Arabia is still on the frontline against terrorism and that more of the same can be expected in the months ahead....

The Belle collaboration at the KEK laboratory in Japan has discovered a new sub-atomic particle which it is calling the "X(3872)". The particle does not fit into any known particle scheme and theorists are speculating that it might be a hitherto unseen type of meson that contains four quarks (arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0309032; Phys. Rev. Lett. to be published). The discovery has been confirmed by the CDF collaboration at Fermilab in the US, where the new particle is being called the "mystery meson". Mesons are particles that contain a quark and an antiquark that are held together by the strong nuclear force. Since...

The following 60 second ad was aired on KFYI, Phoenix during the past few days. (The first sentence was – in essence – people fear what they don’t know) A woman’s voice: “Saudi Arabia is committed to reform. Just this year we passed legislation to create more jobs and opportunities. Economic success makes it harder for terrorists to take root.” “Our text books have been updated to remove references to intolerance.” "We’re modernizing our laws, holding open elections, opening our country and our minds to keep pace with a changing world.” "But, before you say it’s only talk, please stop...

Signals from cellphone masts can be used to track aircraft, monitor traffic congestion and spot speeding motorists without tipping them off that they are being watched. The radar-like system, which is still being developed, has provoked media reports of the start of a huge extension of Big Brother-style surveillance - privacy campaigners have complained that it could be used to track individual people. But radar experts say such fears are unfounded. Conventional radar works by transmitting a signal, listening for the reflection and using the time taken for the round trip to work out the object's distance. More sophisticated systems...

Rush Limbaugh and the Grandmother Test Jim Quinn Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 Ed Asner is out there bloviatiing about how "we got Limbaugh, and Hannity's next" and how he wants to play the life of the "misunderstood" Joe Stalin. OK, so Uncle Joe did starve 100,000 people to death, but he was a good dancer. One wonders if we have a Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy going on or just the ravings of a delusional old Commie who longs for a return to the days when we could all sit around at the Free Store in Berkley listening to Paul Robeson sing...

Poor villages in Thailand have found a great way to improve their lives and make a little money. They generate electricity using micro-hydroelectric equipment, and then sell on any surplus to neighbouring settlements. Instead of waiting for the state-sponsored electricity grid to get to them, they're doing it themselves. Scotland has found a winning formula for keeping its rivers unpolluted and full of wild salmon. Rather than rely on public ownership and government clean-up schemes, fishing rights are bought and sold. So the owners have a powerful incentive to make sure that streams are kept clean and well-stocked. Want to...

She was considered one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the silver screen, but Hedy Lamarr never wanted to be known as just a pretty face. . . . . . She is credited for patenting a technology that is used every day. Hers is a story that is something right out of … well … Hollywood. A Kept Woman Finds Freedom Upon the insistence of her parents, Hedy wed a prominent Austrian munitions tycoon by the name of Fritz Mandl. Mandl took his teenage bride everywhere, including prominent business meetings with his biggest client, the Nazi Party....

The administration's policy of minimizing harm to civilians is an unwarranted confession of guilt about waging a war strictly to safeguard America. In war, a country convinced of the rightness of its course expects its forces to subordinate all considerations to the objective of military victory. Our government, however, has adopted the indecisive policy of "balancing" the goal of defeating the enemy in Iraq with the goal of avoiding harm to civilians. When General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declares that great care is being taken to prevent civilian casualties, he is not referring to the...

Jake Porter is 17, but he can't read, can barely scrawl his first name and often mixes up the letters at that. So how come we're all learning something from him? In three years on the Northwest High football team, in McDermott, Ohio, Jake had never run with the ball. Or made a tackle. He'd barely ever stepped on the field. That's about right for a kid with chromosomal fragile X syndrome, a disorder that is a common cause of mental retardation. But every day after school Jake, who attends special-ed classes, races to Northwest team practices: football, basketball, track....

<p>GLENDALE (suburb of Phoenix)- Manuel Carpio didn't expect to cut his basketball game short Tuesday. He didn't expect to be home by 6 p.m. And he certainly didn't expect to save a toddler's life.</p> <p>Tyson Wright was no stranger to his second-story balcony. The 19-month-old had played on it before. But as his parents cleaned their apartment Tuesday evening, Tyson came up with a new way to amuse himself.</p>

(Nanotechnology will build molecular and atomic “assemblers” that can build products.) In the early 20th century, Henry Ford built a car manufacturing plant on a 2,000-acre tract of land along the Rouge River in Michigan. Built to mass-produce automobiles more efficiently, the Rouge housed the equipment for developing each phase of a car, including blast furnaces, a steel mill and a glass plant. More than 90 miles of railroad track and conveyor belts kept Ford's car assembly line running. The Rouge model was lauded as the most efficient method of production at a time when bigger meant better. The size...

The war in Iraq is pretty much over, except for junk scientists. For them, the war may continue for decades — just like Vietnam. Two developments bear this out. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) last week announced it would study sites in Iraq where armor-piercing weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) were used by coalition forces. Then, a new study was published this week in the journal Nature reporting the amount of Agent Orange sprayed in Vietnam was significantly underestimated. The researchers called for more study of U.S. troops and Vietnamese civilians in the sprayed areas. Both lines of study...

World affairs are being manipulated by a CIA/Zionist cabal. Evidence for it can be found in the fact that most people blame Islamo-fascists for 9/11. But you see, given the damage that 9/11 and other recent events have caused them, one could only believe Islamo-fascists responsible for 9/11 if you accept that they possess suicidal levels of stupidity. After all, 9/11 destroyed the power bases of Osama, Saddam and Yasser, may soon result in an American-style government in Iraq, and increased America's military involvement in the world. Since all these outcomes were fairly predictable given that 9/11 has been blamed...

Dutch research has revealed that pupils at special schools for primary education can best learn arithmetic using one specific strategy. When adding and subtracting with numbers less than 100, these pupils make least mistakes when using the so-called threading strategy (for example, 65 - 23 = 65 - 20-3). Bauke Milo investigated how children with learning difficulties can best learn to add and subtract numbers less than 100. Arithmetic lessons using modern methods challenge pupils to come up with their own solutions. However, children with learning difficulties require a different approach. The skills expected in modern arithmetic education are out...

How easy is it to make ricin poison? "You just get a bunch of castor beans and grind them up," says immunologist Ellen Vitetta of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Stockpiles were recently discovered in Afghan caves used by al Qaeda; Iraq is also known to have supplies. Scientists have worked for years to find a vaccine (the poison is so hard to recognize in its victims that an antidote would be impractical) but without success—until Vitetta and colleagues came upon it. The poison is best known for its role in a notorious cold war espionage murder. In...

Two DNA techniques could be used to identify the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, says experts. One offers relative ease, in that the DNA samples required should be available, but the other offers far more certainty. The US-led invasion of Iraq is now almost complete, and military forces are now searching for the leaders of the deposed regime. Identifying Saddam - dead or alive - will not be easy, as he is believed to have used many doubles. US forces claim to have DNA samples from Saddam and his sons, but will not reveal what form they take, or how...