Free Republic

The Department of External and Public Relations of the Bank of Russia informs that on 17 December 2012 in the framework of the monetary program "Sochi 2014" Bank of Russia issues bullion coins dedicated to the XXII Olympic Winter Games 2014 in Sochi: 3 Rubles silver, gold nominal 50 and 100, with the year of issue "2012".

The Wolfson Economics Prize, which challenges the world’s brightest economists to prepare a contingency plan for a break-up of the Eurozone, today (3rd April, 2012) unveiled a shortlist of five finalists. The shortlisted entries, though all very different from each other, provide valuable ideas about how best to manage a member state leaving the euro. The judges have given the finalists the opportunity to address key questions about their entry. Finalists will be given until the 29th of May to develop and resubmit their entries. Everyone who has progressed to this stage will be guaranteed a £10,000 share of the...

"Black box recordings from Air France Flight 447, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean two years ago, revealed new details about the plane’s final moments. But the report did not assign blame or give an explanation for the crash, which killed all 228 people aboard."

This open letter from a group of scientists [...] is entirely to the point, in my view as a radiation transport physicist who is intimately familiar with the processes by which x-rays deposit energy in tissue. [...] As it stands, these machines are a pure act of state-sponsored violence against anyone who is mislead into one. I would certainly not allow myself to be scanned by one of these machines, nor allow one of my minor children to be scanned by one. [...] Based on a back of the envelope calculation with a 50 KVp Bremsstrahlung spectrum and the standard...

Blogger 'Smash' reports why the rocket smoked and failed: "Mission aborted. LOX valve jammed and batteries discharged." "A $15 hair dryer should keep the LOX valve ice free, but it's difficult when there's no power. The igniters were fired, so they need to replace them."

The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district. More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins' school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district. Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled...

"This investigation into the remote spying allegedly being conducted against students at Lower Merion represents an attempt to find proof of spying and a look into the toolchain used to accomplish spying." "The primary piece of evidence, already being reported on by a Fox affiliate, is this amazing promotional webcast for a remote monitoring product named LANRev. In it, Mike Perbix identifies himself as a high school network tech, and then speaks at length about using the track-and-monitor features of LanRev to take surreptitious remote pictures through a high school laptop webcam."

I rarely agree with George W. Bush on anything, but he was right once. It was when he was running for President the first time. Back then he warned against wasting US lives and resources on "nation building" efforts abroad. Then he got elected and embarked on the most audacious, aggressive and illogical nation building effort in modern history. As a result the world got to see the wisdom of Bush's original position and the folly of his current one.

The Rossijskaya Gazeta reports (in Russian, see translation below) that first Moslem medical center has been created in Moscow, Russia. In that center everything is done the Moslem way.