Free Republic

A toothless skull was all that researchers had of one of Scotland's oldest known Druids, but now they have something more: a wax re-creation of her face, showcasing her gnarled wrinkles and seeming intense determination. The Druid woman, nicknamed Hilda, lived during the Iron Age. An anatomical analysis suggests that Hilda made it into her 60s, an impressive feat because most women from that region and time lived only until their early 30s, said Karen Fleming, a forensic art and facial identification master's student at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

I will not again indulge any vanity posts on Free Republic. I ain't reading yours. Don't read mine.

A Milton Catholic girls’ school and a gay Dorchester man are in a legal fight in Norfolk Superior Court over religious freedom vs. sex discrimination after a job offer was rescinded when he revealed he is married to a man.

Shortly after my wife went into labor for the birth of our son in June, I quietly started freaking out. We were in a small city in southwestern Japan, and the tiny hospital seemed rundown compared to the shining new medical buildings in Boston. The wallpaper was peeling away, a bed appeared to have a broken guardrail, and a ceiling corner sported an exposed electronics board that once housed a security camera. As my wife screamed from the contractions, all those horror stories about universal care that I heard during the health-care bill debate popped into my head. But after...

A Walpole firm that sells seafood and other food products to military commissaries around the world has been caught up in the bureaucratic nets at the Pentagon. Alder Foods Inc., which has sold its frozen Rainbow Seafood Company shrimp and other food items to military personnel for 45 years, says it will probably have to close up shop by the end of the year unless the Pentagon reverses a recent rule change that the firm says will sink its operations. “I can seriously say we will not be a business anymore,” said Michelle Keating, chief executive of the 30-employee Alder...

Longtime Israeli military Ally Turkey sanctions a run by avowed terrorist group Hamas at a three year long blockade of the Gaza shore maintained by its non NATO Ally Israel. A bunch of goons and stooges embark upon a provocation of Israeli Defense Forces in the clear belief that the United States under Obama has clearly signaled that the time has come to end the Zionist entity. President Obama who has to this date only allowed an erstatz Birth Certificate to be released verifying his status as a "natural born citizen" is conveniently off on Holiday with his pal Louis...

Oh those poor Gazans. All out of missiles are they? Supply Chain Management is evidently not their specialty. Hurling explosives through the sky toward Kindergarten classes is more their expertise. So now they can't launch rockets into private homes in Israel anymore because the peace loving flotilla with bags of cement and wheelchairs for the maimed former failed suicide bombers can not be inspected by Israeli watchdogs. Cry me a river. Perhaps they should have learned that they don't bring alleged bags of cement through a Naval blockade. Certainly not without a Navy anyhow. Perhaps the Gazans should have tried...

BROCKTON — It began with a 6-year-old city boy touching a girl in his class, and it ended up costing the city $50,000 in legal fees – plus thousands more in city insurance payouts totaling nearly a quarter-million dollars.    The elementary school student, accused of sexually harassing a classmate as a first-grader in 2006, will receive a total of about $160,000 in a legal settlement reached with the city. His parents received $20,000.       The boy, then 6, was suspended from the Downey Elementary School for three days after school officials accused him of sexually harassing a classmate. The...

STOUGHTON — Jordana Bryan traveled over 2,500 miles from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Massachusetts for one, selfless purpose: to donate her kidney to someone she met via the Internet. Bryan, 56, met Charles “Chickie” Hoffman, a 69-year-old electrical contractor from Stoughton, on the Canton-based Web site MatchingDonors.com, a nonprofit organization that connects organ donors with patients in need of transplants. Several months since their initial Internet meeting and dozens of invasive tests later, Thursday morning, Bryan and Hoffman will undergo a kidney transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Bryan, a professional caregiver by trade, is no stranger to the...

FORT WORTH, Texas - Weapons sellers say gun enthusiasts won’t have to bite the bullet much longer, as a nearly yearlong nationwide ammunition shortage may be winding down. “We’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” said DeWayne Irwin, owner of Cheaper Than Dirt, a Fort Worth store and online retailer. Demand for guns and ammo began growing last year before the November presidential election, partly because many gun owners were concerned that President Obama and Democrats in Congress would reinstate an assault weapons ban or drastically raise taxes on ammunition, guns and firearms materials. “It was the...

Guess what event took this business out of the national headlines?   Forty years ago today.    

<p>Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.</p> <p>After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I've concluded that graduates of the service academies don't stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I've been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.</p>

BOSTON — Handgun sales went up 46 percent at Smith & Wesson. FBI background checks required for gun purchases spiked. Local firearms safety courses are booked solid. Businesses and groups that deal with prospective gun owners say more people have been buying firearms in recent months. But the reasons why vary, from fear that the Obama administration will expand gun controls to anxiety about crime and the slumping economy. “It’s fear, anxiety and ‘get ’em while you can,’” said Peter Tache, owner of M&M Plimoth Bay Outfitters in Plymouth, where AR-15s and other military-pattern semiautomatic rifles, once heavily restricted as...

Nantucket will curtail its 30-year rodent program, saving dollars and, alas, a few rats, too. Health director Richard Ray said more than money was at issue. The town is worried about liability now that the rats have grown so immune to the poison that the amounts needed to kill them are fatal to pets and other animals. “We’re not getting into the field any longer so we don’t have control to deal with the placement of this stuff,” he said. “We don’t want to see an incident where a family pet gets into this stuff.” High demand for rat eradication...

Restaurateur George Carey understands the power and economics of oil - vegetable oil, that is. The owner of Finz Seafood & Grill is now using waste oil from his restaurant’s deep-fryers to generate electricity and hot water at his Dedham location and save thousands of dollars in utility costs. The oil is being recycled into fuel through a Vegawatt, a new clean energy cogeneration system designed for restaurants and food service operators that’s produced by Owl Power Co., a Boylston start-up founded last February. Finz is the first restaurant using the Vegawatt, which essentially is a diesel generator engine that’s...

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. ............

How much is a CEO worth? What is appropriate compensation for the leader of a large and complex organization? The standard reply has always been, “Let the market decide.” Lately, though, markets have proven themselves to be spectacularly ill-suited to be the last word on just about any issue. Even before Alan Greenspan recently and belatedly figured it out, “the invisible hand” and “magic” of the markets were mostly what their airy nomenclature implies: figments of irrational economic exuberance. Markets have never been stand-alone forces of nature; rather they are shaped, controlled and guided by human beings as fallible and...

WEST BRIDGEWATER — No, it isn’t a scene out of “The Simpsons” — the town of West Bridgewater has been charged $2,000 for radioactive kitty litter found in a trash Dumpster. A trash bag filled with the contaminated litter was discovered during a scan for radioactive material at the SEMASS waste facility in Rochester. It is believed to have come from a West Bridgewater cat receiving radiology treatment for cancer whose owner neglected to properly dispose of the litter. The scans for radioactive material became mandatory for SEMASS after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Brian Adams, a spokesman...

(An anti-war activist seeks permission to set up a table in the high school hallway — just like military recruiters.) RAYNHAM, Mass. — Some call it counter-recruitment. Ray Ajemian prefers to call it “truth in advertising.” Whatever the terminology, the question of whether the Bridgewater-Raynham schools in Raynham, Mass., should allow anti-war groups equal access to students as military recruiters will be taken up Wednesday at a meeting of the Counter Recruitment Subcommittee. The meeting will take place at the LaLiberte Elementary School in Raynham. Ajemian, 66, a member of Bridgewater-based Citizens for an Informed Community, an anti-war group, wants...

Massachusetts State Tax Form excerpt     Form 1, Resident Income Tax Return (Full-year resident only. Includes Schedule HC, Health Care Information)IMPORTANT: Beginning in tax year 2007, Schedule HC, Health Care Information, MUST be filed with Form 1. Failure to do so will result in a delay in the processing of your return.     Schedule HC, Health Care InformationIMPORTANT: Beginning in tax year 2007, Schedule HC, Health Care Information, MUST be filed with Form 1. Failure to do so will result in a delay in the processing of your return. 2007