Free Republic

A mysterious crop circle in Bavaria has attracted thousands of visitors since it was spotted in a wheat field last week.The circle in Raisting, upper Bavaria, has a diameter of 75 metres and is formed of three rings. It was discovered last week by hot air balloonists and word quickly spread through internet forums of the find. “They sang, danced, played guitar... and slept in the field,” a woman who lives nearby said of the area’s new visitors to the site, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. Many visitors believe it was not formed by humans. “This is a technology which we...

LIVE THE WAGE: Politicians can’t seem to figure out how to live on $77 a week – could you? In an effort to gain sympathy for raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, numerous politicians accepted a challenge to “Live the Wage.” To no one’s surprise, they couldn’t do it. They were going to live for a week on $77 because that’s all that the challenge sponsors say a full-time worker earning minimum wage makes, after average taxes and housing expenses are deducted, of course. But then, they weren’t supposed to be able to get by on that...

Anyone else just get an odd Emergency Alert that stopped halfway through?

"(A natural EMP event) today would cause a massive disruption to the electric grid, possibly shutting it down entirely for months or longer, with unimaginable consequences," Singer wrote. "Only two years ago, the sun let loose with a Carrington-magnitude burst, but the position of the earth at the time prevented the burst from hitting it. The chances of additional events of such magnitude may be far greater than most people think." Carrington refers to a solar storm in 1859 that caused telegraph systems to fail around the world. Singer warned that a man-made EMP attack would be even worse.

The price of a stabilized green power grid is very steep, one could say it is like a “hockey stick”Story submitted by Eric Worrall  (h/t John Droz)Coal and gas electricity companies are being paid up to 400x times the wholesale price of power, in return for helping to stabilize the German electricity grid.According to Bloomberg, “Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that the government is paying more utilities than ever to help stabilize the country’s electricity grid.” “At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of...

I don’t think Gina McCarthy had thought this through. McCarthy to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: “And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants…It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units,” “This is an investment strategy that will really not just reduce carbon pollution but will position the United States to continue to grow economically in every state, based...

Well at least on Fox and Conservative Radio,the hosts have brought up this issue over the last few weeks.Most if not all of the hosts on Fox have said something like,what has to happen to cause President Obama to stop taking vacations/golfing/fund-raising to send him back to the White House?Maybe if Kim Kardashian breaks a nail?Or maybe if Tiger Woods is sent to the hospital from a "Golf Club Assault"?,or how about Beyonce has a major wardrobe malfunction and is traumatized from world-wide expose? Maybe some of us here can take some guesses to which event will send Barry back...

<p>The mystery of how a woman could have been filmed while using a modern cell phone back in 1938 seems to have finally been solved.</p> <p>Black and white footage of a young female chatting into a wireless handset - said to have been filmed at a factory in the United States in the 30s - has attracted over 300,000 plays on YouTube.</p>

A study released Monday at the conference shows that vulnerable communities in Nigeria fared far worse after legislation was passed criminalizing gay male sex. And in a panel scheduled for Wednesday , researchers were expected to discuss way to help advocates, doctors and patients combat stigma. The past year has seen both unprecedented advances in gay rights - with expanded marriage equality in the U.S. – and even more significant setbacks, with discriminatory laws passed in Nigeria and Uganda and Russia's president Vladimir Putin speaking out against gay rights, said Richard Parker, a professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman...

LifeNews recently published an article by Mark Leach about what happened when his baby was born with Down syndrome. Leach describes how he and his wife felt abandoned by the medical establishment and how the hospital gave them outdated and scant information about Down syndrome. In response to his experience, and the experiences of many other Down syndrome parents, he has become the bioethics specialist at the National Center for Prenatal & Postnatal Down Syndrome Resources, and works to get positive, life-affirming information into the hands of new Down syndrome parents and those who go through prenatal testing for Down...

Essay by Dr. Tim Ball (Elaboration of my Heartland Climate Conference Presentation) We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge. Rutherford RogersSo-called climate skeptics, practicing proper science by disproving the hypothesis that human CO2 is causing global warming, achieved a great deal. This, despite harassment by formal science agencies, like the Royal Society, and deliberate neglect by the mainstream media. It combined with an active and deliberate Public Relations campaign, designed to mislead and confuse. Most people and politicians understand little of what is going on so the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strategy of using created science for...

Governments can’t change the weather. One day people will marvel that turn of the century governments thought they could control the climate, and needed to issue decrees about how much “change” in the weather they would allow.From different continents come two articles with a similar theme. It’s time to dump the EPA and pointless “Climate” policies.The US should get rid of the federal EPA Alan Caruba and Jay Lehr tell us how it is. The EPA is a rogue tool of liberal activitists. For years now I have been saying that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must be eliminated and...

Just as many (23%) say the theory that Obama is not an American citizen is true, with another 17% who aren't sure. Sixty percent (60%) reject that theory as false.

Just throwing it out there. Nothing is impossible. I do foresee something like this in the short to mid term future. What's to stop them? Would our own government do anything if the populace of the southwest was over 55 percent "amnesty given" Latinos and Latino illegals?

“I was actually scared that it was so close to home, literally, it’s right here on my block,” said Allyson Deihl. “I’ve heard it on the news nationally and it’s scary to think that it’s happening in Jacksonville, in Riverside.” According to the police report, the man and woman spotted three men walking in their direction, then realized they were being followed. The report said that the woman grabbed her can of Mace from her purse, and then her boyfriend was punched, causing him to stumble to the ground. The woman told police that she tried to spray the men...

One of the more outrageous conspiracy theories about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 surfaced in the days following the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last week. The theory, which originated in Russia, holds that MH17 and MH370 are actually the same plane and that the U.S. military arranged for the second flight, filled with corpses, to be blown up over eastern Ukraine. This theory was described in a widely read account in the New Republic on Sunday by Russian-American Jessica Ioffe, which argued that Russian civilians were being fed a uniformly skewed interpretation of the events that brought...

No one can argue that Harry Reed is attacking wealthy political donors the Kock brothers but not a peep about; (via thesunlightfoundation.com ")Thomas Steyer, A long-time donor to Democratic causes, Thomas Steyer's contributions to federal and state elections have topped $40 million over the years, according to Influence Explorer. He contributed a whopping $32 million to California's Proposition 39, a tax initiative that won approval from voters in 2012, The Californian is a billionaire hedge fund maestro turned environmentalist who poured some $11.1 million into Super PACs in 2013." Since Harry Reed is standing on the senate floor only going...

A new kind of tracking tool, canvas fingerprinting, is being used to follow visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn. First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it. Like other tracking tools, canvas fingerprints are used to build profiles of users based on the websites...

I find it interesting that all of Texas' Most Wanted criminals are categorized as "White." Gotta boost those crime numbers!

← A flip-flop on Arctic permafrost thaws – actually a net cooling rather than a warming A conversation with Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on the Kaya Identity → Hard times for Aussie Alarmists – Flannery begs in new video Posted on July 18, 2014 by Anthony Watts Story submitted by Eric WorrallTim Flannery, one time head of the government Climate Commission in Australia, until it was disbanded by the current government, has released a video begging for donations to “keep science in the news”. A year after raising a million dollars, he now needs more money. Flannery has an impressive track record...