Free Republic

The founder of the website "Free Republic", Jim Robinson, has joined a growing boycott of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) due to a homosexual activist group sponsoring the event. GOProud, a group that advocates same-sex "marriage," a repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and "expanding access to domestic partner benefits" for homosexuals, is listed as a sponsor of the event at CPAC's website. Mr. Robinson has joined a number of conservative activists including Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver, and Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of...

Leftists who decried the War on Terror now use the same terminology to describe center-Left members of their own party. On last night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Ed Schultz interviewed Katrina vanden Heuvel about President Obama’s “sellout” on the health care bill. Katrina complained Obama’s is “a White House which has emboldened the conservadems, people like Joe Lieberman” who “is now holding hostage” socialized medicine. She repeated the elocution moments later while appealing to “citizens who don’t want to be held hostage by the insurance companies.” Schultz thanked her for appearing, adding, “Always the truth coming from you...

In an interview for Nation magazine, former President Jimmy Carter says that current President Barack Obama is “the best in my lifetime, maybe the best this country has ever had.” Key to the high praise was Carter’s assessment that “President Obama is the most brilliant man to ever have held the office. He is wise beyond the boundaries we normally observe for human beings. That is probably why his Administration is our nation’s most unprecedented in history.” “Of course, being the first black man to be elected president has to rank as the most unprecedented accomplishment ever achieved by anyone...

Here is a short horror comedy film by Richard Gale. Saw it at the Nevermore Film Festival earlier in the year. I know many a FReeper will find this as funny and enjoyable as I did. The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon

A recent road trip convinced this traveler that the radio airwaves are saturated these days with self-proclaimed experts who are espousing more solutions to our economic woes than there are problems. A recent visit to the Will Rogers Center in Claremore, Okla., convinced this observer that what this country needs is not another talk show host, but instead, someone with the character, integrity and sense of humor of Rogers. Some say that Rogers invented talk radio and at the peak of his career could lay claim to several million daily listeners. His commentaries were never cruel and were based on...

Like all of this year's graduates, Moshe Kai Cavalin is excited that he completed college, with a degree in astrophysics. But unlike the majority of college grads, Cavalin is only 11 years old and stands 4 feet, 7 inches tall. At the age of an average sixth-grader, Cavalin has gradated from East Los Angeles Community College. But, graduating college at 11 may not be his highest goal in life. "I want to be a movie actor and compete in the 2016 Olympics in martial arts," Cavalin told NBC affliate Wood TV.

Moshe Kai Cavalin, 11, graduates with honors from East Los Angeles Community College this week, but just don't call him a genius. 11-Year-Old Graduates From LA College Watch Video Moshe Kai Cavalin, 11, is graduating with honors from East Los Angeles Community College this week. "I consider myself a regular kid who works hard and does his best," says this only child of a Taiwanese mother and an Israeli father. When Cavalin started college at the age of 8, he may have been the youngest person in class, but he ended up tutoring some of his 19- and 20-year-old classmates...

Seeking signs of genius, a researcher recently reconstructed the shape of Albert Einstein's brain with techniques normally used to analyze fossils. This mold of thought, she believes, reveals the imprint of a rare intelligence that transformed our understanding of space, time and energy. By studying photographs of Einstein's brain taken at his death in 1955, paleoanthropologist Dean Falk at Florida State University identified a dozen subtle variations in its surface that may have heightened his ability to see physics in a new way. Her research suggests how the brain shaped the inner life of the 20th century's most famous mind....

More Roosevelt… Less Jimmy Carter… that’s what this brand needs! Folks, there’s been a lot of scrutiny of President Obama in these first 100 days. It goes with the territory. The attention is brutal no matter who’s in the Oval Office and it always will be. Exposure is something most marketers covet . . .but over-exposure especially of the wrong features can be deadly for a personal brand. That is why, Barack Obama –whom I’ve called a first-rate poli-marketer (see the past few weeks FOX Forum posts here)– had better stop behaving like Jimmy Carter and start emulating Roosevelt. In...

<p>As was asked when this issue was debated -- and resolved, we thought -- "If you don't trust a pilot to carry a gun, what the fuck are you doing allowing him at the controls of a plane carrying 300 people?"</p>

As a new book speculates that 'Britain's Einstein' was autistic, an autism expert warns that a prenatal test for the condition would prevent brilliant scientists like Paul Dirac from ever being born A new book on the greatest British physicist since Newton speculates that both his profound mathematical abilites and his extreme social awkwardness stemmed from undiagnosed autism. The claims – from a biography of Paul Dirac by Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man – tie in with an article on the BBC website from leading autism researcher Prof Simon Baron-Cohen. Baron-Cohen says we need a public debate about the prenatal...

The number of children entering New York City public school gifted programs dropped by half this year from last under a new policy intended to equalize access, with 28 schools lacking enough students to open planned gifted classes, and 13 others proceeding with fewer than a dozen children. The policy, which based admission on a citywide cutoff score on two standardized tests, also failed to diversify the historically coveted classes. In a school system in which 17 percent of kindergartners and first graders are white, 48 percent of this year’s new gifted students are white, compared with 33 percent of...

An oldie, but a goodie. And it really captures the attitude that Mr. Obama and his supporters have regarding themselves, Liberalism and their candidate.Operation: Rabbit

Bo (woof) In Commentary: Some think this dog is amazing. Me, I’m not surprised. (In case you missed this one, a Mission Viejo woman’s dog — a 9-year-old cockapoo known as Cookie Einstein — has become a celebrity of sorts for her apparent mathematical abilities, the O.C. Register’s Niyaz Pirani reported over the weekend. She [Cookie] adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides and calculates square roots and simple algebra through barking. And Cookie can answer if the question’s asked in either English or Spanish.) Bi-lingual and good in math…she must have scored well on her SATs. Cookie won’t respond to anybody but...

DOWNEY, Calif. - With the end of another school year approaching, college sophomore Moshe Kai Cavalin is cramming for final exams in classes such as advanced mathematics, foreign languages and music. But Cavalin is only 10 years old. And at 4-foot-7, his shoes don't quite touch the floor as he puts down a schoolbook and swivels around in his chair to greet a visitor. "I'm studying statistics," says the alternately precocious and shy Cavalin, his textbook lying open on the living room desk of his parents' apartment in this quiet suburb east of Los Angeles.

Until a week ago, her instinct was always the same: any time she was away from home, Halimahton Yusof would scan the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of her daughter's face. "I always looked for her. For the past few years I didn't even know whether she was alive," she says, her eyes moist with tears. "Every time there was a story on the news about an accident, or a death, I feared the worst. I just wanted to know she was alive." Child genius and now prostitute: Sufiah Yusof attended Oxford University at just age 13 Then, last...

Many leading figures in the fields of science, politics and the arts have achieved success because they had autism, a leading psychiatrist has claimed.Michael Fitzgerald, Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, argued the characteristics linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were the same as those associated with creative genius. (l-r) George Orwell, Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson Prof Fitzgerald cited Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, George Orwell, H G Wells and Ludwig Wittgenstein as examples of famous and brilliant individuals who showed signs of ASDs including Asperger syndrome.Beethoven, Mozart, Hans Christian Andersen and Immanuel Kant have also received post mortem...

Martin Camacho taught himself to read about age 1, his parents said. By 3, he was doing multiplication. As a 5-year-old, he tested into fifth grade, and at age 10, he started classes at Central High School in St. Paul. Now 12, Martin is tied for fourth in the state heading into the final meet of the high school math-league season. (skip) "It's an unusual talent," Roberts said. "We're going to hear a lot from him." It may seem odd to picture a 12-year-old walking the halls of a big city high school, but "it's natural now, after three years,"...

Scientists have discovered a huge active volcano under Antarctica. - The BAS team says data from the volcano will help it predict future rises in sea-levels caused by melting ice.

Zeffirelli Brands Mel Gibson's Passion Anti-Semitic; Calls Director “Bloodthirsty”   Thu Feb 26,12:12 PM ET     Godfrey DeenyFashion Wire Daily February 26, 2004 - New York - Franco Zeffirelli, the last person before Mel Gibson (news) to direct a major feature film on the life of Christ and someone who has himself directed the actor as Hamlet, has lambasted Gibson's controversial film The Passion as anti-Semitic.   "They tell me that in America, despite the ban on minors, that mothers absolutely want their children to see the film, in order to understand the suffering Jesus underwent to save...

Former President Bill Clinton says his wife is a “world-class genius” when it comes to improving the lives of others. Clinton contended that the ability to help others the most important quality in a president. “The reason she ought to be president, over and above her vision and her plans is that she has proven in every position she has ever had in life, whether it was in elected office or not, that she is a world-class genius in making positive changes in other people’s lives,” he said. “Look what she did for me. How many other wives would tolerate...

Here I sit. I sit in my computer room. My son, who is home from college after ace'ing his first semester final examinations...sits with me. We are discussing historical tidbits. World War II is the current subject.. We discuss certain aspects of the War in the Pacific in late 1944. I have Winamp playing selected numbers from Roger & Hammerstein's "South Pacific". My son holds in his hand one of my posssesions. A Rubic's Cube. I have owned this puzzle for a number of years. It has been sitting on my computer desk for many a month in a completley...

WOLFEBORO, N.H. - Former President Clinton says his wife is a "world-class genius" when it comes to improving the lives of others. ADVERTISEMENT Clinton stuck mostly to familiar themes in two hour-long appearances Thursday, describing at length what he views as the nation's biggest challenges. Nearly 15 minutes into his first speech, he added almost as an afterthought that "everything I'm saying here is my wife's position, not just mine." It was his third trip to New Hampshire in little more than a month, and the visit came the day before Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton was to return...

STAUNTON, Va. -- As Jackie Robson rushed off to Japanese 101, a pink sign on the main door of her college dorm reminded her to sign out. There were more rules: an 11 p.m. curfew, mandatory study hours, round-the-clock adult supervision and no boys allowed in the rooms. Jackie is 14. She never spent a day in high school. Like the other super-bright girls in her dorm, the Fairfax County teen bypassed a traditional education and countless teenage rites, such as the senior prom and graduation, to attend the all-female Mary Baldwin College in the Shenandoah Valley. The school offers...

My mother, rest her merry, brainy soul, convinced me early on that I was - as she liked to put it, quoting the cartoon character Yogi Bear - "SMARRR-ter than the average bear!" I happily assumed that my Yogi-like intelligence would ensure great things. My sense of entitlement grew when I easily won good marks in school, then grew some more when three different college professors told me I had a talent for writing. Rising to the top, I gathered, was a matter of natural buoyancy. The reality check came in my twenties, when nearly a decade of middling effort...

LOS ANGELES Kathleen Holtz only got her driver's license two years ago. Now, at 18, she's got a law license. Holtz learned Friday that she passed the California bar exam. "It's not a big deal to me," Holtz said of her age. Eighteen is the minimum age to practice law in California but 30 is the average age of admission to the state bar. Holtz was 15 when she entered law school at UCLA, where she was a Law Review editor. "If you sat in the same class with her for a whole semester, you would never know she was...

The E8 pattern (left), Garrett Lisi surfing (middle) and out of the water (right) Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt). In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. "Being poor sucks," Lisi says. "It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month."

A surfer dude with no fixed address may be this century's Einstein. A. Garrett Lisi, a physicist who divides his time between surfing in Maui and teaching snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, has come up with what may be the Grand Unified Theory. That's the "holy grail" of physics that scientists have been searching for ever since Albert Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity nearly 100 years ago. Even more remarkable is that Lisi, who has a Ph.D. but no permanent university affiliation, solves the problem without resorting to exotic dimensions, string theory or exceptionally complex mathematics. A successful Grand...

British brains dominate list of living geniuses By Aislinn Simpson Last Updated: 1:07am GMT 29/10/2007 Britain has more living geniuses per head of population than anywhere else in the world, according to a new survey which reveals the country's influence on science, technology, business and the arts. Almost a quarter of those featured in the list of 100 living geniuses are Britons, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, in joint first place, and physicist Stephen Hawking at seven in the list. British artists and musicians feature heavily, including Brit Art leader Damien Hirst at number 15,...

MENDELEEV SLEEP: The development of the periodic table of the elements was a leap forward in the chemical sciences. Although not responsible for discovering the elements he knew existed, Mendeleev organized the information available to him like no one else before him. It was his organizational skills that revealed something critically important to the advancement of mankind. What he discovered was new! Mendeleev noticed patterns in the properties and atomic weights of halogens, alkali metals and alkaline metals. According to the legend, Mendeleev had written what he knew about existing elements on the equivalent of flash cards and organized, reorganized...

With reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act high on the agenda as Congress returns from its recess, lawmakers must confront the fact that the law is causing many concerned parents to abandon public schools that are not failing. These parents are fleeing public schools not only because, as documented by a recent University of Chicago study, the act pushes teachers to ignore high-ability students through its exclusive focus on bringing students to minimum proficiency. Worse than this benign neglect, No Child forces a fundamental educational approach so inappropriate for high-ability students that it destroys their interest in learning,...

Tributes have been pouring in for Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential film directors of the 20th century, who died on Monday at his home on the Swedish island of Fårö. He was 89. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt hailed Bergman as "one of the great dramatists in this world," and French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid tribute to "one of the geniuses of our time." "The dream ended, the music went quiet that night on the island of Fårö, where Ingmar Bergman died," Sarkozy said. "France, a land of the cultural exception that was dear to Ingmar Bergman, honours...

LONDON — Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks. May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful. Queen were one of Britain's biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits...

Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French. But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed. Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152. This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking. According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest two-year-old she has ever met. Parents Martin and Lucy Brown have always...

Her parents knew Georgia Brown was bright. After all, she could count to ten, recognised her colours and was even starting to dabble with French. But it was only when their bubbly little two-year-old took an IQ test that her towering intellect was confirmed. Georgia has become the youngest female member of Mensa after scoring a genius-rated IQ of 152. Georgia Brown has an official genius-rated IQ - Intelligence Quotient - of 152 This puts her in the same intellectual league, proportionate to her age, as physicist Stephen Hawking. According to an expert in gifted children, Georgia is the brightest...

True pleasure comes from finding things out. Acquiring knowledge is like a zero dollar investment that can pay its owner dividends for the rest of their life. If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of breaking new intellectual ground, you know it’s transcendent. Discovery is a form of renewal, more revolutionary than any war or politics. Having experienced epic revelation is like being born again; renewed through cognitive baptism. When you know you’ve learned something [so extremely] important, it consumes you, that’s Shangri-La! Learning has an extremely spiritual dimension to it which makes it deserving of its own religion. Learnianity, for...

As the LAPD cracks down on the city's most violent street gangs, federal and county officials have launched their own campaigns to apprehend and deport gangsters who are in the county illegally. For the first time, federal immigration officers are tracking incarcerated gang members, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is creating a database of gang members who are in the U.S. illegally. The FBI is also strengthening its ties to international police agencies and hopes to create a gang intelligence center in El Salvador. "We want to connect the dots the same way we have been doing with...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

Top-seeded Roger Federer defended his title at the Australian Open, beating 10th-seeded Fernando Gonzalez 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-4 in Sunday's final. Australian Open Scoreboard Every match, both men's and women's, throughout the Australian Open. Complete Scores It was Federer's 10th Grand Slam title, and his third in the last four years in Melbourne. The win also extended his win streak to 36 matches, the longest of his career and fifth best in the Open era. Federer also became the first player since Bjorn Borg at the French Open in 1980 to win a Grand Slam title without dropping a set....

The sixteenth century was a period of tumultuous change in Western Europe. The need for some kind of moral and intellectual shake–up within the church had been obvious for some time. Many religious and political writers of the fifteenth century had been aware of the weaknesses of the medieval church and the society in which it was embedded. However, there are good reasons for thinking that few were really prepared for the radical events of the sixteenth century, which are generally referred to collectively as "the Reformation." The Reformation remains of central importance for Christian theology and the life...

Freud's Will to Power BY RONALD W. DWORKIN November 29, 2006 Legend has it that Freud, although educated in the philosophies of his day, studiously avoided the work of Nietzsche to preserve the originality of his ideas against external influence. Nietzsche's analysis of the human psyche, how values were supposedly projections of people's unspoken jealousies and fears, ran dangerously close to Freud's idea (still a work in progress at the end of the 19th century) that the roots of conscious behavior lay in unconscious desires. But after reading Dr. Peter Kramer's outstanding new biography of Freud (HarperCollins, 213 pages, $21.95),...

BOOK REVIEW & DISCUSSION: Ain't Got No Cigarettes: Memories of Music Legend Roger Miller By Lyle E Style "It's an endless story about Roger. He was one of the cleverest people I've ever met in my life." (Waylon Jennings) This is my own review of Ain't Got No Cigarettes, the first Roger Miller book ever published. My review is based on reading the book (twice) and having several discussions with Lyle E Style, the author. He may stop by later to answer questions (as his schedule allows). This one is a must-read, folks. And for you radio personalities who...

Parents and teachers call him St. Paul's low-key whiz kid. Jake Heichert grew up spurning studying, sleeping through the occasional exam — and, most recently, earning a rare pair of perfect scores on the ACT and SAT. Last week, his family sat around their living room, wondering how it all happened. Rich and Susan Heichert's only child received a 2400 on his SAT college assessment test in May. In February he scored a 36 on his ACT. He earned perfect 5s on his Advanced Placement tests in chemistry, U.S. history, and government and politics. Oh, and calculus, Jake added. Almost...

Maths genius declines top prize Photos of the reclusive genius are rare Grigory Perelman, the Russian who seems to have solved one of the hardest problems in mathematics, has declined one of the discipline's top awards. Dr Perelman was to have been presented with the prestigious Fields Medal by King Juan Carlos of Spain, at a ceremony in Madrid on Tuesday. In 2002, the mathematician claimed to have solved a century-old problem called the Poincare Conjecture. So far, experts working to verify his proof have found no significant flaws. There had been considerable speculation that Grigory "Grisha" Perelman would...

The Holocaust wasn't Hitler's fault. Darwin made him do it. Complicit as well are any who buy into the scientific theory that modern man evolved from lower animal forms. That's the latest lunacy from one of our more fanatical right-wing American Christian television outfits, the Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Coral Ridge espouses that America is not a free-religion nation, but a Christian one. It argues there should be no separation of church and state. Thus it's America's Taliban, America's Shiite theocracy. It certainly has a propensity for explaining or excusing Hitler. A few years ago it brought...

A boy genius from Adelaide has won the world's most famous maths prize. He gives Brendan O'Keefe a glimpse inside his extraordinary mind TERRY Tao was just two when he stunned a family gathering at home in Adelaide by giving a maths and spelling lesson to friends' children who were up to five years his senior. Using blocks, and knowledge he had gleaned from television, Tao showed the children how to add up and to make words. Tao's father, Billy, an Adelaide pediatrician, remembers his son's party-stopper. "The children were playing and the adults were talking ... suddenly, we found...

How does El Hombre match up against the Sultan of Swat? This spring, Washington University scientists, at the request of GQ magazine, put Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols through a series of tests similar to those given to Babe Ruth 85 years ago — tests ranging from finger tapping to visual responses to bat speed. The results? Both men aced the tests, and their results were strikingly similar. In 1921, psychologists at Columbia University put Ruth through scientific tests to try to determine what made him great. He had faster than average reflexes, steady nerves, and superior sight and hearing. The...

Grigory Perelman a no-show for his Fields Medal.Four mathematicians were today due to collect gold medals and glory in Madrid, Spain, having been declared winners of the 2006 Fields Medals — referred to as the 'Nobel prizes' of mathematics. But only three turned up. Grigory Perelman, a reclusive Russian mathematician who was widely expected to be one of this year's winners (see 'Maths 'Nobel' rumoured for Russian recluse'), was indeed honoured at the opening ceremony of the International Congress of Mathematicians. But after a round of applause, president of the International Mathematical Union John Ball said "I regret that Dr...

World's top maths genius jobless and living with mother By Nadejda Lobastova in St Petersburg and Michael Hirst (Filed: 20/08/2006) A maths genius who won fame last week for apparently spurning a million-dollar prize is living with his mother in a humble flat in St Petersburg, co-existing on her �’30-a-month pension, because he has been unemployed since December.   Grigory 'Grisha' Perelman The Sunday Telegraph tracked down the eccentric recluse who stunned the maths world when he solved a century-old puzzle known as the Poincare Conjecture. Grigory "Grisha" Perelman's predicament stems from an acrimonious split with a leading Russian mathematical...