Free Republic

  Toward a Conceptual Framework for Capitalism by Edward W. Younkins The power of ideas is great. If we are to educate, persuade, and convert others to free-market thinking, we need to articulate, in structured form, the conceptual and moral foundations of free enterprise. We are obliged to expound a coherent and consistent body of principles that are in accord with reality and that properly reflect and explain capitalism. In other words, we must approach the idea of free enterprise from a philosophical point of view. The survival of free enterprise may be in jeopardy unless people understand its conceptual...

NASA to Announce 'Significant Findings' of Water on Mars Tuesday By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer posted: 03:30 pm ET 01 March 2004 NASA will hold a press conference Tuesday to announce "significant findings" about water on Mars based on evidence from its Opportunity Mars rover. "It's going to be the most significant science results that we've had from the rovers, and it's bearing on their primary mission," NASA spokesperson Don Savage told SPACE.com. That mission is to find signs of water that might support life. Will the announcement change how we think about Mars? "Anything of a significant...

When Paul wrote that Jesus emptied himself and became a servant and yet he was God, in what ways did he retain or not retain his powers of being God? by R. C. Sproul     The concept of "emptying" was a raging controversy in the nineteenth century, and elements of it remain today. The Greek word used by Paul in the second chapter of Philippians, kenosis, is translated as "emptying" in most Bible versions. The question is, Of what did Jesus, in his human (incarnate) state, empty himself?      The popular view in certain circles in the nineteenth century was...

In October 2003, the President’s Council on Bioethics published Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. This three-hundred-and-some-odd-page report summarizes the Council’s reflections on a wide variety of ethical issues that recent advances in biotechnology—from gene therapy for fetuses to the development of psychotropic and “age-retarding” drugs—have forced upon the public’s attention. This volume now has a mate: Being Human: Readings from the President’s Council on Bioethics. Each of these books is surely among the most unusual of documents ever to roll off the presses of a government printing office. (Both, incidentally, are available upon application from The President’s...

'Chicken flu poses threat to humanity' (Filed: 23/01/2004) A virus the World Health Organisation fears could set off an epidemic worse than Sars has spread further into Asia, with Thailand confirming several cases after the death of a chicken butcher. A patient suffering from 'bird 'flu' After declaring the country free of the bird 'flu, the Thai government said two boys, aged six and seven, were "critical but stable" with the disease. Three more people are being tested. At least five people in Vietnam, four of them children, are now known to have died in the latest outbreak of the...

If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later . . . bombs of unimaginable power would threaten the species; . . . that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch; . . . that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest . . . the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad. --Michael Crichton I - WHAT MANNER OF CREATURE ARE WE? It took 100,000 years for humans to get inches off the ground....

By comparing the human genome with that of chimpanzees, people's closest living relative, scientists have identified a partial list of the genes that make people human. They include genes for hearing and speech, genes that wire the developing brain, genes for detecting odors and genes that shape bone structure. The comparison, reported yesterday in Science, was undertaken by Dr. Michele Cargill and colleagues at Celera Diagnostics in Alameda, Calif., who decoded most of the genes in the chimp's genome, and Dr. Andrew G. Clark and colleagues at Cornell, who made the analysis. A more complete version of the chimp genome...

"the language of men who are, or who are waiting to be, slaves." The Man of Letters in the Modern World The invention of standards by which this difference may be known, and a sufficient minority of persons instructed, is a moral obligation of the literary man. But the actuality of the difference does not originate in the critical intelligence as such; it is exemplified in the specific forms of the literary arts, whose final purpose, the extrinsic end for which they exist, is not the control of other persons, but self-knowledge. By these arts, one means the arts without...

Preaching abundant living The Rev. Della Reese Lett teaches lessons of material success and personal empowerment in her own church. Della Reese, who played a down-to-earth heavenly being on "Touched by an Angel" isn't acting as she stands in front of a congregation on Sundays in West Hollywood. She's preaching — in her own church. And her message has no mention of sin, no mention of good and evil and no endorsement of sacrifice if it means doing without. She talks about abundant living, not in the hereafter but in the here and now.

HAVANA -- Tony Díaz Sánchez, of the Liberation Christian Movement, is imprisoned at Holguín, 1,000 miles from his hometown, Marianao. To see him, his wife, Gisela, daughters Yeni, 16, and Lázara Massiel, 4, and his brother Carlos must make a long trip, filled with the difficulties of the Cuba of the poor. The visits occur every three months, and on Oct. 14, the family carried ''the basket'' -- a bag of sugar, a bag of powdered milk, a little oil, a powdered beverage, but no proteins, because prison officials do not permit them. The officials allow only 30 pounds of...

This Aug. 23, 2003 IKONOS satellite image shows the aftermath of the explosion that destroyed the Brazilian VLS-1 V-03 rocket designed to carry two satellites into orbit. The Aug. 22 explosion killed 21 people after an engine ignited by mistake while on its launch pad. The rocket exploded at its jungle base of Alcantara, in the northeastern state of Maranhao, Brazil. The image shows the burned vegetation and the collapsed launch pad. A before image taken on Sept. 5, 2001 is also available for comparison. The image may be used to support reporting of this story in print, broadcast and...

James Boswell, during his London socializing, once found himself in the company of an aged peer of the realm. Never at a loss for a conversational opening, Boswell asked the old boy whether, looking back on his long life, he could see any pattern or purpose in it. No, replied His Lordship, it had all been "a chaos of nothing." This came to mind when I read those news stories about recent advances in the understanding of aging, and hopes for dramatically extending human life. Now, in the first place, I am skeptical, not to say cynical, about science-news stories...

Blair accused by Greeks of crimes against humanity By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels (Filed: 29/07/2003) Tony Blair was accused yesterday of "crimes against humanity" in a lawsuit lodged at the International Criminal Court in The Hague by Greek lawyers. The Athens Bar Association filed 22 charges against the Prime Minister and senior Cabinet members, alleging that they invaded a sovereign country on a dubious pretext. "The repeated, blatant violations by the United States and Britain of the stipulations of the four 1949 Geneva conventions, the 1954 Convention of The Hague as well as of the International Criminal Court's charter constitute...

I am getting ready to self publish a book of poetry that I have written, one or two of them I have submitted here, looking to find supporters, I will be producing 50 books to begin with, and do a book signing, please let me know what you think,also here is a link to one of the poems i submitted. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/894697/posts

Proposed Cuts Could Impact Queens’ School Lunch Program by Jessica Bruder, Chronicle Correspondent May 01, 2003 It’s Friday afternoon at Long Island City’s PS 166, and a girl is nibbling on a pizza crust while waiting in line to throw away her lunch tray. All around her, the cafeteria buzzes while kids eat their lunches, many provided by the government.    Four out of five children at PS 166, 948 out of 1,164 students in all, are considered poor enough to qualify for federally funded school lunch. But according to child advocates, many of them risk losing their subsidized meals if...

From "TransExodus: The Enduring Secular Reformation, Pluralist Transhumanism, and Posthuman Pilgrims", by George P. Dvorsky, February 16, 2003: A large community of genetically modified posthumans and fyborgs, fed up with antiquated and restrictive biolegislation, depart Earth to parts unknown. Similarly, a group of clones, hoping to flee religious persecution and threats from terrorists, build a spacecraft and head to Rigel Kentaurus. And unnerved by the revivalist turn taken by the World Government and its parliamentary human majority, an entire population of cyborgs permanently upload themselves into a secure and massive supercomputer on Titan and establish an isolationist polis of their...

On a Mission for Humanity By Dale McFeatters - Scripps Howard News Service With a certain chilling coincidence, the shuttle Columbia's fatal breakup comes in the 100th year since the Wright brothers first took flight. It is a harsh reminder that mankind's determination to slip the bonds of Earth is a dangerous enterprise. In the 17 years since the Challenger, space flight had again settled into a seemingly predictable routine. At age 77 John Glenn returned to space. The Russians even took a paying tourist aloft. The Columbia itself was on its 28th mission. The sudden loss of seven admirable...

Russian scientist Alexander Bolonkin develops artificial intelligence in the USA It was shown in my previous articles about the artificial intelligence and human immortality that the issue of immortality can be solved fundamentally only with the help of changing a biological bubble of a human being to an artificial one. Such an immortal person made of chips and supersolid materials (the e-man, as it was called in my articles) will have incredible advantages in comparison with common people. An e-man will need no food, no dwelling, no air, no sleep, no rest, no ecologically pure environment. Such a being...

<p>At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies released a triad of studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been.</p>

JERUSALEM (AP) - A Palestinian girl was recovering well Monday after she received a kidney from a Jewish seminary student from Scotland who was among six people killed in a Palestinian suicide bombing, hospital officials said. Yasmin Abu Ramila, 7, a resident of Jerusalem, had been on a transplant waiting list and undergoing dialysis for almost two years, an Israeli Health Ministry official said. A donor became available when Jonathan Jesner, 19, a seminary student from Glasgow, died on Friday, a day after he was critically wounded in a Tel Aviv bus attack claimed by the Islamic militant group Hamas....