Free Republic

In the 1970s, Americans were told we were in a global cooling crisis and if something wasn’t done, we’d enter a new ice age. When that didn’t happen, a few decades later we were told that entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend was not reversed by the year 2000. Despite the consistent failure of these apocalyptic warnings, that hasn’t stopped climate change alarmism. We’re now being told we only have 12 years to combat climate change, and the solution is to fundamentally dismantle the system of...

If you ask most young people today if they have any hobbies, you will receive one of four answers: 1. "No." 2. "What do you mean?" 3. "Yeah. I play video games/watch TV/watch movies." 4. "Yeah..." and then they may actually cite a hobby. The fourth is the least common. Dan Scotti, lifestyle writer at the website Elite Daily, and a millennial, wrote a perceptive piece on the matter titled, "Why Don't Millennials Have Hobbies Anymore?" "None of my friends have hobbies," Scotti wrote. And he was honest enough to include himself in this assessment: "With a pair of iPhone...

the United States takes action now to improve its innovation and commercialisation processes, it will lose its leading position by all measures of innovation by 2029, the authors of a new report have claimed. The outlook is similarly gloomy for the EU and the UK, with the study predicting that East Asian countries – mainly China and South Korea – are set to race past their western counterparts in patent grant numbers, patent quality growth, and return on R&D spend, among other metrics. Jointly produced by the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) and PatSnap, the Innovation Arms Race 2018 report...

With dynamic growth and access to capital seen as primary factors for jumping three places, the US has regained its status as being on the cutting edge of competitiveness in a ranking by the IMD think tank. A competitive ranking of 63 advanced economies published on Wednesday showed the United States improving three positions to return to the top spot, overtaking Hong Kong, Singapore and the Netherlands, and leaving Switzerland behind.As the top five most competitive countries in the world remained the same — changing only in their order — the American economy's comeback was mainly driven by economic performance,...

If you're looking for some motivation today to get you through a task you're struggling with, take some time to learn about David Aguilar. David, who was born with an under-developed arm, successfully created himself a prosthetic arm made entirely out of Lego. Not only that, it only took him five days to complete the first model. Since then David has perfected his design and created another arm with a motor that gives him more functionality than ever.

Canada's Prime Minister will be meeting with a special guest to discuss how science in Canada rules. Justin Trudeau and Bill Nye the Science Guy will be having a public discussion tomorrow about the 2018 Federal Budget, which was recently unveiled.The two will be participating in an armchair discussion at the University of Ottawa and will be highlighting investments in Canadian innovation. The 2018 budget proposes an investment of nearly $4 billion in Canada’s research system to support the work of researchers and to provide access to state-of-the-art tools and facilities.

There is a new wave of coders and hackers looking to upend the entire internet, signaling the start of a brand new space race. No, this isn’t an episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley, this is actually happening. Currently, the internet is built by large centralized services including server owners, data managers, cloud providers, search engines, telecommunication companies, and social media websites. And these entities are beginning to expand their reach. Internet security and net neutrality are quickly becoming hot topics as more people become aware of the dangers of centralization. And for good reason. Google, Amazon, and Facebook are racing...

Students study Aristotle and John Locke, while learning farming, construction and wilderness skills. No $45,000 tuitions here. Tuition maxes out at $10,000 for a residential master’s degree, $7,000 for residential undergraduates.

After two successful efforts to replace small bridges in 55 hours over one weekend, the Pennsylvania Turnpike says it is looking for more opportunities to use the fast-replacement approach. In late September, the turnpike was closed for a weekend between Cranberry and Beaver Valley to replace a bridge in New Sewickley Township. Crews built the new bridge directly beside the existing structure, demolished the old bridge and used paraffin to slide the new bridge across beams into place. Earlier this month, it replaced another bridge on the Northeast Extension in Lehigh County. In that case, sections of the new bridge...

Sustainability (sustainable development) is one of the hottest trends on college campuses, in the news media, in corporate boardrooms, and with regulators. There are three different versions.Real Sustainability involves thoughtful, caring, responsible, economical stewardship and conservation of land, water, energy, metallic, forest, wildlife and other natural resources. Responsible businesses, families, and communities practice this kind of sustainability every day: polluting less, recycling where it makes sense, and using less energy, water, and raw materials to manufacture the products we need.Public Relations Sustainability mostly involves meaningless, superficial, unverifiable, image-enhancing assertions that a company is devoted to renewable fuels, corporate responsibility, environmental...

People in New Orleans, Louisiana, have been voicing their discontent about the intrusion of the Interstate 10, or I-10, Freeway in their lives ever since it was completed in 1990. After years of debating and studying, they are ready to repair the damage it has caused with what they are calling a Cultural Innovation District. The community will not remove the Interstate since the city cannot afford it, and in the end, the cost of removing it wouldn’t measure up to its value, according to studies conducted. As a result, the city and designers decided to meet halfway and resurrect...

When Microsoft unveiled the first Surface tablet five years ago, it was a spectacular failure. At the time, the Apple iPhone was well on its way to conquering the technology industry, and the iPad appeared set to lead an even more devastating invasion of Microsoft’s office-worker kingdom. Microsoft conceived of Surface, an innovative laptop-tablet hybrid, as a way to show off the versatility of its software. Windows machines, it argued, could work as phones, personal computers and tablets. And didn’t everyone love Windows? Nope. Microsoft soon took a $900 million write-off for unsold Surfaces. Another effort to break into the...

Scientists, technologists, engineers, and visionaries are building the future. Amazing things are in the pipeline. It’s a big deal. But you already knew all that. Such speculation is common. What’s less common? Scale. How big is big? “Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, Silicon Dock, all of the Silicons around the world, they are dreaming the dream. They are innovating,” Catherine Wood said at Singularity University’s Exponential Finance in New York. “We are sizing the opportunity. That's what we do.” Wood is founder and CEO of ARK Investment Management, a research and investment company focused on the growth potential of today’s disruptive...

If you're wondering where the Washington, D.C., swamp is being drained as promised, look no further than the Federal Communications Commission and intrepid new Chairman Ajit Pai. For eight long years, the Obama administration circumvented our deliberative democratic process to impose laws via administrative fiat and his infamous "pen and phone." And no agency illustrated that malfeasance more than the FCC, where former Chairman Tom Wheeler in particular rammed through partisan policies and midnight regulations of dubious legality, often suffering the wrath of an unamused judicial branch for its shenanigans. Chief among those Obama FCC misdeeds was its relentless and...

Americans have become lazy, argues economist Tyler Cowen. They don't start businesses as much as they once did. They don't move as often as they used to. And they live in neighborhoods that are about as segregated as they were in the 1960s. All of this is causing the U.S. to stagnate economically and politically, Cowen says in his new book: "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream." Growth is far slower than it was in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and productivity is way down, despite everyone claiming they are working so hard. "Innovation is painful....

President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions. The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be...

It’s well-known among people who bother to learn the facts that U.S. manufacturing output continues to rise despite the reality that the number of Americans employed in jobs classified as being in the manufacturing sector peaked in June 1977 and has fallen, with very few interruptions, ever since.Nevertheless, some people – for example, the Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott – continue to insist that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is largely due to increased American trade with non-Americans. Other studies find empirical evidence that labor-saving innovation rather than trade is overwhelmingly responsible for the loss of manufacturing...

Innovation at best is like a water sprinkler on a nice healthy plant, making it grow and blossom; however, sprinkling without the plant is just like watering sand. Nothing happens. Currently, all over the world and with some 100 plus major innovation themed events yearly, complete with great photo opportunities for the local and national leaderships, most nations have little to show for these super expensive efforts. It seems that we talk a lot about innovation and find ourselves stuck in the suffocation of great ideas. And, suddenly the Trump nation erupts on a high note! Innovative excellence is the...

A whole new way to fight antibiotic resistance.Scientists have discovered that Tasmanian devil milk contains an arsenal of antimicrobial compounds that can kill some of the most deadly bacterial and fungal infections known to science - including golden staph. Tasmanian devils were found to produce six different types of these antimicrobial compounds - humans produce just one - and scientists were able to successfully synthesise them in the lab to test their effectiveness against a number of drug-resistant bacterial and fungal pathogens. When tested against 25 different bacterial and six fungal strains, the six varieties of antimicrobial compounds were found...

The United Nations on Friday approved an Israeli-sponsored resolution focusing on international innovation and development. The resolution, entitled "Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development," passed with 123 countries supporting it, 30 countries opposing, and eight abstaining, according to a statement from Israel’s UN mission. After months of diplomatic efforts, Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon succeeded in passing the resolution by working country by country to convince it of the importance of the law, notwithstanding the fierce opposition from the Arab bloc to all Israeli resolutions. The Arab member-states opposed the resolution, despite the fact that many elements of the decision...