Free Republic

A six-storey rubber duck won't call Toronto waterfront home until this summer — but it's already making waves in the Ontario legislature. The 13,600-kilogram rubber duckie drew criticism, and many puns, from the Progressive Conservative tourism critic as he questioned why the province would help pay to bring the Instagrammable bath toy to Canada for a visit. "People are already treading water, trying to pay their bills, and you float this rubber ducky right in their faces?" Rick Nicholls said.

4Chan is very loosely defined as an image-pasteboard website, full of content of every imaginable category. Depending on whom you ask, 4Chan is either "the heart and soul of the Internet" or "where integrity goes to die" — a place for celebrity nude photo leaks, gamergate, and endless trolling. No matter what anyone's personal feelings about what goes on the site’s many boards, there’s no doubt about its contributions to internet culture. 4Chan brought us lolcats, Chocolate Rain, and RickRolling. Now the site's humor has a purpose, making fun of the Islamic State (a.k.a.: "Daesh"). This could be bad for...

A giant yellow rubber duck floating on Nanming River in China's south-west Guizhou Province has reportedly been swept away by floodwaters just months after it exploded on display in Taiwan. The 18m (59ft) sculpture by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman disappeared around 19:00 local time on Wednesday, after the city saw days of heavy rainfall, the Taiwan-based Want China Times reports. Even though the duck weighs 1 tonne, and was sitting on a 10 tonne metal platform lashed to the riverbed with steel wires, it was easily dislodged by the storm. "The duck flopped over and was flushed away really quickly...

HONG KONG, - Thousands of people snapped pictures of a 54-foot-tall rubber duck floating in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor. The inflatable duck, created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, raised a stir and attracted crowds of hundreds when it floated into the harbor while a brass band played at Ocean Terminal, CNN reported Friday. "Hong Kong has been changed forever," the artist said. Hofman said the duck may look like a giant children's toy but it is meant to appeal to adults. "I see it as an adult thing. It makes you feel young again. It refers to your childhood when...

A 90-year-old woman spent three days trapped in her bathtub after becoming too weak to pull herself out, the San Jose Mercury News reported Thursday. Shirley Madsen, of Walnut Creek, Calif., survived her ordeal by drinking water from a rubber duck with a hole in the bottom. When Madsen got into the tub on May 27, she forgot to put her phone within reach and could not call for help when she got trapped. Madsen survived for three days stuck in the bathtub by continually replacing the cooling bath water with fresh water from the tap to stay warm. She...

Challenged to probe under Greenland's glaciers, NASA robotics expert Alberto Behar wondered what mechanism might endure sub-zero cold, the pressure of mile-thick ice and currents that sometimes exceed the flow rate of Niagara Falls. As Dr. Behar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory soon discovered, though, there isn't much money for global-warming experiments in Greenland... Unfazed, he thought of one device that might survive such extremes at a cost his field expedition could readily afford — a two-dollar rubber duck. Each duck was imprinted with an e-mail address and, in three languages, the offer of a reward.

Thousands of rubber ducks to land on British shores after 15 year journeyBy BEN CLERKIN - More by this author »Last updated at 22:00pm on 27th June 2007 Comments (9)They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world. The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years...

As we in the Western world have come to expect, many Muslims and Islamic organizations claim "outrage" at almost anything and everything they can find. They rioted, burned buildings and vehicles over cartoons that parodied their prophet Muhammad. Then Muslims rioted, burned buildings and vehicles and even murdered a nun when Pope Benedict XVI quoted a 14th century Emperor who was critical of Islam. Like the Left, apparently, they have little to do-except riot or protest and attempt to silence all of those who have the unmitigated gall to disagree with their tenets of belief. Political correctness has completely taken...