Free Republic

Even as a Salon writer publishes thinly-veiled chick porn about the unreconstructed Slavic men that animate her fantasies (she’s exaggerating — trust me), American women are cheerfully thinking up ways to exterminate their “ineffectual� husbands. Last summer, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl – which sold more than two million copies and is being made into a Hollywood film – brought out unsettling streaks in some of my married girlfriends. With Flynn’s husband-hating heroine, Amy, as their role model, these women sat around planning the imaginary stitching-up and neutralisation of their spouses over last orders and a dwindling bowl of edamame beans....

Although its application in the technology sector has given 3-D printing a high profile, a number of Chinese entrepreneurs and investors have expressed a pessimistic view of its likely development in the near future. "Some people have said that 3-D printing will bring about a manufacturing revolution, but that's an exaggeration," said Ru Fangjun, founder of HangZhou Xundian Technology Co, which deals in 3-D printing devices in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Ru has been keeping an eye on the prospects for 3-D printing for two years. In 2011, he opened a 3-D photo studio in Hangzhou, producing models for clients at...

China has made great strides in the technological research into the control rod drive mechanism, a key piece of equipment for nuclear power plants, according to a ministry statement issued Wednesday. The Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) made the announcement in a brief statement, citing progress made in a government-funded research project carried out by state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN). CGN launched the "Research of Control Rod Drive Mechanism for Mega-Kilowatt-Class Pressurized Water Reactor" project in 2011 as part of the country's efforts to break foreign monopolies on bottleneck technologies. Scientists with the project have completed research...

BEIJING: Patients in China are swarming to acupuncture clinics to be given bee stings to treat or ward off life-threatening illness, practitioners say. More than 27,000 people have undergone the painful technique -- each session can involve dozens of punctures -- at Wang Menglin's clinic in Beijing, says the bee acupuncturist who makes his living from believers in the concept. But except for trying to prevent allergic reactions to the stings themselves, there is no orthodox medical evidence that bee venom is effective against illness, and rationalist websites in the West describe so-called "apitherapy" as "quackery". "We hold the bee,...

Science is the systematic application of a logico-empiricist method to look at and understand things, and was born in Christian Europe first with the Scholastic philosophy and then with Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon and Galileo Galilei. The necessary foundation for scientific research is the belief in one God that created a universe regulated by immutable laws which can be understood by man exactly because God's mind and man's are similar except in extent. The Christian God is a person. Galileo famously talked about the "book of nature", that scientists try to read, being written by God. This is possible...

GUMI (South Korea), Aug 9 — A South Korean city has begun testing an “electrified road” that allows electric public buses to recharge their batteries from buried cables as they travel. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), which developed the system, said yesterday it would be tested over the next four months on a 24km route in the southern city of Gumi. Pick-up equipment underneath the bus, or Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), sucks up power through non-contact magnetic charging from strips buried under the road surface. It then distributes the power either to drive the vehicle or...

SEOUL, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Sunday warned of a possible power-shortage crisis that may lead to a rolling power outage as seen in Sept. 2011 amid a scorching heat wave across the country. Nationwide heat wave was expected to cause the most dangerous crisis in supply and demand of electricity here for three days through Wednesday, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE). Last Friday, power demand reached a record high of 79.35 million kilowatts (kWs), surpassing the country's power-generation capacity of 77.15 million kWs. Power reserves temporarily dropped to 3.29 million kWs, below...

Continuing on the theme of what Muslims did - or more likely did not do - for the world, there is a widespread misconception that they "invented algebra". Maybe this fallacy is due to the fact that "algebra" is a word of Arabic origin, but historical questions are not solved by etymological answers. Yes, the English word "algebra" derives from the Arabic. So does "sugar" (from the Arabic "sukkar") but that doesn't mean that Muslims invented sugar. The word "algebra" stems from the Arabic word "al-jabr", from the name of the treatise Book on Addition and Subtraction after the Method...

The video that you can see by clicking on the link just below this post title is that of a BBC lynch mob against Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League, during the programme called - a misnomer - FreeSpeech on BBC3. It is not free speech if you verbally abuse and even incite to murder someone for exercising his right to free speech, as it happens in this "debate". Interestingly, the comments to the video on YouTube reveal how the audience was cherry-picked by the BBC to fit its political bent and in no way represents the British general...

The Chinese want to join the shale gas revolution, even if it means drilling for oil in China’s earthquake hot bed in the Sichuan region, where nearly 70,000 died in an earthquake in 2008. Royal Dutch Shell Plc and China National Petroleum have started 'fracking' operations in the province. China hopes to boost annual shale gas production to 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015, and reserves are estimated at about 1,115 trillion cubic feet, according to the US Energy Information Administration, higher than the estimated 665 trillion gas reserves on American soil. Europe's largest oil company plans to invest $1...

The performance of popular U.S. rock band Bloodhound Gang was canceled over the weekend after one of its musicians shoved a Russian flag into his underpants at a concert in Ukraine, prompting outrage from Russian officials and calls for an investigation into the possibility that the flag fiasco was "ordered" by a higher authority. The latest came Sunday as United Russia deputy Sergei Neverov demanded that prosecutors get to the bottom of "who paid the group to desecrate the flag" at Wednesday's performance in Odessa, RIA Novosti reported. At the concert, bass player Jared Hasselhoff withdrew and showed to the...

South Korea's health authority said Sunday it has confirmed 63 patients have been infected with a super bacterial infection that cannot be easily treated by antibiotics, raising concerns over a possible contagion. The number of patients infected with OXA-232-type carbapenemase-producing enterobacteriaceae, also known as a super bacteria, came to 63 at 13 local hospitals as of Thursday, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It marked the first time for this type of CPE to be detected in South Korea, the health agency said. Such super bacteria are known to be resistant to most antibiotics, which gives...

U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday vetoed a ban by the U.S. International Trade Commission on the import of all Apple products that infringe rival Samsung Electronics' patents. It was the first time in 26 years that a U.S. president vetoed an ITC ruling, triggering charges of flagrant protectionism. "After extensive consultations with the agencies of the Trade Policy Staff Committee and the Trade Policy Review Group, as well as other interested agencies and persons, I have decided to disapprove the USITC's determination to issue an exclusion order and cease and desist order in this investigation," Michael Froman, a U.S....

When the Central Intelligence Agency's "favorite Saudi prince" - which was how the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz last week described the chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan - landed in Moscow in his private jet on Wednesday and drove straight to Novo-Ogarevo in the city suburbs to meet President Vladimir Putin at his residence, it didn't turn out to be the "hush-hush" visit that the spy chief is usually accustomed to and would have expected. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass scrambled to carry a crisp report, quoting the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that the Saudi prince and...

SINGAPORE, Aug 3 — Malaysia has finalised its full report on the proposed high-speed rail link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Local television Channel NewsAsia reported Mohd Nur Ismal Mohamed Kamal, chief executive officer of the Malaysia Land Public Transport Commission, as saying that the two sides will meet after the Aidil Fitri celebrations at the end of the month. He said: “The base line alignment and all that is done. But of course, minor changes can still happen. We are just starting the process of engagement and discussion with the Singapore side, with the joint ministerial committee meeting up...

What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?Let’s set aside the question of how we got the baseball moving that fast. We'll suppose it's a normal pitch, except in the instant the pitcher releases the ball, it magically accelerates to 0.9c. From that point onward, everything proceeds according to normal physics.: The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and...

Someone or some company will develop an app that will signal when a person is lying! Imagine a room full of reporters watching Carny through those glasses or just about anyone testifying in front of Congress, or your kids for that matter. The whole world will change when deception is so easily detected.

Andrew Cuomo has finally noticed no one, including him, has paid any real attention to the needs of upstate New York, but his actions and lack of actions tells us nothing has really changed. Governor Cuomo declares he is finally going to focus on improving the upstate economy, saying, “There has been no upstate focus…downstate dominates the legislature, because that’s where the people are.” We know, Governor; we’re the wan tail attached to that Great Dane, New York City. Whenever they twitch, we are wagged.

According to researchers at EMPact America, an organization dedicated to studying and preparing for the possibility of large-scale electro magnetic pulse threats that can destroy our modern day electrical infrastructure, the earth came dangerously close to a serious destabilization event. A couple of weeks ago the sun emitted a massive CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) that, had it been earth-directed, would likely have wiped out critical portions of the world’s power grid and sent developed nations back to the stone age within a matter of seconds. ‘The world escaped an EMP catastrophe,’ Henry Cooper, who now heads High Frontier, a group...

Thursday, August 01, 2013 The Environmental Apocalypse Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Early in the morning, while most are still sleeping, groups of elderly Chinese women spread out across city streets. They tear open trash bags, pick through the litter and sort out bottles and cans that come with a deposit. And then they bring them to the local supermarket to a machine that scans and evaluates each can, accepting and rejecting them one by one, and finally printing out a receipt. The interaction between the elderly immigrant who speaks broken English or the homeless man...

Dimock is the sacred myth fractivists just won’t let go, as a recent story from the failing, and always politically correct (perhaps there is a connection), Los Angeles Times demonstrates, with the Scranton Times piling on for good effect (yes, that Times, the conflicted one whose owners are in the water testing business). It appears the Los Angeles Times needs to bump up their circulation numbers, so this past Sunday they trotted out the “Dimock” story once again (perhaps inspired by watching Gasland 2 on HBO).

Here are some really good photos of the crashed Boeing 777 known as Asiana Flight 214.These include pics of the interior, exterior, landing gear, engines, and removal and loading process.

New York City and Philadelphia concerns about what fracking might mean for their water supplies simply don’t hold water and reflect a more basic desire – they want the land, all of it, for their own enjoyment.

Volunteer "cyber troopers" are monitoring Malaysian internet activity to flag up "sensitive" or "insulting" posts, reports say. The Sensible and Ethical Malaysians United Troopers (Semut) group is said to have recruited "hundreds" of volunteers in a bid to "promote healthy use of social media". And it appears to have government backing, with Communication Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek reportedly saying that with limited police personnel to monitor online activities, Semut's formation is welcome. The group lodged a police report last week against a Facebook user for allegedly insulting the king, official news agency Bernama says. It quotes Semut coordinator...

(Reuters) - As the breakneck growth in the global smartphone market eases, the mostly Japanese companies that make the robots that build the phones are looking to automakers to take up the slack. Robotics remains a strength in a Japanese electronics industry that has been hammered by competition from rivals in South Korea and Taiwan. Panasonic Corp, Hitachi High-Technologies, Yamaha Motor Co, Fuji Machine Manufacturing and JUKI Corp together make eight of every 10 component mounting robots. The quickest of these can mount more than two dozen parts a second, some thinner than a tenth of a millimeter. A line...

Shale gas fractivists are predictable true believers, the sort who are always around regardless of the issue, and we should never be discouraged at what sometimes appear to be victories on their side. They are losing the war.

Another uncertainty for climate models – different results on different computers using the same code Posted on July 27, 2013     |     by Anthony Watts New peer reviewed paper finds the same global forecast model produces different results when run on different computers Did you ever wonder how spaghetti like this is produced and why there is broad disagreement in the output that increases with time? Increasing mathematical uncertainty from initial starting conditions is the main reason. But, some of it might be due to the fact that while some of the models share common code,...

On a literacy forum, a somewhat hostile teacher demanded to know if I was trying to frighten people? I answered: Yes, I am. I've studied Whole Word for almost 10 years. It doesn't work; it couldn't work. That our education establishment pushed this thing on people is a crime. If I can help frighten people away from it, that's good. As for phonics, people should understand that this is almost an umbrella term. In fact, I'm starting to think it's not so much a program or set of rules as a concept. If a kid knows that the letters on...

It seems we will never be rid of the Clinton cancer. The name Terry McAuliffe ought to ring a bell. He was Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is a major pal of the Clintons. For a time he was Chairman of Green-tech Automotive. Wonderful things happen to the Clintons and to those around them. Hillary made $100,000 in cattle futures and Terry McAuliffe turned a $100,000 investment in Global Crossing into $18 million. And here's how he did it: To whit: McAuliffe was a young business hustler with a glad-handing, back-slapping, used car salesman style from the get-go....

What if your home could protect itself from dangerous weather  by retreating underground automatically long before it hits? If you think about it, a house -or entire neighborhood/town- that could withstand higher winds than boxy, frail wood structures -and actually hide underground if necessary- could have one heck of a lot of applications: not just in tornado alley, but avoiding fires in California, tsunamis in Japan, or of course hurricane season in the Carolinas. Why build an expensive underground shelter only to watch your house and belongings be scraped from the face of the Earth, washed-away, or turned to...

Marc Morano reported: ‘Senate global warming hearing backfires on Democrats’ — Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama! — ‘Skeptics & Roger Pielke Jr. totally dismantled warmism (scientifically, economically, rhetorically) — Climate Depot Round Up ‘Sen. Boxer’s Own Experts Contradict Obama on Climate Change’ — Warmists Asked: ‘Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?’ For several seconds, nobody said a word. Sitting just a few rows behind the expert witnesses, I thought I might have heard a few crickets chirping’

Bear with me, LI readers – I’m a little bit of a geek, so I find stories like these exciting. It might not be of interest to everyone, but I do think there’s one point about it that will resonate with all of you. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started Bezos Expeditions (as well as the space exploration venture Blue Origin) out of his “passions for science, engineering, and exploration.” Bezos, like so many others, watched Apollo 11′s launch from his television as a child in 1969. Days prior, the mission began when five F-1 rocket engines fired together in a...

First runner-up headline: New test-taking strategies, er, uncovered [NSFW]. Well men, we’ve done it... thanks to research conducted by Carnegie Mellon University...The study assigned 54 straight men to view either mildly erotic (think Sports Illustrated) or neutral images of mix-sex couples before completing a social stress test. The results found that the men who viewed the semi-erotic photos were half as likely to feel stressed when taking the test compared to the guys who viewed the nonsexual pictures. The study also found that 50 per cent of men performed better on the math portion of a stress test ─ which...

I want to make Freepers aware that the Kindle version of the book, “The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics” will be free at Amazon next Thursday. The book explains the fundamental psychology behind Liberalism, and why it exists within our species. Ten years ago, I would have been unable to explain how such a weak, foolish, cowardly, instinctively treasonous and disloyal, reality-blind psychology could have ever survived in the world. In my view back then, I would have thought that no Liberal would last ten seconds in a state of nature, and their very existence would have been an unsolvable mystery....

I want to make Freepers aware that the Kindle version of the book, “The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics” will be free at Amazon next Thursday. The book explains the fundamental psychology behind Liberalism, and why it exists within our species. Ten years ago, I would have been unable to explain how such a weak, foolish, cowardly, instinctively treasonous and disloyal, reality-blind psychology could have ever survived in the world. In my view back then, I would have thought that no Liberal would last ten seconds in a state of nature, and their very existence would have been an unsolvable...

Hi, welcome to my vanity thread. I am having a problem downloading .pdf files on Firefox. If I click on a .pdf link all I get is a blank window in response. I am currently using Adobe Acrobat reader as my .pdf viewer, but Firefox seems to be oblivious to its existence. I have checked Firefox addons, and there seem to be hundreds of .pdf related addons, but I don't know which if any I should choose. Any advice on how to get Firefox to download/display/print/save .pdfs would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, you guys are the best.BTW: I have to...

The overwhelming reception for his forthcoming biopic about Nikola Tesla has led American director Michael Anton to deliver a new name to sum up the iconic nature of the man and his unique legacy. “Nikola Tesla does not need a controversial label,’ said Michael Anton. “The fact that his name is not as familiar as it should be is one of the issues we intend to address with this film, which has progressed from a strong script with a modest budget into a potential voice that will finally break the great silence that is the history of Nikola Tesla. “From...

"Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the result of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark and our mills would be idle and dead. His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science."Vice President Behrend of the Institute of Electrical EngineersNikola Tesla symbolizes a unifying force and inspiration for all nations in the name of peace and science. He was a true visionary far ahead of his contemporaries in the field of scientific development. New York State and...

In 1988 for the Oakland Athletics, Tony LaRussa initiated his strategy of using Dennis Eckersley as a 9th inning, only-when-leading relief pitcher – a “closer.” The move helped the A’s and resurrected Eckersley from an over-the-hill starter to Cy Young and MVP winner. The success of the Athletics and Eckersley popularized the practice with it eventually attaining universal adoption across MLB. Specific elements of the Eckersley case made the strategy make sense. He was an aging starter with a lot of inning mileage in his arm. Restricting his innings and making them very predictable so as to ease warming up...

Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research. In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue. “In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments...

Intelligent DesignWhose Will decreed This slash of sea Would frame This sun in gleams of green?What Plan determines stone's decline, Or shapes in stars, or shadow's sheen, Or that we track, as clever beasts, The passing haze of comet's fall,And are the glaze of Thought on flesh That sees the need of Plan at all? …Read The Rest Here>>>

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won't you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?” ~ Luke 14:28 (NIV)- By: Larry Walker, II -During his 2011 State of the Union address, Potus announced a new U.S. energy target: Produce 80 percent of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035. Just this past week, two and a half years later, he announced that the centerpiece of his proposal involves deploying the EPA in a new war on the coal industry. But according to Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Allegheny), the...

Wall-E-Like Farming Robots Could Replace Undocumented Workers and Save the US Billions Despite advancements in mechanization within US agriculture, some menial jobs are still best left to human workers. Problem is, federal crackdowns on undocumented laborers have decimated that workforce. The Harvester automaton could provide a cheap, readily available labor force without the threat of raids by the INS. The US agriculture industry is worth about $300 billion annually—half from livestock production, the other half from crops. However, some of the most basic jobs in this industry still have to be performed by people. Jobs like offloading potted plants from...

President Obama gave his “War on Coal” speech at Georgetown University yesterday. And killing hopes for the Keystone Pipeline. His plan includes $8 billion in Federal Loan Guarantees for clean energy firms (like Solyndra). Here is a list of deceased solar energy companies: 2009 to 2010: Bankrupt, closed, acquired Advent Solar (emitter wrap-through Si) acquired by Applied Materials Applied Solar (solar roofing) acquired by Quercus Trust OptiSolar (a-Si on a grand scale) closed Ready Solar (PV installation) acquired by SunEdison Solasta (nano-coaxial solar) closed SV Solar (low-concentration PV) closed Senergen (depositing silane onto free-form metallurgical-grade Si substrates) closed Signet Solar...

We’re back at Camp Donkeyland peeking in as kindly old Uncle Democrat is once again scaring his Republican children with campfire ghost stories. This time Uncle Democrat tells his naïve little children Marco, Kelly, Bob, John and Lindsey that global warming is real and if they don’t support Uncle Democrat’s “fix” for it they will be labeled “Enemies of the State.” He asks, “You don’t want to be labeled an ‘Enemy of the State’ do you children?” Little Marco, the most reliable of the Republican children, proudly...

President Obama angrily blasted climate change skeptics during his energy policy speech Tuesday at Georgetown University, saying he lacked "patience for anyone who denies that this problem is real."

Obama in Berlin and after the Oklahoma tornado the usual suspects are back blaming Anthropogenic (human caused) Global Warming… aka: Climate change (AGW-CC). What's odd (really not) is that this "crisis" like all others can only be "solved" by imposition of a socialist/fascist top-down dictatorship. Most of those loyal to the Left political spectrum seem willing to surrender their liberty, prosperity and maybe even their souls (and that of future generations) to such a dictatorship! Overlords who will ration and control ALL aspects of your soon to be grim life! (for what maybe is WRONG!). No one can escape from...

The end to animal experimentation seems to be nearer than we could previously imagine. In 2008 three US federal government agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Toxicology Program (NTP), signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the aim of ending animal testing of drugs and chemicals for human use. The realization of this ambitious plan will take years, but it's a start of historic importance, especially considering that the three agencies involved have been among animal testing's biggest funding bodies.This momentous agreement followed a 2007 report released by the world's most prestigious...