Free Republic

Human activities are releasing greenhouse gases more than 30 times faster than the rate of emissions that triggered a period of extreme global warming in the Earth's past, according to an expert on ancient climates. "The emissions that caused this past episode of global warming probably lasted 10,000 years. By burning fossil fuels, we are likely to emit the same amount over the next three centuries," said James Zachos, professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zachos will present his findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science...

In the fog-shrouded forests of California's remote North Coast, winemakers believe they've found the perfect terrain to grow the notoriously fickle pinot noir grape prized by connoisseurs. Vineyard developers are snapping up thousands of acres of redwoods and firs in Sonoma County, with plans to clear the trees and plant the once-obscure varietal made famous by the wine-fueled road trip film "Sideways." Environmentalists and residents in Annapolis, a tiny town about 140 miles north of San Francisco, are trying to rein in the pinot lovers. "If you've seen the movie, you've seen the glassy-eyed stare they have when they talk...

New studies show Fourth Salt Man is 2000 years old TEHRAN, Dec. 23 (MNA) -- The most recent studies on the Fourth Salt Man indicate that the body is 2000 years old, the director of the Chehrabad Studies Center announced on Friday. Recent radiography and CAT scans of the body indicate that the Fourth Salt Man was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death, Abolfazl Ali added. Discovered in the Hamzehlu Salt Mine in early March 2005, the Fourth Salt Man is the most intact of the “salt men” discovered in the mine, which is located near...

WASHINGTON - Government studies released Thursday show a broad range of potential costs if the United States were to regulate carbon dioxide to curb global warming, from relatively cheap to expensive. The Environmental Protection Agency said its analyses show the superiority of President Bush's plan for cutting air pollution from the nation's 600 coal-burning power plants. But Bush's plan, which wouldn't regulate carbon dioxide at all, has been stalled in Congress since its introduction in 2002. Nonetheless, EPA compared it with current regulations as well as competing legislative proposals by Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and James Jeffords, I-Vt. None of...

WASHINGTON - In an aggressive push by the Bush administration to open more public land to oil and gas production, the Interior Department has quit conducting environmental reviews and seeking comments from local residents every time drilling companies propose new wells. Field officials have been told to begin looking at issuing permits based on past studies of an entire project, even though some of those assessments may be outdated. The instructions are in a directive from the department's Bureau of Land Management expected to cover hundreds of anticipated new drilling applications. President Bush and Congress authorized the streamlining as part...

My daughter has asked me to ask you all to recommend books on foreign affairs for her college course on International relations. My understanding is they must be non-fiction and pertain to the US relations with other nations, but other than that the field is wide open. They can be about any time in our history, any country, wide ranging or very specific and, of course, excellent writing always preferred. Thanks in advance to all who care to respond!

At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.” The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York. The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment, but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality....

Because the universe is an energy system and has an inherent order, there is always a response to prayer. This is not belief, supposition, or simply wishful teaching. Prayer has been extensively studied and proven in double- and triple-blind studies. Prayer is energy, and has definite action observable in the external consensual world. There are numerous reference materials on this fascinating subject. Dr. Harold Koenig, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University and the country's leading authority on faith-and-medicine studies, performed academic research that shows that prayer has beneficial health effects, primarily for the person who does the praying....

CAMP BLUE DIAMOND, AR RAMADI, Iraq (August 6, 2005) -- Navy personnel have traditionally worked closely with the Marines, either as corpsmen healing combat wounds or as chaplains healing the spiritual gashes. But one Navy ‘doc’ with the 2nd Marine Division took it a step further and trained to become one of the few Sailors who have earned a black belt in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. Lieutenant James Morris, a 32-year-old Kearny, Ariz., native who coordinates all medical evacuation in the Al Anbar Province of Iraq, is the top man on the Patient Evacuation Team. The officer-in-charge is...

Unusual things are happening in the feminist world. The Hungarian representative to UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) said that, in the future, abortion will be viewed by women in the same way that torture is now viewed by human rights advocates. Now, given how often the UN turns a blind eye to torture, Saddam Hussein’s regime being a fine example of the carefully shielded glance, we may justifiably wonder if this means torture will become acceptable or abortion unacceptable. But even so, the possibility that CEDAW members are beginning to question the practice is telling....

Today’s Washington Post is reporting: A new analysis of the most recent abortion data shows that the number of U.S. women having the procedure is continuing its decade-long drop and stands at its lowest level since 1976. In the year 2002, about 1.29 million women in the U.S. had abortions. In 1990, that number was 1.61 million. But as usual the mainstream media has left out much of the story. For example, this study, which was conducted by Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health® (PRCH) and The Guttmacher Institute acknowledges that 96% if all abortions are performed as a...

Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...

Success has many parents; failure is an orphan. That's the kind of fickle armchair opinions offered by some public figures and media commentators who are waffling supporters or critics of our mission in Iraq. Without embarrassment, their speeches and writings bounce around with the day's headlines. Who cares? They're just a bunch of talking heads anyway. And, with the expansion of choices in media, people are able to choose which ones reinforce their own dispositions. Surveys show that supporters tend to watch Fox, and opponents tend to watch CNN. The importance is two-fold. First, the larger middle is affected and...

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the humanities in Washington "don't get no respect." Not as much as they should, anyway. We're a company town and the company makes politics. But like a blind squirrel who finds an acorn once in a while, politicians and the journalists gather occasionally with others who crave more profundity than the noise in political rhetoric to listen to the annual >Jefferson Lecture. "The training of the intellect was meant to produce an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction but it also had practical goals of importance to the individual and the entire community, to make the humanistically trained individuals...

Researchers: Gay Men React to Scent Like Women By E.F. Winslow Posted 5-10-2005 It’s Official. They really are “Girlie Men”. Scientists in Sweden have found that a compound taken from male sweat stimulates the sexual area of the brains of gay men and straight women, but not heterosexual men. In the study, which has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, scientists monitored brain topography while administering varied scents to a group of 12 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 12 heterosexual women. They reported a correlation between the reactions of the women’s brains with that...

As Gov. Rendell and state legislators consider a proposal for a $7 an hour minimum wage, they should also bear in mind Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan's warning that such a move "prevents people who are at the early stages of their careers... from getting a foothold in the ladder of promotions." Wage-hike proponents often argue that minimum-wage employees haven't had a raise since Congress last increased the national rate. But few entering the workforce at the minimum wage stay there for long. Nearly two-thirds get a raise within one to 12 months. Most low-wage earners simply don't need...

Two new studies looking at the feasibility of space-based solar power - orbiting satellites that would serve as high-tech space dams - suggest the concept shouldn't be readily dismissed and could generate both Earth-bound and space-based benefits. These "powersats" would catch the flood of energy flowing from the Sun and then pump it to Earth via laser or microwave beam. On earth it would be converted to electricity and fed into power grids to be tapped by terrestrial customers. The thought of beaming energy to Earth via satellite was first brought to light in the late 1960s by Peter Glaser,...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United Nations is studying whether it was appropriate for the top U.N. envoy for North Korea to maintain business ties with a South Korean businessman accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, U.N. officials said Tuesday. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had not known about the ties between Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park, a native of North Korea and citizen of South Korea who was also accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress. Strong is the U.N. point man on stalled six-nation talks aimed at persuading North Korea to...

Testosterone has a bad reputation. The public image of it is closely linked to the idea of dumb aggression, to the caveman. But this is a far from complete image. In recent years new research is starting to show that it would be more accurate to associate this much maligned hormone with Newton, Da Vinci, Einstein and Edison than the rough and brutal Neanderthal. Testosterone, it seems, could be the true driver of our civilisations. Satoshi Kanazawa at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, studied the biographies of 280 scientists and plotted their intellectual achievements against their ages. He discovered...

STANDARD VIEW 1. Recession causes businessmen to be cautious. 2. Talented leaders make the population happy. 3. A rising stock market makes people increasingly optimistic. 4. Scandals make people outraged. 5. War makes people angry. 6. Happy music makes people smile. 7. Nuclear bomb testing makes people nervous. SOCIONOMIC VIEW 1. Cautious businessmen cause recession. 2. A happy population makes leaders appear talented. 3. Increasingly optimistic people make the stock market rise. 4. Outraged people seek out scandals. 5. Fearful and angry people make war. 6. People who want to smile choose happy music. 7. Nervous people test nuclear bombs....