Free Republic

Hi, I'm a long time lurker, having posted a few times, but been a Freeper for close to two years. I have had lots of doubts with President Bush for some time, even before the 2004 elections, but I didn't like Kerry so I voted for Bush again. But this tragedy has hit too close to home. I lived in Idaho for several years before moving back to Alabama, and I live in Washington County, and I left before Katrina hit, and my home is powerless and won't have power or oil for a while. Although I continue to support...

College students are persistently imbued with the idea that it is fashionable to be anti-establishment. But a tangible definition of the establishment is never given; it’s often idly expressed as the middle-America lifestyle; a wife, 2.3 children, a house with a white picket fence, and a nine-to-five job. But regardless as to how students conceptualize the establishment, the idea is vague at best, and leaves youth helplessly rebelling against an obscurity, for the purpose of mere non-conformity. To be exact, the establishment is any individual or group of individuals who discontinue thought, which can be done either consciously or subconsciously....

It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then--to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone--"to relax," I told myself--but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's. I began to think...

When I was a boy, my parents used to enjoy a comedian named Ronnie Graham. One of his jokes was, "The other day a cat came up to me and said, 'How do I get to Carnegie Hall?' and I said 'Practice, man, practice.' This other cat came up to me and said, 'Meow.' He was a real cat." We talk a lot in our movement about spiritual practices. I am a Religious Science Practitioner; the root word of Practitioner is practice. But why do we practice? Ernest Holmes said that a central concept of our movement is "Perfect God,...

A&E doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing. A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings. They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon. The research is published in the British Medical Journal. The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all. They consulted 10 top chefs from...

In a confidential report, Young Muslims and Extremism, prepared jointly by the Home and Foreign offices in mid-2004 and presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair, we learn something about the inner thinking of the British government. Leaked to the Sunday Times of London, the report is now available in four parts in .pdf format at the newspaper's site.Its goal is "to encourage moderate Muslim opinion to the detriment of extremism" and to that end proposes an "Operation Contest." Along the way, it contains much of interest in it, including these points: "A number of extremist groups are actively recruiting young...

International Business Machines Corp (IBM) is linking with a team of Swiss scientists to create the world's first accurate, computer-based model of the brain, the U.S. company said on Monday The researchers hope that modeling the brain at the cellular level will give new insights into the workings of the most complex organ in the body. The immediate goal is to model the circuitry in the neocortex, which accounts for about 85 percent of the human brain's mass and is thought to be responsible for language, learning, memory and complex thought. By expanding the work to other areas, scientists hope...

About Thinking It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that...

I was just thinking about the Jeremy Glick episode. O'Reilly may be moderate politically, but that doesn't mean unbiased these days. His problem is that he isn't neutral when it comes to the United States. He is pro-American. To the left, that's biased.

I'd love to hear your comments on the movie "What the Bleep Do We Know." I thought it was the most impressive movie I have seen in a very long time. Has anyone seen it? "What the Bleep" is a movie that deals with quantumm science, the power of thought to shape our experience, the scientific basis for the power of thought. It ries to explain the nature of reality, both scientifically and theoretically. It is about "how the quantum world invites spiritual and mystical interpretations of reality." "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" talks about the science of possibilities...

Patriots: Anti-American comedian George Carlin is coming to Syracuse on Dec. 11th for a concert at the Landmark Theatre. Guess who's going to be there to greet him? Join me in letting George Carlin and his fans know that we take exception to his claim that 3000 Americans somehow deserved what they got on Sept. 11th. Spread the word, bring a friend, bring a sign. I wonder how many concert-goers are aware of his beliefs relative to the War on Terror and 9/11? Those plunking $40 to support this vile person and his affluent lifestyle might re-think that purchase if...

Thursday, October 21, 2004 Sister, your thinking is so irrational, it's outright bizarre. You offer nothing more than a point-by-point rote recitation of fallacious Democrat talking points, spin-by-spin. Do you read any of the incisive analyses I send you that are based on hard facts? If you analyze what the Democrats spew, it's easy to deconstruct the vast majority of their rhetoric as nothing more than baseless, emotional propaganda. Pick a topic, any topic, and I'll deconstruct the Democrat fantasy for you based on tangible, factual, empirical data. I'll even tell you where the Democrats are correct. You may not...

Medieval sea chart was in line with current thinking (Filed: 04/05/2004) The 16th-century Carta Marina, complete with sea monsters, gives an accurate location for dangerous eddies. Roger Highfield reports A satellite image of the north-east Atlantic has revealed that medieval cartographers knew much more about ocean currents than was thought. The ornate Carta Marina, published in 1539, appears crude by today's standards, depicting sea monsters off the coast of Scotland, sinking galleons, sea snakes, and wolves urinating against trees. But when oceanographers examined a large group of swirls and whorls drawn off the south-east of Iceland, complete with ships, a...

Shell Beads From South African Cave Show Modern Human Behavior 75,000 Years Ago ARLINGTON, Va.- Perforated shells found at South Africa's Blombos Cave appear to have been strung as beads about 75,000 years ago-making them 30,000 years older than any previously identified personal ornaments. Archaeologists excavating the site on the on the coast of the Indian Ocean discovered 41 shells, all with holes and wear marks in similar positions, in a layer of sediment deposited during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). "The Blombos Cave beads present absolute evidence for perhaps the earliest storage of information outside the human brain,"...

<p>To fulfill his promise to balance the budget without raising taxes, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger needs all the help he can get. Through its newsletter and in interviews we conducted with its scholars, the Reason Public Policy Institute has raised a number of promising ideas for reform.</p>

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.

What should a political party do to minimize debate on the part of their constituents over real issues and simply pre-program voters to think and act a certain way? Well, first thing, control education at the national level where you can teach kids WHAT to think instead of HOW to think. Secondarily, feed your constituents a series of one-line bumper sticker slogans which sound great but have about as much real meat as your average soy-burger. Can there be any doubt that liberals are the masters of this art? Personally, I have, for a long time now, been very wary...

At the risk of enraging the gods of political correctness, it is time that someone asks the NAACP why it wants to derail a movement that appears to improve the educational performance of black students. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wants federal money withheld from Florida schools because high-school graduation requires passing an exam on which blacks fare poorly. The NAACP effort has national implications because Florida's system of standards, accountability and what it calls "high-stakes testing" conforms to what is going on in most other states and the direction of federal education policy. The Florida...

Common mental tasks can cut a driver's ability to see signs, cars and traffic lights by as much as 30 per cent, accoding to a new study. The findings underline how what is going on in a driver's head can be as important - and distracting - as a crying child in the back seat, or driving past the scene of an accident. Some mental tasks can be so complex and distracting that they result in those all-too-familar accidents in which drivers claim they "didn't expect it" or "saw it too late," according to an article published recently in the...

The Absurdity of 'Thinking in Language' This paper has been read to the University of Southern California philosophy group and the Boston 1972 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, as well as to the Houston meeting of the Southwestern Philosophical Society. Appeared in The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, IV(1973), pp. 125-132. Numbers in "<>" refer to this journal. Among the principal assumptions of major portions of philosophy in recent decades have been: (1) That philosophy somehow consists of (some sort of) logic, and (2) that logic is a study of and theory about (some sort of) language. There, of...