Free Republic

The White House announced Thursday morning that the deadline for federal contractors to receive their vaccinations is being pushed back to Jan. 4, 2022. The change aligns the contractor deadline with new requirements from the Department of Labor's Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for certain private employees and from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for healthcare workers at their facilities. The White House says that moving the deadline from Dec. 8 into early next year is meant to provide clarity across various requirements, and isn't a response to current labor crunches and the upcoming holiday season. "We wanted...

New research from an international team of scientists is suggesting that instantly recognizable earthy smell after rain is released by bacteria trying to attract a particular arthropod as a way to spread its spores. The smell is a 500-million-year-old example of chemical communication, evolved to help a particular type of bacteria spread. Scientists have long been fascinated by the unique odor that appears when it rains. The scent is particularly prominent when the first rains of a season hit dry soil. Two Australian researchers named the odor petrichor, after an influential study in the 1960s suggested a particular oil is...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine whether users can challenge social media companies on free speech grounds. The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, centers on whether a private operator of a public access television network is considered a state actor, which can be sued for First Amendment violations. The case could have broader implications for social media and other media outlets. In particular, a broad ruling from the high court could open the country’s largest technology companies up to First Amendment lawsuits. That could shape the ability of companies like...

Presented at World Federation of Scientists, Erice, Sicily, 20 August 2015 This is a version of the talk I gave about uncertainty in the global average air temperature record at the 48th Conference of the World Federation Scientists on “Planetary Emergences and Other Events,” at Erice, Sicily, in August of 2015. It was a very interesting conference and, as an aside, for me the take home message was that the short-term emergency is Islamic violence while the long-term emergency is some large-scale bolide coming down. Please, however, do not distract conversation into these topics. Abstract: I had a longer abstract,...

The mysterious world of gut bacteria is a hot area of research in science right now. The systemic implications of our gut flora are being found to have vast holistic effects from potentially affecting the symptoms of autism to influencing neurodegeneration in the brain. New research on the turquoise killfish could point to another effect of our gut microbiome – moderating aging. Several studies in recent years have found interesting links between aging and gut microbiota. From mice to men we've seen evidence of age-related differences in the microbiome between the old and young. It seems increasingly clear that as...

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure. These figures have changed little since December. Polling released earlier this week showed that Americans overwhelmingly believe that more competition and less regulation is better for the economy than more regulation and less competition. Not surprisingly, America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by...

The usual cadre of ignorant prominent conservatives is urging us to support of Whole Foods because left-wingers are boycotting the overpriced gourmet food chain since CEO John Mackey wrote an op-ed against ObamaCare in the Wall Street Journal. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for the guy. What goes around in his store’s behavior, comes around, even in organics. (snip) But, unlike them, I look beneath the surface of silly, shallow talking points and principle-free partisan knee-jerking. And I’m not upset that Whole Foods is being boycotted. In fact, I love it. It’s a great episode in poetic justice for...

Last week, almost every major US bank manufactured profits out of thin air by changing their regular reporting periods to exclude months in which huge losses occurred by changing their definitions of bad debt, and by revaluing their assets at fantasy land valuations that they will never receive in the open market, courtesy of FASB. This event was a non-event to me because it merely continued the process known as the Enronization of America. This event, the systemic injection of fraud and deceit into nearly every aspect of American life, has been unfolding for decades, even prior to the Enron...

A 76-year-old Jewish-Romanian lecturer was hailed a hero after blocking his classroom door long enough for many of his students to escape the Virginia Tech gunman, before being shot dead. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, pressed himself against the door of the classroom while shots were fired in the corridor and surrounding rooms. He stood firm, attempting to barricade the door, while his students clambered out of the windows. His son, Joe Librescu, said in an interview from Tel Aviv that the professor e-mailed his wife to say that he had prevented the gunman getting into the classroom. However, the...