Free Republic

Temple of Apollo, built ca. 540 BC by the ancient greeks Temple of the Greek god Apollo, built ca. 540 BC, Corinth, Greece. Credit: Following Hadrian/CC BY-SA 2.0 Recent research shows that ancient Greeks used a primitive type of lifting machine to move heavy stones before they began using cranes 2,500 years ago. It is commonly believed that the foremost discovery of the ancient Greeks in building technology is the crane. Yet, enormous stone structures were known to have been built in Greece at least 150 years before the use of cranes themselves. Cranes first appeared in the late sixth...

Twitch influencer Jessica Fernandez issued an apology Tuesday after she went viral for posting a video about a “feral” man at the gym who she claimed was staring at her “like a piece of meat.” Fernandez published the apology on TwitLonger — an extension of Twitter that allows users to post tweets longer than 140 characters — calling the video “the most serious thing I have ever posted.” “First of all, I want to apologize sincerely to the man at the gym where this all started. He didn’t do anything wrong to me and I blew our interaction out of...

A gym fanatic was left trapped under weights for 33 minutes while he waited for emergency services to free him. The man, aged between 25 and 35, was working out at Snap Fitness in Spring Hill, Brisbane, Australia at 5:47 am on Thursday when he got into trouble. Firefighters did not arrive until 6:20 am to rescue him, with paramedics arriving shortly afterward. It took six minutes to extract the man from under the weights. By this point, the man was unconscious and required CPR. He was taken to Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital in critical condition. There were no...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled "Prayer" are closed to debate of any kind.

Donald Trump's new running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, wrote in a 1999 op-ed that the Disney film "Mulan" was liberal propaganda used to foster debate about women serving in the military. “Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her cloddish cohorts,” Pence wrote in the op-ed, which was first reported by Buzzfeed. “Obviously, this is Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military," wrote Pence, who...

LANSING, Mich., Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A proposed law in Michigan is aimed at ensuring beer drinkers who pay for a pint get at least 16 ounces. The measure was introduced in the House last week, MLive.com reported. It would ban what barflies refer to as "cheater glasses" with thick bottoms so they look like they hold a pint but actually take a few ounces less. State Rep. Jim Irwin, a Democrat from the college town of Ann Arbor, said the state regulates meat and other foodstuffs to make sure buyers get what they pay for. Irwin introduced a similar...

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 16, 2011, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Phoenix, Arizona. TO BEGIN, consider one of the most important measures of property, the kilogram. It’s a measure of mass or, for non-scientific purposes, weight. According to the papers last week, a global scramble is under way to define this most basic unit after it was discovered that the standard kilogram—a cylinder of platinum and iridium that is maintained by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures—has been losing mass. You may think that this is impossible. Of all the...

More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time. In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard. Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet...

A British gym is trying to add human interest to otherwise dreary workouts by replacing traditional dumbbell weights with human ones. The Gymbox chain gym in central London says fitness enthusiasts can now swap their usual lumps of metal for human beings in a range of shapes and sizes.

<p>In the more than a century since 'perfect' platinum-iridium cylinders were first used as the world's kilogram standards, their weights have mysteriously fluctuated. Scientists are rethinking what the measure means.</p> <p>GAITHERSBURG, MD. -- Forty feet underground, secured in a temperature- and humidity-controlled vault here, lies Kilogram No. 20.</p>

ALBANY, N.Y. -- You could forgive a guy for grunting while lifting 500 pounds -- unless you're the owners of a place called Planet Fitness. It turns out that grunting isn't allowed in their universe. Corrections officer Albert Argibay learned that the hard way this week. He was hoisting 500 pounds on a machine at the Wappingers Falls, N.Y., gym when the manager said he grunted -- in violation of the Planet Fitness rules. Argibay said whether or not he grunted is "open to interpretation." What's crystal clear is that police were called to escort him out after the manager...

I need to ask a question about excercising and weightlifting. I have been hitting the treadmill for about two months. I have just started light workouts involving lifting weights trying to tone up. I lost about 110 pounds and I want to keep it off. I have not changed my diet. I am very careful about what I eat. My question is why am I gaining weight? It is not very much and I could stand to gain a couple of pounds anyway.

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!