Free Republic

A lawsuit is expected to be filed in California today over the amount of arsenic in some of the best-selling wines in the country. CBS News reports laboratory testing by Denver's BeverageGrades found some wines have as much as time times the maximum level of arsenic the Environmental Protection Agency allows for drinking water. The EPA doesn't regulate wine as it does water, and there are no federal labeling requirements to disclose what's in wine.

Yes, greek yogurt is delicious, nutritious, and surprisingly cost-effective. But, we admit we’d never really thought about this consequence of making it our go-to breakfast snack. It turns out that one of the byproducts of greek yogurt production is a little thing called acid whey. It’s a runny substance that is remarkably bad for the environment: If acid whey is dumped, its decomposition can deplete ecosystems of oxygen, killing fishy inhabitants. But, with the continuously growing popularity of that delicious yogurt — it now accounts for $2 billion of the $6 billion yogurt market — finding an ecologically responsible way...

Most of our snow, along with the neighbors from San Diego, has melted away. They didn't actually melt. It was more like they ran screaming back to warmth and Palm trees. Us hardier and poorer types look forward to the snow. We have to. It's all around us. We have had warm winds blowing in from Canada the last couple of days. We call these "Chinook" winds. The Canadians call it "Blowing all the tumbleweeds South". I like our name better. The Canadians have a lot of strange names for things. They call a hat a "Took". They call beating...

TEL AVIV/FRANKFURT, March 12 (Reuters) - Two years after scientists cooked up the first test tube beef hamburger, researchers in Israel are working on an even trickier recipe: the world's first lab-grown chicken. Professor Amit Gefen, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, has begun a year-long feasibility study into manufacturing chicken in a lab, funded by a non-profit group called the Modern Agriculture Foundation which hopes "cultured meat" will one day replace the raising of animals for slaughter. The foundation's co-founder Shir Friedman hopes to have produced "a recipe for how to culture chicken cells" by the end of the...

The jade artifact, which has cleft rectangles, incisions and a cone at its top, was discovered underwater in Veracruz, Mexico. Photo courtesy Professor Carl Wendt A mysterious corncob-shaped artifact, dating to somewhere between 900 B.C. and 400 B.C., has been discovered underwater at the site of Arroyo Pesquero in Veracruz, Mexico. Made of jadeite, a material that is harder than steel, the artifact has designs on it that are difficult to put into words. It contains rectangular shapes, engraved lines and a cone that looks like it is emerging from the top. It looks like a corncob in an abstract...

Naughty, naughty cows broke into a woman’s home and pooed everywhere as she showered. Pat Costen, from Guernsey, came downstairs to find the two wandering around her house. They’re part of a conservation herd bred to protect grasslands. But she’d forgotten to lock her doors and the animals barged in with heavy bowels and no respect. Ms Costen said: ‘I was in the shower and when I came out I could smell something. I looked over the banister and there was large cow pat. They came in through the kitchen, along the corridor, round the snooker table and into the...

I finally had to put Old Gus out of my misery. Gus was the pickup I inherited from my Father. I wouldn't call Dad a hoarder, but the man had a collection of shoestrings. "Well, the boots might wear out, but you can always use the strings for stuff like hanging up pictures." You should have seen his art collection. Naked Mexican ladies hanging by a shoestring. That sounds like a new Showtime series. But I digress. Old Gus was like a brother to me. In fact, in Dad's will, he left me to Gus. Oh, I'll bet the lawyer...

Suspected Israeli nationalists set fire to a Christian seminary in Jerusalem and vandalized an elementary school in Nablus on Thursday, officials said. The attacks, which came a day after a similar group burned a mosque near Bethlehem, have been characterized as hate crimes by Israeli officials and "terrorism" by Palestinians. According to local media reports, the assailants poured flammable liquid into a bathroom window of the Greek Orthodox seminary and ignited it. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said "anti-Christian" slogans were scribbled in Hebrew on the seminary's walls — including “Jesus is a son of a whore” and “the redemption of...

My friend Jerry works for the Fish and Game. I guess they teach fish how to play Monopoly or something. He's had some interesting jobs. One time, he had to shock fish. I saw that movie about the Cuckoos Nest, so the fish must have been wiseacres and deserved it. I went along as an unpaid volunteer. Dad always said, "The workman is worth his wages". I had to carry this metal pole out into the river. Normally, as I found out later, they use a car battery for electricity when they shock fish. Jerry figured that if a little...

Missan, 29, may be the world’s oldest cat, according to its Swedish owner who says that aside from suffering from some minor back and kidney problems, there is no reason why her furry friend won't make it to the grand age of 30. Missan the Swedish farm cat is turning 30 this spring and may be the world oldest living cat. By far. “I read an article about another cat that was supposed to be the world’s oldest, and I just thought to myself: ‘mine is older!’,” Missan’s owner Åsa Wickberg, from Karlskoga, told the TT news agency. According to...

Gotta hear this Strech Call the Far right edges out the truth or else @ the wire..... http://www.kentuckyderby.com/prep_races/2014/southwest-0 The Truth or Else and Mr. Z, who had been battling before Far Right swept past them both, were separated by a nose at the wire. Runner-up The Truth or Else banked five Derby points and now has a total of six, while Mr. Z's third-place effort (two points) gave him 14 all told.

Buying two goats in August 2008 was little more than an experiment for farmer Paula Olson and some entertainment for her daughters. Six and a half years, 14 milking goats and roughly $300,000 later, she's in the midst of constructing a small-scale creamery in Madrid, Iowa, that's set to feature goat milk, cheese, ice cream and more. And though her creamery isn't yet open, Olson said local businesses have begun inquiring about her products, prompting her to already consider expanding.

Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, will visit Washington, DC and Louisville. The visit to the nation's capital is scheduled for March 17-20 and then the heir and his wife come to Louisville on March 20. In Louisville, they will highlight the work being done by members of the local community and charitable organizations to protect, preserve, and promote the health and well-being of the people of Kentucky's largest city through community cohesion, clean air, and food literacy initiatives, according to a news release.

CONROE, Texas - A Houston-area man has been accused of dragging a donkey behind his vehicle as other drivers called 911 to report the apparent animal abuse. Montgomery County jail records show 21-year-old Nasim Irsan was being held Monday on a charge of cruelty to livestock animals. Online jail records do not list bond or an attorney for Irsan, who was booked Saturday night into the jail in Conroe. Deputies responding to reports of a pickup truck dragging a donkey located the moving vehicle and rescued the animal, which had a rope around its neck. The rope was tied to...

This week, we sat down with Lierre Keith, author of "The Vegetarian Myth" to learn about why Vegans are wrong. She can be found at http://www.lierrekeith.com/

The market for Mexican marijuana has dried to a whiff and “everybody and his mother” is growing their own product, says a Puebloan who has been selling pot here for more than 20 years. - The current legal recreational market is fueled by people from out of state, Tracy said. Colorado users, weary of the high taxation on the product, have taken to growing, getting their “red card” for medicinal marijuana or even using Craigslist to score pot. - See more at: http://www.chieftain.com/news/3292183-120/marijuana-tracy-market-dealer#sthash.D9Z5fiLF.dpuf

Let's pretend it is 56 B.C. and you have been fortunate enough to be invited to a party at the home of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a great social coup. Piso, after all, was Julius Caesar's father-in-law and a consul of Rome. What's for dinner? You need to prepare for pig. Archaeologists studying the eating habits of ancient Etruscans and Romans have found that pork was the staple of Italian cuisine before and during the Roman Empire. Both the poor and the rich ate pig as the meat of choice, although the rich, like Piso, got better cuts, ate meat...

In a black and white photo snapped in the early 1940s, a young, central Ohio farm girl beams from beneath a straw hat. Around her neck is a small scarf; she wears a pair of overalls. The photo arrived with a simple but joyfully blunt note from the subject, now a 77-year-old farmer in rural Ohio: “Here’s me, butch Gael!”Only age 9 when it was taken, she already had a faint understanding that she was a lesbian. Aware of her differences, Gael buried a lack of love for frills in acceptable rural tomboyishness. For more than a decade she hid...

The University of California–Berkeley is hosting a lecture about how it is “necessary” to apply gay and transgender studies to agriculture because agriculture is all about reproduction and our food systems will suffer if we don’t. “So why queer agriculture? This seems like an odd question . . .” says the description, prompting an “uh, yeah” in my head, before continuing with “. . .but it becomes more obvious with research and analysis.” That second part I’m not so sure about, however, considering how many times I felt like my brain was going to explode as I continued reading. “Since...

Let's pretend it is 56 B.C. and you have been fortunate enough to be invited to a party at the home of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a great social coup. Piso, after all, was Julius Caesar's father-in-law and a consul of Rome... You need to prepare for pig. Archaeologists studying the eating habits of ancient Etruscans and Romans have found that pork was the staple of Italian cuisine before and during the Roman Empire. Both the poor and the rich ate pig as the meat of choice, although the rich, like Piso, got better cuts, ate meat more often and...