Free Republic

 The worst rub is the learning curve. There needs to be a hierarchy of the most common tasks.  Audacity is free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds.   "Audacity is available for Windows, Mac, Linux; and other operating systems. Check their feature list, wiki, and forum."  Audacity is a great success, a user-community produced and managed application program that does what it's supposed to. Years ago you used to have to pay for this software, now it's free, but you have to invest your time in learning how to use it. The worst rub is the learning curve. So many...

The Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) has received court approval of its seizure of the art studio of James Dupree. It plans to bulldoze it and sell the land to a private grocery chain. Despite renovating a dilapidated warehouse and converting it into an attractive and bustling center for artistic expression, Dupree’s property rights are being sacrificed to the PRA’s vision of what the City needs. “It’s a question of whether the rights of the collective community should take precedence over the rights of a single individual,” PRA Executive Director Ed Covington explained. “Far more people will eat the food sold...

Russia has now directly invaded Ukraine-  yet underdog Kiev remains spirited in defiance  As the battle in the east rages, a Ukrainian artist -who's conveniently from a country blessed with some of the most beautiful models in the world- has gone to the  tried-and-true method of buoying soldiers' morale, the pin-up girl...  'SEPARATISM is Bad for Your Health'

When was the last time you used your computer's disc drive? What about your DVD player? E-waste is all around us, but as the brilliant Instructables user behind this $60 3D printer proves, there's plenty to be done with it—if you've got some engineering chops. Last week we wrote about the world's smallest 3D printer, which costs less than $300 and prints resin. But an Instructables user named Mikelllc has gone way further, uploading his designs for a 3D printer made from 80 percent recycled e-waste and costing roughly $60. Part of the idea, he writes, is to "help us...

Something cheerful for a cheerful day.

MUSIC | U2 pans for wisdom in Songs of Innocence “There is only one thing … worse than being talked about,” says a character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, “and that is not being talked about.” The Irish rockers U2 and their partners at Apple tested that idea by placing free copies of U2’s latest album, Songs of Innocence (Island), in the accounts of iTunes subscribers on Sept. 9—a date, coincidentally, that also marked the 124th birthday of Colonel Harland Sanders and the 48th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

More at Reaganite Republican

French designers alter 3D printer to let you ink yourself 3D printing technology has now followed the curve of most emerging inventions. What starts as a prototype gets picked up by the industries the idea most impacts, then by corollary industries, then by the art and hobbyist crowd. This month, Paris design studio Appropriate Audiences made that final step by hacking a 3D printer and turning it into a tattoo gun. The printing device itself, called Tatoue, affixes a tattoo gun on rails to a square metal frame. The frame and gun can move on three axes so the tattooing...

The shooting death of Ferguson, Mo. teenager Michael Brown on Aug. 9 by officer Darren Wilson set off a firestorm of protests, marches, and more recently, speculation and anger regarding the handling of Brown’s death and autopsy. Ferguson has become the epicenter where the conversation surrounding racial tensions and the extent of police oversight has taken center stage. On Oct. 23, the Department of Justice condemned recently leaked information regarding Brown’s autopsy that suggests Brown was shot at close range and may have been charging at Wilson at the time he was shot, calling the leaks “irresponsible and highly troubling.”...

I am trying to find the photo taken in the 80's about Teddy's offshore drilling. Funny how I can't find it on google. Any have the link to the pic? Here is the story behind it from Rush: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2007/08/03/luke_sissyfag_howell_heflin_womb_to_the_tomb RUSH: What happened was -- this is back in the late eighties, I think -- Senator Kennedy is vacationing off the coast of the south of France and he's got a young nubile, very limber and flexible young woman with him, scantily clad in a nice bikini. We know this because paparazzi were taking pictures from neighboring boats, and the New...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Penelope Cruz is Esquire's "sexiest woman alive." Cruz is the 11th woman to be given the title by the magazine. Previous honorees include Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Rihanna, Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson.

pic: facebook (Miss Suomi official) More/video at Reaganite Republican...

ISIS torched an 1800-yr-old church at Mosul, Iraq       (Photo: Ankawa4All)  Full gallery at Reaganite Republican...

AmericaÂ’s upper classes are now and have always been insecure. Lacking a hereditary nobility, social strivers have had to work hard to distinguish themselves from the masses when the only distinguishing feature, really, is cash. In the 19th Century, worried rich people formed "the Four Hundred" to distinguish the social "in-crowd" from the hoi polloi. America's nervous upper class, distinguished now, as it was then, by money, not heredity, is still trying desperately to distinguish itself from those gun and God lovin' American masses upon whom Obama heaped such scorn.Our social "betters" go to Ivy League schools where earnest (and...

More at Reaganite Republican...

My graphic artistic skill doesn’t extend much beyond stick figures and daisies, and my rather limited visual sense means that my home was designed more with an eye to utility than aesthetics. Despite my personal limitations, I’m actually very fond of, and quite knowledgeable about, art.More specifically, I’m fond of and knowledgeable about art through the early 20th century. I’ve taken numerous art history classes and can discuss with some sophistication all manner and times of sculpture and painting. I’ve been to most of the great museums in the Western world,* and bored my children silly by dragging them through...

I have long had a love/hate relationship with pop music. Growing up as an aspiring jazz pianist, I wasn’t interested in listening to anything that might appeal to those that I deemed to possess a less than refined palette of musical taste. This willful ignorance continued for some time; it was not until I began making YouTube videos (and subsequently receiving requests for modern pop songs) that I decided to drop my preconceived notions and examine contemporary pop with an open mind. What I found is that, despite my initial aversion to the stuff I was hearing, I was unable...

The Metropolitan Opera, despite vigorous opposition from many parts of the Jewish Community, is forging ahead with its plans to present the opera, “The Death of Klinghoffer,” during its Fall 2014 season. After a campaign of letter writing, demonstrations, and articles in the Jewish press, the Met has refused to remove the opera from its schedule, offering only to “compromise” by cancelling its worldwide HD simulcast programs, but not the production at the Metropolitan Opera House itself. This opera presents the takeover of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 by Palestinian terrorists, and their murder of 69 year old,...

The Russians -well known for their great sense of humor (especially when you're making fun of them)- have loudly complained to the Bulgarian government for not-the-first-time re. the ongoing vandalism offensive against (offensive) USSR-era monuments glorifying the Soviet Red Army, the Bulgarian Red Army, and/or socialism in general that still dot the bleak post- communist landscape of the EU's poorest country. One gets the feeling they might have done a bit better by now economically if not for the damage wrought by 40 years of communist stagnation- they seem to think that too, as evidenced by the Bulgarians' disgust...

Hollywood's famed Sunset Strip, Fall of '56  (photo PLAT)  Full gallery/video at Reaganite Republican...