Free Republic

...As of 2010, SXSW Inc. had just 75 paid employees, including those working part-time. ..,These thousands of volunteers “are the faces of SXSW,” according to the company, and without them this year’s conference simply couldn’t happen. ...SXSW may have an argument that its internship program is legal; that its program is only available to those getting college credit certainly helps. When it comes to volunteers, however, the Department of Labor says there is no argument at all: Individuals “may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.” ...The artists who come to SXSW aren’t compensated much better. Plane tickets and...

Sunday’s Academy Awards event showcased Hollywood’s finest. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes saying lovely things about their industry – a politically “progressive” business that gives nearly all of its political contributions to Democrats. Democrats, of course, purport to believe that “the rich” do not pay their “fair share” in taxes. Democrats also believe in gender equality, that women should receive “equal pay” for “equal work.”

It’s a sad day for the Internet… according to Trend Micro’s security analysts, it’s been discovered that photographs of both sunsets and — even more heartbreaking — cats being shared across the web contain malware capable of getting into your bank accounts.

TCM Remembers 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6gXi67ueD0

Enjoy Classic Duck Dynasty

1970s: “The Flying Pulpit” The Williams X-Jet, created by Williams International, was a small, one-man, light-weight, Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft powered by a modified Williams F107 turbofan aircraft engine designated WR-19-7 after some minor modifications. The vehicle was nicknamed "The Flying Pulpit", seemingly due to its shape. It was designed to be operated by / carry one person and dirigible by leaning in the direction of desired travel together with the modulation of its input power. It could move in any direction, accelerate rapidly, hover and rotate on its axis, stay aloft for up to 45 minutes...

1927: Submarine Aircraft Carrier HMS M2 was a Royal Navy submarine monitor completed in 1919, converted in 1927 into the world's first submarine aircraft carrier. She was shipwrecked in Lyme Bay, Dorset, Britain, on 26 January 1932. She was one of three M-class boats completed. • Design and Career Four M-class submarines replaced the order for the last four K-class submarines, K17-K21. Although they were similar in size, the M class was an entirely different design from the K class, although it is possible that some material ordered for the K-boats went into them. In any event, the end of...

Vyacheslav Ivanov made a timelapse of snowflakes forming and melting that's mesmerizing and sort of makes you appreciate the beauty of those frozen bits falling from the sky..

THINK YOU DON'T like IPAs? Too bitter, too intense? Many are. Tongue-numbingly resinous and paint-thinner strong, today's double and triple India Pale Ales have a few devoted, if masochistic, fans. But to those of us more interested in grace than grandeur, IPAs can be hard beers to love. Or even swallow. No longer. Showcasing new and experimental breeds of hops, the latest pale ales offer a welcome change of pace: nuanced flavor.So get them while you can: a fleeting, flickering burst of tropical sun in a northern winter. 1. Great Lakes Chillwave Double IPA (9.4% ABV): Hop-of-the-moment Mosaic bursts through...

RUSH: I told you a long time ago to be wary that the Clinton-Lewinsky thing was gonna lead to people thinking it's cool and all that. Have you heard Beyonce's latest tune? Oh, oh, oh! Well. Hang on. Grab audio sound bite 6A. This is Beyonce Carter's website. She released a new song out there, and a video entitled "Partition." It's the limousine partition, I guess. Doesn't want the driver looking back. Wants the driver to close the partition. In the song she sings a bout going to a club with her husband and not getting there before things got...

A chilling video of Maryland police silencing an innocent student who was recording the arrests of two other people has civil libertarians outraged. The arrests were made at night on the streets of Towson, Maryland. A University of Maryland-Baltimore County student who witnessed the arrests decided to record them using his cell phone. The student, 21-year-old Sergio Gutierrez, was soon approached by officers who objected — wrongly — to his actions. Gutierrez repeatedly told the officers that he knew he had the right to film them, but the cops were prepared to use any excuse to shut him down. First...

Christian Scientists have won their long, twilight struggle against brutalism -- so says a wrecking ball at the corner of 16th and I streets in Washington, D.C. For what seemed like an eternity, members of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist fought with architecture historians and city bureaucrats over the right to tear down their own church. Churchgoers never liked their 1971 classic brutalist structure -- an architectural style that is well, brutal -- and have even suggested it has something to do with their dwindling numbers.

When it comes to wildlife photography, the Snow Leopard is almost unicorn-like. No, it’s not mythical, but it’s almost as hard to capture one of these infamous “gray ghosts of the Himalayas” on camera as it is to track down a creature that doesn’t actually exist.

I have a new idea for a movie or series. I know we have a few Hollywood types here. Name: Outlawing Normal The show will be how society fringes work to push government and society to accept the fringes and, outlaw the normal society. I get to be executive producer.

...Until now, there were only two verified photographs of Johnson (1911-1938), who remains the most inspirational musician produced by the Mississippi Delta and the man Eric Clapton once anointed as "the most important blues musician who ever lived". This weekend a third, newly cleaned-up and authenticated image has been released by the Johnson estate showing him standing next to musician Johnny Shines. Forensic work on the photograph began in 2007, when Lois Gibson, who works with the Houston police department, analysed the features of the long-fingered figure holding the guitar. Gibson, who found the identity of the sailor kissing the...

Wait, did the season finale of “Downton” leave us with more questions than it answered? Here’s what we still don’t know: Did Bates kill Green? Will Mary choose Blake or Gillingham or Napier? (Okay, probably not Napier). Will Edith ever locate Michael Gregson? What dirt does Barrow have on Baxter? (And, related, why do the names of so many characters on “Downton” begin with B? Bates, Blake, Barrow, Baxter, Bunting, Branson, Braithwaite. I’m out of breath). I doubt the last question will be answered and it looks like we’ll have to wait for next season to find out about the...

From the opening ceremony with a malfunctioning ring, to police officers singing Get Lucky, the Sochi Winter Olympics have been a games to remember. But tonight marks the end for the highly controversial games, which are also the most expensive in Olympic history. Showing that the country has a sense of humour, dancers during the opening section of the show mocked the moment a ring failed to open during the opening ceremony. The joke was followed by an opulent show of ballet, circus performances and classical music, an ode to the country's rich literary history - before the Olympic flame...

In my youth, vampires were EVIL INCARNATE. They used you and left you dead or worse. Somehow, in the past fifty years, vampires have become teenaged heartthrobs, misunderstood and full of angst. But do you realize, from a societal and sociological point of view...vampires are the perfect man for modern women? In my youth, in the movies, men were men. You were either John Wayne…strong, silent, but caring underneath, or you were Cary Grant…quirky, but strong, witty on the surface, but a manly good guy underneath. They were GOOD INCARNATE. We have gelded the modern male. Once they were supposed...

A journey to the heart of New Guinea’s Asmat tribal homeland sheds new light on the mystery of the heir’s disappearance there in 1961 smat is, in its way, a perfect place. Everything you could possibly need is here. It’s teeming with shrimp and crabs and fish and clams. In the jungle there are wild pig, the furry, opossumlike cuscus, and the ostrichlike cassowary. And sago palm, whose pith can be pounded into a white starch and which hosts the larvae of the Capricorn beetle, both key sources of nutrition. The rivers are navigable highways. Crocodiles 15 feet long prowl...

Tunes for the Ages(d)\ Beetles – “When I’m 64.” At 73, I wish. Jackson Browne - “In sixty-five I was seventeen (actually 25) and running up one-o-one. I don't know where I'm running now, I'm just running on.” Well, I kind of know where I ‘m running to now. Neil Young –“ Old man look at my life, I'm a lot like you were.” Not sure about that. And Sinatra - “It Was a Very Good Year”. Most have been, not all.