Free Republic

The historic Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969 culminated in the first manned moon landing. While many of the proud Americans who were involved in that project are no longer with us 40 years later, the technologies they built still live on, will be further refined, and will return us to that lonely world and beyond. Our commitment to space exploration began with a wake up call over five decades ago with a beeping sound. Not with a clock radio, but with a transponder signal that could be tuned in by any ham radio enthusiast — the launching...

"What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with fireworks - only Ludlow Kissel takes it to a new height by putting on a display that will go down in history." (Quote from the flicklives.com page.) Shep read this story on the air pretty much every July 4th. You can listen to the story in mp3 audio file format or download it for later enjoyment at the Internet Archive, here (direct link to the mp3). The story appeared in written form in Playboy, and later, in Shep's first book, In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson once saved Loome Theological Booksellers from the "out with the old, in with the new" spirit of Vatican II hardliners in the Archdiocese of St. Paul/Minneapolis. Before he was Archbishop of St. Louis, before he was Bishop of Saginaw, before he was Bishop of Sioux Falls, and before he was the Auxiliary Bishop of St. Paul/Minneapolis, he was the Chancellor for the Archdiocese. Before Loome Theological Booksellers was the largest theological bookstore in the world, it was not. The following story was recounted to me by Dr. Loome just last week (some embellishments of suspense...

Glenn Hauser's World of Radio podcast provides news of international broadcasts, especially shortwave. The podcast is available here or here for free in mp3 and realplayer audio file formats. On June 3, 1989, Radio Beijing's English Service reported, briefly, on the army massacre of civilians in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Episode #1462 of World of Radio begins with the recording of the Radio Beijing announcer's report, then the episode goes on to speculate who the announcer was and what was his fate. Transcript of Radio Beijing announcer follows:Please remember June the Third, 1989. The most tragic event happened in the Chinese...

On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Italy's Mount Vesuvius exploded, burying the Roman towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii under tons of super-heated ash, rock and debris in one of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history. Thousands died. But somehow, hundreds of papyrus scrolls survived -- sort of -- in a villa at Herculaneum thought to have been owned at one time by Julius Caesar's father-in-law. The scrolls contained ancient philosophical and learned writings. But they were so badly damaged -- literally turned to carbon by the volcanic heat -- that they crumbled when scholars first tried to open them centuries...

Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. According to a new model for dark energy, that is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today. The model, published online May 6 in the journal Physical Review D, was developed by Research Associate Sourish Dutta and Professor of Physics Robert Scherrer at Vanderbilt University, working with Professor of Physics Stephen Hsu and graduate student David Reeb at the University of Oregon. A cosmological phase transition -- similar to freezing -- is one of the distinctive aspects of this...

This artist's conception shows a rogue black hole floating near a globular star cluster on the outskirts of the Milky Way. New calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way. Fortunately, the closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years from Earth. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA) (PhysOrg.com) -- It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie: rogue black holes roaming our galaxy, threatening to swallow anything that gets too close. In fact, new calculations by...

April 27, 2009 The Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.PresidentUniversity of Notre Dame Dear Father Jenkins, When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the...

The voice of Ian Freeman of Free Talk Live enters the site today, narrating The Market For Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill. Well over a quarter century old, Morris and Linda Tannehill’s iconoclastic "The Market for Liberty" is one of the most important books of our time. Written originally in 1970, it is even more relevant now in an era of rapidly vanishing personal liberty caused by an ever more intrusive and expensive government. "The Market for Liberty" is the antidote to years of government indoctrination, lies and misinformation. Using clear and concise language, the Tannehills provide an entire...

Business software maker Oracle Corp. said Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to buy server builder Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4 billion. Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) said it will buy Sun (JAVA, Fortune 500) common stock for $9.50 per share in cash, a 42% premium from Friday's closing price of $6.69. After accounting for Sun's cash and debt, the deal's value is $5.6 billion, the companies said. The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle said it expects Sun to contribute over $1.5 billion to its operating profit this year, and over $2 billion in the second year. On...

PHOENIX -- Whitey Lockman, who doubled ahead of Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard Round The World" that clinched the 1951 NL pennant, died Tuesday at the Mayo Clinic Hospital. He was 82. Lockman told the New York Daily News last week that he was fighting pulmonary fibrosis. Lockman's wife, Linda, told the Daily News on Thursday night that her husband's death was "very, very sudden." Lockman was an outfielder and first baseman and played with the Giants from 1945 to 1958. His career, which ended in 1960, also included stints with the Cardinals, Orioles and Reds. He was a career .279...

The News & Observer will lay off dozens of workers and subject remaining workers to furloughs and salary cuts in the Raleigh newspaper's latest efforts to save money. The newspaper says it will eliminate 78 positions, or about 11 percent of its work force, through a round of voluntary buyouts as well as layoffs. The equivalent of 27 full-time workers in The N&O newsroom are included in the plans, Publisher Orage Quarles III confirmed Monday. Remaining workers will need to take a week off without pay between May 1 and Oct. 31, Quarles says. Workers making more than $25,000 per...

The Rev. Joseph C. Martin was recalled yesterday during his funeral Mass as a "wounded healer" who offered a "way up and a way out for God's broken people." An emotional overflow crowd in Baltimore heard the Roman Catholic priest who worked with the addicted eulogized as a good Samaritan who advised others to "go as far as you can and take one step more." The funeral Mass was held at the 'Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. ... Tom Neff took a train from New York City to pay his respects to the...

North Carolina has delayed sending out state income tax refund checks so state officials can juggle the cashflow needed to give taxpayers back their money. Secretary of Revenue Ken Lay described the problem as a temporary backlog, because the department is having to tap special accounts to pay refunds, he said. "Everyone who is due a refund will get a refund," Lay said in a prepared statement, saying he expects progress in the coming weeks. The disclosure of the refund logjam this week has angered some taxpayers who called the Revenue Department in recent weeks and were told that...

Despite the many accolades for President Barack Obama's swift action on a major economic stimulus package, an outline of a comprehensive financial rescue package, and his most recent proposal for another bailout for homeowners who might not meet their mortgage payments, a growing number of critics and global investors have questioned the effectiveness of these measures in helping to put the economy back on a path to faster growth. Specifically, the costly stimulus plan is little more than a grab bag of congressional policy obsessions that other Presidents suppressed in the past; the financial rescue plan is a jumble of...

Antisemitic phrases in draft document 'totally unacceptable' (ANSA) - Brussels, March 5 - Italy has decided to withdraw from an upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Thursday. Frattini said ''aggressive phrases of an antisemitic nature'' in a draft declaration were behind the decision to withdraw from the conference, known as the Durban Review Conference, which is a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The minister said the phrases in the draft declaration were ''totally unacceptable'' and stressed that they would have to be removed before Italy...

This is (IMHO) an outstanding work of hard science fiction. From the Wikipedia page:Tau Zero follows the crew of the starship Leonora Christine, a colonization vessel crewed by 25 men and 25 women. The ship is not capable of FTL travel and so is constrained by relativity. Its engines operate two modes, acceleration and deceleration. The deceleration module becomes damaged during the trip. Because the engines must be running at all times (to provide particle/radiation shielding), and because of the hard radiation produced by the engines, the crew can neither repair the decelerator nor turn off the accelerator. Instead, the...

The collapse of the Historical Archive of Cologne on Tuesday buried more than a millenium's worth of documents under tons of rubble. Archivists and historians hope something can be salvaged, but the future of the city's past is grim. Disaster struck in Cologne on Tuesday, as the building housing the city's Historical Archive suddenly collapsed. According to city officials, two people are officially missing and believed dead. ... Cologne's archives are one of the only collections in Germany to have survived World War II completely intact. Because of Cologne's long history, much of its heritage was stored locally rather than...

... The disaster coming this spring and summer is no movie, and nothing menacing is falling from the sky. It's about what's not falling from the sky — rain. After three years of below-average rain and snowfall, coupled with new pumping restrictions to protect endangered fish, California's farmers are running out of water. The devastating impact has trickled down to dozens of small Central Valley farming communities. ... The farmers who will be slammed the hardest are those who depend on the Central Valley Project, the massive federal system of dams, reservoirs, pumps and canals that helped spawn California's $36...

Don't have time to wait for a latte or a pot of drip to brew? Starbucks Corp. says it has an answer: instant coffee. The Seattle-based coffee retailer (Nasdaq: SBUX) plans to unveil an instant coffee product next week. In a memo sent to Starbucks employees Thursday, Vivek Varma, Starbucks senior vice president of public affairs, said the product could be in stores by Feb. 18. Varma said this won't be your father's instant coffee. She said Starbucks has developed technology to "absolutely replicate the taste of Starbucks coffee in an instant form." Starbucks has been working on the project...