Free Republic

Everyone today seems to have some solution for "going green" or improving sustainability...However, at $4 per gallon and above, producing gasoline is profitable no matter how inefficient and un-green extracting and refining it happens to be. Just make sure your balance sheet doesn't include the ice sheet continuing to slide off Greenland or the Antarctic ice collapsing in the next few years. Those ecological disasters will make Japan's recent tsunami look like my post-nasal drip. Sniffle. ...

Does anybody know of a firewall program that will allow blocking direct access to a site (youtube in my case) while still allowing another page to bring in content from that site? I am trying to block youtube while allowing an educational site that has specific embedded youtube videos as lecture material. With McAfee, I can block youtube, but then the embedded video lectures aren't loaded at the educational site.

James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore have written a powerful book exposing the efforts of the fossil industries to confuse the public and policy makers about the science of climate change. After all, if there is scientific doubt about climate change – either the causes, or the effects – then we don’t really have to do anything, do we? “This is a story of betrayal, a story of selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility on an epic scale.” The book exposes the public relations techniques used, the players, and the funding. It is a warning to all about media manipulation, and it is...

Google Books is a very interesting feature. Serendipity has found a book of a Canadian traveling in the US in 1846. He was explaining US State nicknames for Canadians so they would understand what they were hearing when they traveled here. Some of these have persisted to this day and some are just plain weird and funny: Massachussetts The Bay State, Steady Habits Rhode Island Plantation State Vermont Banner State or Green Mountain Boys New Hampsire The Granite State Connecticut Freestone State Maine Lumber State Pennsylvania Keystone State Delaware Little Delaware Maryland Monumental Virginia Old Dominion or Cavaliers North Carolina...

Some of you might be tired of seeing this, I've posted it as a response twice, but I still think this is what we are dealing with here: This race baiting is like the dog that can sense that you are afraid of it. No matter how normal you try to act, the dog senses that you are afraid and continues to "pick on you" until the desired fear response is given. Then the dog rewards giving him what he wants, but not by letting up, but by going even further once you are on the run. This is what...

How long before a Signature Means Nothing? 8/19/2001   I just lost a deal selling my house. It wasn’t the financing that fell through. It wasn’t the inspection that found something too expensive for me to agree to fix. It was a lack of honor. Long ago, the world was chaotic. There were no rules. A person could do anything as long as he was more ruthless than the other guy. Later, a person’s word, his handshake, and his signature were considered good enough to close a deal. When a person would give you his word sealed with a ...

Yesterday on C-Span (I believe) there was a panel of media writers, environmentalists, and Julia Butterfly Hill discussing media and the environment. I was only channel surfing, and just caught about 5 minutes of it. However, there was one media writer who made the statement that global warming was "the most moral issue since the civil rights movement of the 60's" (to paraphrase it). It's funny that the left does not see abortion as a moral issue at all. It wasn't even mentioned during the time I was watching. The guy was actually raising global warming to the moral level ...

Earthshare.org

What do you think of All-Day Kindergarten? I have seen this touted as a cure for the education problem. It allows politicians to say they "did something" for education, while schools will get extra money from state or federal coffers (so I have heard). I have heard people say they like it since it is like daycare. The politicians assume that most kids already attend daycare so being away from home all day will not be a problem. My kids have never been in daycare. An all-day experience away from home will be too much for them as a first ...