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Word For The Day, Tuesday February 9, 2015 In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". omphaloskepsis [om-fuh-loh-skep-sis] -ncontemplation of one's navel as part of a mystical exercise.[< Greek omphal (ós) omphalos + -o- -o- + sképsis act of looking}

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Former Mexican leader Felipe Calderon says he does not understand why Americans would vote for Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential candidate "completely crazy" and "not very well-informed". He further explained in the interview with CNBC that the border wall Trump plans to erect if elected is "stupid" and "completely useless". http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=102632

Scientists are set to make a major announcement Thursday on efforts to pinpoint the existence of gravitational waves, or ripples of space and time that transport energy across the universe. The waves themselves have never before been directly measured, though Albert Einstein said a century ago they were out there, according to his theory of general relativity. They are believed to form around massive objects like black holes and neutron stars, warping space and time. If gravitational waves have been spotted, it would mark one of the biggest scientific discoveries of our time, filling in a major gap in our...

DNA evidence lifted from the ancient bones and teeth of people who lived in Europe from the Late Pleistocene to the early Holocene -- spanning almost 30,000 years of European prehistory -- has offered some surprises, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on Feb. 4, 2016. Perhaps most notably, the evidence shows a major shift in the population around 14,500 years ago, during a period of severe climatic instability... The researchers pieced this missing history together by reconstructing the mitochondrial genomes of 35 hunter-gatherer individuals who lived in Italy, Germany, Belgium, France,...

200,000 fish bones discovered in and around a pit in Sweden suggest that the people living in the area more than 9000 years ago were more settled and cultured than we previously thought. Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests people were storing large amounts of fermented food much earlier than experts thought. The new paper reveals the earliest evidence of fermentation in Scandinavia, from the Early Mesolithic time period, about 9,200 years ago. The author of the study, from Lund University in Sweden, say the findings suggest that people who survived by foraging for food were actually...

As Hillary Clinton seeks to break that "highest, hardest glass ceiling," she is finding that -- at least in this state -- women voters aren't so eager to help her shatter it. And it's not just young women. At rallies across New Hampshire, women from every generation have flocked to Bernie Sanders' events. They sport "Grandmas for Bernie" buttons, laud him for his vision, and seem content to pass up the opportunity to put Clinton on a historic path to the White House, betting that there will be another chance down the line. "That ceiling will be shattered at some...

In the movie "The Big Short," Steve Carell plays a slightly altered version of me. In real life, I am a portfolio manager and financial services analyst who over a 25-year career has, at times, been highly critical of bank behavior. More than eight years after the financial crisis, many people say that the large banks still pose a threat to the economy and should be broken up. Such a view captures the justifiable anger many Americans still feel toward the large banks. But I don't agree. Breaking up the banks would ignore the significant progress made by regulators to...

DO NOT VOTE ON THIS THREAD. This is the nightly DISCUSSION thread for the ongoing 2016 Free Republic Caucus. Per caucus rules, no comments are allowed on the caucus thread itself - hence this open chat thread. If you'd like to vote in the caucus, please look in the sidebar for the link, or check downthread here. Thanks, and let 'er rip! Windy

Every player of the popular video game Civilization knows to hit the save button before engaging in the risky, stupid invasion of foreign country. In the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it became apparent after the first few months that the war was not working out as its framers had envisioned. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction was only the icing, so to speak, on the disaster of failed reconciliation, state collapse, and executive incompetence. What if we had “saved game” before we invaded Iraq? What would America’s strategic options look like today? The Middle East...

Mozart "Prague" Symphony 38 First Movement with Orchestral Score. For all you budding conductors out there.

February 11, 10:30 EST, there will be a big press conference about gravitational waves by the people running the gravitational wave detector LIGO. It's a fair bet that they will announce the first direct detection of gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. If all goes as the scientists hope, this will be the kick-off for an era of gravitational wave astronomy: for learning about some of the most extreme and violent events in the cosmos by measuring the tiny ripples of space distortions that emanate from them. In the words of the eminent relativist John Wheeler, Einstein’s...

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Oracle has released new Java installers to fix a well-known security issue (CVE-2016-0603) that also affects a plethora of other applications, from Web browsers to antivirus products, and from file compressors to home cinema software. The problem is called DLL hijacking (or DLL side-loading) and refers to the fact that malware authors can place DLLs of the same name in specific locations on the target's filesystem and have it inadvertently load the malicious DLL instead of the safe one. DLL hijacking is a very well-known issue This type of attack is very old and has been known to many software...

--snip-- But as the burning towers came crashing down under their own weight, disbelief turned to anger. "I still don't understand," she says, "how it could have been allowed to happen." We are having lunch in a busy Manila shopping centre, not far from the Dona Josefa Apartments, where it all started, where she - and the CIA and the FBI - first heard the words "Operation Bojinka." --snip-- the United States already had a thick file on him, and that was just one of his 21 known aliases. Sometimes he passed himself off as Paul Vijay, or Adam Sali...

This sounds like a great book - thought you guys might be interested. In The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, Walsh brings his substantial erudition to bear on his best nonfiction work so far, a tour de force about how the “new nihilists” of the so-called Frankfurt School and their philosophy of “Critical Theory – like Pandora’s Box – released a horde of demons into the American psyche.” Disguised as a utopian dream, it– like Satan, a key figure in the book – instead sowed “destruction, division, hatred, and calumny.” This is not a casual beach read. It’s not even your typical...

Electronic gear shifters on some newer Fiat Chrysler SUVs and cars are so confusing that drivers have exited the vehicles with the engines running and while they are still in gear, causing crashes and serious injuries, U.S. safety investigators have determined. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in documents posted during the weekend, has doubled the number of vehicles involved in an investigation of the problem, but it stopped short of seeking a recall. The agency found more than 100 crashes and over a dozen injuries, mostly in Jeep Grand Cherokees. Agency tests found that operating the centre console shift...

A pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards and Mark Blankfield star in this infamous Friday's skit about a maniacal chiropractor with some very unusual therapy techniques.

LIVE Stream: Donald Trump Rally in Manchester, NH at the Verizon Wireless Arena (2-8-16)

A male leopard which entered a school in the Indian city of Bangalore injured six people trying to capture it. A scientist and a forestry employee were among those mauled during the near 10-hour long effort to corner the dangerous animal on Sunday. The leopard, which strolled into the Vibgyor International school, was eventually tranquillised and released. A recent wildlife census estimated that India has a leopard population of between 12,000 and 14,000. The eight-year-old male was spotted strolling inside the school premises in the Kundalahalli area. Pictures by Kashif Masood Read more and see video at link