Free Republic

A region of Iceland is erupting for the first time in 800 years, raising concern of disruptions in air travel for centuries to come. The Guardian of London reported that since Jan. 21, the Reykjanes peninsula southwest of Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, has experienced more than 8,000 earthquakes. About 10 centimeters of land has risen due to magma intrusions underground, the paper said. "It seems that after being relatively inactive for many centuries, this region is waking up," Lancaster University volcanologist Dave McGarvie told the Guardian. The area is fed by five volcanic systems, the Guardian said, "which seem to come...

A daredevil has died after crashing in a homemade rocket he had launched himself while filming a program. "Mad" Mike Hughes, 64, died on Saturday near Barstow, California, after a rocket that he had built and crashed into the ground on private property at approximately 1:52 p.m. on Saturday near Highway 247, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. "In a cosmic quest to explore the final frontier on a shoe-string budget, Mike Hughes and Waldo Stakes have built a steam powered rocket that will launch "Mad Mike" 5,000 feet into the air," said an article on the Science...

A man died in what authorities described as a rocket crash in the desert in Barstow on Saturday afternoon. The deadly crash was reported just before 2 p.m. on a private property along Highway 247, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said in a written statement. "A man was pronounced deceased after the rocket crashed in the open desert during a rocket launch event," the statement said. Medical help was already on-site, but the pilot could not be saved. Authorities did not identity the pilot pending positive identification by coroner's officials. Witnesses and news reports indicted the launch was an...

Brad Pitt is making a movie about him Space is a fiction invented by white people, who should be removed from earth. Black people should be removed from the earth – to prevent white people from colonizing other worlds. Is this simply a freewheeling debate led by an eccentric two-time national champion-turned-instructor, or a fireable offense? A student at Weber State University is demanding the firing of Ryan Wash, whose life story will be told in a Brad Pitt-financed biopic, calling him a “racist professor” who was teaching an “anti-white curriculum” to his students. Freshman Michael Moreno secretly recorded Wash...

"I don't want to be a flat Earther," David Weiss says, his voice weary as he reflects on his personal awakening. "Would you wake up in the morning and want everyone to think you're an idiot?" But Weiss is a flat Earther. Ever since he tried and failed to find proof of the Earth's curve four years ago, he's believed with an evident passion that our planet is both flat and stationary -- and it's turned his world upside down. "I absolutely freaked out," Weiss tells CNN in a phone interview. "It literally whips the rug out from underneath you."...

Our nation yesterday rightly treated itself to a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. Vice President Pence summed it up this way: "This may be the only event of the 20th century that will be remembered in the 30th. But it wasn’t celebrated by everybody. Even for an event like this, there are conspiracy theorists. They claim that the Apollo program never happened, that it was all faked by the United States government, as in the movie Capricorn-1. Examples: Some conspiracy theorists talk about the fluttering in the flag planted by Buzz Aldrin. (Explanation: it was vibrations in the wires...

As I do every year, I wrote my Holy Week column about Easter. Major historians, even atheists, recognize that the execution of a man named Jesus around A.D. 33 is one of the most -- if not the most -- significant events in human history. Christians go a step further. They believe Jesus rose again from the dead. And therein lies the problem. Last week, I noted that "there are many who call themselves Christians, but only those who actually believe in the physical resurrection of Christ are truly Christian." It is not a controversial statement, or at least, I...

Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube. Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year. Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing....

YouTube has announced that it will no longer recommend videos that "come close to" violating its community guidelines, such as conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos. On Saturday, a former engineer for Google, YouTube's parent company, hailed the move as a "historic victory." The original blog post from YouTube, published on Jan. 25, said that videos the site recommends, usually after a user has viewed one video, would no longer lead just to similar videos and instead would "pull in recommendations from a wider set of topics." For example, if one person watches one video showing the recipe for snickerdoodles, they...

A group of people who believe the Earth is flat have announced their “biggest, boldest, best adventure yet”: a Flat Earth cruise scheduled for 2020. The cruise, organized by the Flat Earth International Conference, promises to be a lovely time. Flat earthers – who include the rapper B.o.B. and reality television person Tila Tequila – will be able to enjoy restaurants, swimming pools and perhaps even an artificial surf wave. There’s just one problem for those seeking to celebrate the flatness of the Earth. The navigational systems cruise ships, and other vessels, use rely on the fact that the Earth...

The Flat Earth International Conference has come to Denver. The flat-earthers come to discuss their beliefs with each other and debate the ideas of a flat versus round Earth. People not so sure the Earth is round have come from around the globe to Denver this week to discuss their beliefs at the Flat Earth International Conference, hosted at the Crowne Plaza Denver Airport Convention Center. The two-day conference began on Thursday and ends Friday. Self-described "flat-earthers" believe the Earth's shape has not been proven using the scientific method. "Scientifically when you go and try to prove the curvature, or...

Which of this generation's biggest tech luminaries and innovators will ultimately be remembered for having the greatest lasting effect on the world? It's a tough question, especially when you consider the role that people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg play in our everyday lives. But, if you ask renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the answer is simple: Elon Musk. "As important as Steve Jobs was, no doubt about it — [and] you have to add him to Bill Gates, because they birthed the personal computing revolution kind of together — here's the difference: Elon Musk is trying...

MOSCOW — The head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency has said that a proposed Russian mission to the moon will be tasked with verifying that the American moon landings were real. “We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they’ve been there or not,” said Dmitry Rogozin in a video posted Saturday on Twitter. Rogozin was responding to a question about whether or not NASA actually landed on the moon nearly 50 years ago. He appeared to be joking, as he smirked and shrugged while answering. But conspiracies surrounding NASA’s moon missions are common in Russia. The Soviet...

I heard the Lord speak, “I have extended an olive branch of peace to the United States of America and will extend Donald Trump’s presidency into a second term by the power of my right hand. What I have done in the White House will happen with every branch of Government in the United States for I will pull out corruption and plant trees of righteousness that will bear much fruit. Even now the ax is laid to the root of these corrupt trees. Every tree which does not bear good fruit will be cut down, pulled out and thrown...

On this day in 1883, railroad companies create the first time zones. Yes, you heard that right. Private individuals saw a problem and solved it without involving the federal government. What a wonderfully American “do it yourself” mindset! Such determination and perseverance is what made our country great. Before time zones, Americans generally relied upon the local time in their communities. That local time was based upon the movement of the sun in the sky, so the time could vary from city to city. Cities would usually designate one clock in the area—perhaps at a certain church or business—as the...

The autumn equinox is upon us. On Saturday (Sept. 22), the sun will shine directly on the Earth's equator, autumn will officially begin in the northern hemisphere, and the length of day and night will be nearly equal across the globe ... or, "across the disc," if you're a flat-Earther. For flat-Earthers — the vocal online community of folks who believe the world is actually flat and science is a conspiracy — the equinox can be tricky to explain. Without axial tilt, the phenomenon in which the rotating, spherical Earth angles its poles toward or away from the sun, how...

My father has been a pilot for all of my life of 50 years. He seems to latch on to ideas such as the flat earth theory that betrays everything that he was trained in aerial course plotting. True north? Magnetic North? Distant mountains rising from the horizon during the flight etc. He finally believes that the international space station exists after I insisted that he join me on a clear night to watch it go over. He seems to be obsessed with the notion that doom and destruction are always nearing. He's been like chicken little about gun control...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/i-watched-an-entire-flat-earth-convention-for-my-research-heres-what-i-learned/

A Third Of Millennials Aren’t Sure The Earth Is Round, Survey Finds April 5, 2018 at 1:28 pm CBS Local — A new survey has found that a third of young millennials in the U.S. aren’t convinced the Earth is actually round. The national poll reveals that 18 to 24-year-olds are the largest group in the country who refuse to accept the scientific facts of the world’s shape. YouGov, a British market research firm, polled 8,215 adults in the United States to find out if they ever believed in the “flat Earth” movement. Only 66 percent of young millennials answered...

A new survey has found that a third of young millennials in the U.S. aren’t convinced the Earth is actually round. The national poll reveals that 18 to 24-year-olds are the largest group in the country who refuse to accept the scientific facts of the world’s shape. YouGov, a British market research firm, polled 8,215 adults in the United States to find out if they ever believed in the “flat Earth” movement. Only 66 percent of young millennials answered that they “always believe the world is round.” Science teachers across the U.S. will be shaking their heads after learning that...