Free Republic

Hal Lindsey’s book “The Late Great Planet Earth,” written in 1970, sold over 28 million copies. Gullible Christians got sucked into Lindsey’s soon end-of-the world poppycock. As time has passed without his version of Armageddon taking place, we can now objectively analyze where Lindsey went wrong: • Lindsey (p. 54, 181), like other dispensationalists, placed the beginning of the end with Israel becoming a nation in 1948. He thought all prophecy would be fulfilled within a 40-year generation (Matthew 24:34). But 1988 came and went, proving him to be a false prophet. (This should be adequate proof that 1948 has...

I know Van Impe, LaHaye, and Camping are no longer with us, but what about Hal Lindsey, John Ankerberg and other keepers of the end time flame. I'm surprised the end time context of what's going down in Ukraine hasn't been discussed on FR, unless I missed it. Please direct me to such threads if it has.ff

The psychedelic renaissance will resemble the 1960s, only this time, it will take place under medical authorities and state supervision, with the corporate sheen of celebrity endorsement.The popularization of psychedelics has already transformed the American mind. As tripping becomes normalized and legal in the coming decade, the pace of change will only accelerate. There will be more openness to new ideas, both brilliant and insane. Commercial availability will also invigorate the market for synthetic religious experiences.Having seen people gobble up hallucinogens in various contexts, I’m not particularly bothered by the substances themselves. The physical effects are negligible—fatality rates are basically...

Hal Lindsey’s book “The Late Great Planet Earth,” written in 1970, sold over 28 million copies. Gullible Christians got sucked into Lindsey’s soon end-of-the world poppycock. As time has passed without his version of Armageddon taking place, we can now objectively analyze where Lindsey went wrong: • Lindsey (p. 54, 181), like other dispensationalists, placed the beginning of the end with Israel becoming a nation in 1948. He thought all prophecy would be fulfilled within a 40-year generation (Matthew 24:34). But 1988 came and went, proving him to be a false prophet. (This should be adequate proof that 1948 has...

It’s not every day that something truly shocking happens in baseball. There are thousands of games each year, each pitch photographed and videotaped and tracked on radar to the millimeter and microsecond, so there is really very little new under the sun. But what’s happened to the Yankees over the first three weeks of the season is truly shocking. This past weekend, right fielder Aaron Judge went on the IL with a strained oblique muscle—and I know this isn’t the point, but when a guy as big as Judge pulls a muscle, it has to register on the Richter scale—which...

What did the picture editor of Look see in the Bronx teenager's photograph? A weeping city news vendor surrounded by front pages announcing the death of President Roosevelt — and the small, tenderly caught moment that humanizes great events. It got its sixteen-year-old snapper, Stanley Kubrick, a staff job at the magazine, and he never did anything like it again — unless you count the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in which the computer HAL, the picture's only really human character, gets dismantled in what's easily the most moving death scene in the director's oeuvre. Stanley Kubrick died...

Shortened title. Full title: Judicial Watch: Docs Reveal FBI Cover Up of ‘Chart’ of Potential Violations of Law by Hillary Clinton ‘I’ll make sure Andy tells Mike to keep these in his pocket’ (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 186 pages of records from the Department of Justice that include emails documenting an evident cover up of a chart of potential violations of law by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Judicial Watch obtained the records through a January 2018 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed respond to a December 4, 2017...

Depending on how paranoid you are, this research from Stanford and Google will be either terrifying or fascinating. A machine learning agent intended to transform aerial images into street maps and back was found to be cheating by hiding information it would need later in “a nearly imperceptible, high-frequency signal.” Clever girl! This occurrence reveals a problem with computers that has existed since they were invented: they do exactly what you tell them to do. The intention of the researchers was, as you might guess, to accelerate and improve the process of turning satellite imagery into Google’s famously accurate maps....

CIMON isn’t much to look at. It’s just a floating ball with a cartoonish face on its touch screen. It’s built to be a personal assistant for astronauts working on the International Space Station (ISS). CIMON stands for Crew Interactive MObile compinioN. It’s not supposed to be just a tool. It’s also supposed to be a friend. Yes, it’s a personality prototype. You can tell, can’t you? But, as numerous books and movies have clearly warned us — shortly after being switched on for the first time, CIMON has developed a mind of its own. And it appears CIMON wants...

The Stratford Festival says it is mourning the loss of a “rare artist” and one of its pioneers, Douglas Rain, who died at the age of 90 on Sunday morning. “Canadian theatre has lost one of its greatest talents and a guiding light in its development,” the festival’s artistic director, Antoni Cimolino, said in a press release Sunday. “Douglas Rain was that rare artist: an actor deeply admired by other actors.” The festival said Rain died of natural causes in Stratford, Ont., where he built his career as an actor. Before his death, Rain was one of few surviving members...

Douglas Rain passed away Sunday morning at the age of 90. The actor, one of the pioneers of the Stratford Festival, is best known for his role in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rain was the voice of the sentient computer HAL.

A round, basketball-shaped autonomous assistant that is supposed to help astronauts with their space work. Sounds a lot like HAL-9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey," right? CIMON (Crew Interactive Mobile Companion) won't say, "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," but the first-ever flying, autonomous, artificial intelligence-based robot is slated to head to the International Space Station (ISS) later this week. With any luck, CIMON will stay there for the foreseeable future. ..." "What we're trying to do with Watson AI services is imitate a human," Biniok said, adding that CIMON has a digital "mouth" and can express...

At CES, both Ford and Volkswagen announced that their cars would integrate Alexa for weather updates, navigation and more. According to CJ Frost, principal architect solutions and automotive lead at Amazon, the car industry is moving into a mobility space. The idea isn't restricted to the ride anymore; it encompasses a journey that starts before you even get in the car. With the right skills built into the voice service, you can start a conversation with Alexa about the state of your car (is there enough fuel, is it locked, etc.) before you leave the house. It can also pull...

To sum it up, the knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task—and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at that task. This includes political judgment.But as a psychologist who has studied human behavior—including voter behavior—for decades, I think there is something deeper going on. The problem isn’t that voters are too uninformed. It is that they don’t know just how uninformed they are.

Should she win the presidency, Hillary Clinton would quickly try to find common ground with Republicans on an immigration overhaul and infrastructure spending, risking the wrath of liberals who would like nothing more than to twist the knife in a wounded opposition party. In her first 100 days, she would also tap women to make up half of her cabinet in hopes of bringing a new tone and collaborative sensibility to Washington, while also looking past Wall Street to places like Silicon Valley for talent — perhaps wooing Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook, and maybe asking Tim Cook from Apple to...

Last year, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was serious about making one last bid for the White House. Only after realizing that Jeb Bush had already secured pledges from most of the top Republican donors did he decide to sit out the 2016 election. Of course, as it turned out, Bush – even with a reported $100 million war chest – could barely make a blip on the electoral radar. In the year of Donald Trump, the former Florida governor was just another victim. Since then, Romney has become one of Trump’s biggest and most outspoken detractors. When the primary...

Did Donald Trump violate IRS rules, by using a charity's money to buy himself a signed football helmet? Four years ago, at a charity fundraiser in Palm Beach, Donald Trump got into a bidding war at the evening's live auction. The items up for sale: A Denver Broncos helmet, autographed by then-star quarterback Tim Tebow, and a Tebow jersey. Trump won, eventually, with a bid of $12,000. Afterward, he posed with the helmet. His purchase made gossip-column news: a flourish of generosity, by a mogul with money to burn. "The Donald giveth, and The Donald payeth," wrote the Palm Beach...

WASHINGTON -- I see that CNN is calling upon the good offices of Mr. Potato Head to refute Donald Trump's evisceration of Hillary Clinton in his speech last Wednesday. Mr. Potato Head is very indignant that Peter Schweizer has written a book, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich," demonstrating that a pattern of corruption exists in the relationship between The Clinton Foundation and the Clinton State Department. He says that pattern of corruption does not establish the Clintons' guilt. Well, an author can only do so much....

Donald Trump is not a professor, but for years he will be yielding insights to every student of economics. His Tuesday address on trade did a masterful job of combining antiquated fallacies with misinformation and ignorance to create an encyclopedia of error. Instructors have never had so much free help constructing their lesson plans. The vision Trump conjures is one of alluring simplicity. He promises to achieve "economic independence" by abandoning globalization, instead using American workers to produce American goods. This change, he said, would "create massive numbers of jobs" and "make America wealthy again." It's a scam, skillfully pitched...

In May, under pressure from the news media, Donald Trump made good on a pledge he made four months earlier: He gave $1 million to a nonprofit group helping veterans’ families. Before that, however, when was the last time that Trump gave any of his own money to a charity? If Trump stands by his promises, such donations should be occurring all the time. In the past 15 years, Trump has promised to donate earnings from a wide variety of his money-making enterprises: “The Apprentice.” Trump Vodka. Trump University. A book. Another book. If he honored all those pledges, Trump’s...