Free Republic

I just finished reading about that sorry b*st*rd, George Clooney: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1528789/postsHe whines on about the past twelve months being the worst year of his life. Boo Hoo. I guess being a world traveling multi-millionaire isn't as wonderful as we might think.What I have discovered over the years is that good and bad times are somewhat cyclical. Everything can be going well and then, all of a sudden, a bad cycle will emerge. The same is true in reverse.I thought it might be enlightening to hear what real people have to say about the worst year of their life. I am...

At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. For over three decades, the great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic...

This guy All Kinds of Wristbands seems to make a compelling argument for these wristbands. You can check out the site for yourself, but his message seems to be that humanity in general (cancer patients, troops, hurricane survivors) can all be helped by this. This includes poor Chinese people who need a job because of their crappy government. Thoughts?

ARAB RACISM & ISLAMIC JIHAD!!! Are Militant Muslims DECAPITATING Tourists in S. Philippines? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Sadistic Saddam attack Arab Kuwaiti 'brothers' tortured them horrifically? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Sadistic Saddam BUTCHER/GASSED/TORTURED HIS OWN PEOPLE? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Do Arab Muslim Militant Hamas/Islamic-Jihad/other 'Palestinian' Militants (& often Fatah - connected to the official 'Palestinian' authority) TARGET BABIES, (not as the West targets terrorists) Yes or no? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Arab Islamists attack French subways? (1985) IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM +...

Here is yet another case of savage butchery committed against a woman for offending the honor of a man. From the New Brisbane's News: MULTAN, Pakistan - A Pakistani man cut off the nose and lips of his 19-year-old sister-in-law after she went to court for a divorce in a tribal area of the central province of Punjab, police said on Thursday. Abbas then attacked the girl, hacking off her nose and slicing off her lips. A doctor treating the girl said her nose had been cut off from the bridge and her lips partially severed. Numerous cases have also...

Soldiers, commanders, children, parents: The human face of a natural disaster. The e-mail came from a reader, U.S. Marine Corps, retired: So, I was driving down I-20 from NE Columbia [S.C.] toward the city when I began to pass this huge convoy of Army trucks, Humvees, etc. The convoy was in the right lane. I was driving in the left. The convoy vehicles were loaded with tough-looking young soldiers, and each of them had the familiar "AA" (All American) patches of the famous 82nd Airborne Division stitched on their sleeves. Of course--being such an enormously long convoy of these young...

I see Americans helping Americans. I hear stories and see photos that inspire me! I thank God I live in America.Brett Coomer / Chronicle A paramedic carries a pair of girls away from an Army helicopter after they were airlifted from their flooded home in New Orleans on Tuesday. More Chronicle PHOTOSI just listened to the local D.C. radio news and they played a woman screaming about no showers in the Astrodome. No this, no that, no nothing (I hear different). Then they quoted Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich making snide remarks about the progress of relief efforts. Melissa Phillip...

Living in the most materially advanced civilization in history, we Americans forget how fragile civilization is and the tragic nature of the human condition. This week, nature reminded us. .....Civilization has been compared to skin stretched over a skull – that is, the thin veneer under which the ever-present savage dwells. We have seen the truth of that observation borne out in horrifying tales of looters, some of them armed – and some of them police officers – running rampant in flooded New Orleans. To paraphrase Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the line between civilization and barbarism runs through every human heart. And...

Iran expresses grief at deaths of American people by Hurricane Katrina disaster Iran-US-Condolence Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi on Tuesday expressed grief at deaths of people in the United States caused by Hurricane Katrina. He said that Iranian nation and government sympathize with American people especially the bereaved families of the natural disaster. He hoped that situation in the flood hit states of America would return to normal soon. At least 50 people died in Mississippi and flood waters poured into low-lying New Orleans through levees battered by powerful Hurricane Katrina.

Though assisted dying seems to have been out of the news, several quiet developments have furthered its cause in the UK. First we have the highest judge in the land, Lord Chief Justice Woolf, supporting a move by the Home Office to set gradations of sentences for murder. When asked about mandatory sentences, Woolf noted the differences in murder: 'If you intend to kill someone deliberately then a life sentence may be the only appropriate sentence. But you can have someone who has a relative who is suffering pain of severity which someone in my position can only try to...

Dear George, You don’t mind if I call you George do you? When you sent me a letter offering your condolences on the death of my son, Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, in the illegal and unjust war on Iraq, you called me Cindy, so I naturally assume we are on a first name basis. George, it has been seven months today since your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big boy, my hero, my best-friend: Casey. It has been seven months since your ignorant and arrogant lack of planning for the peace murdered my oldest child. It...

I'll reply to this with a chronology.

The insertion of human stem cells into monkey brains runs a "real risk" of altering the animals' abilities in ways that might make them more like us, scientists said today. A panel of 22 experts -- including primatologists, stem cell researchers, lawyers and philosophers -- debated the possible consequences of the technique for more than a year. While the group agrees it is "unlikely that grafting human stem cells into the brains of non-human primates would alter the animals' abilities in morally relevant ways," the members "also felt strongly that the risk of doing so is real and too ethically...

It turns out your real estate agent was right. In determining the historic reasons why societies thrived and conquered, while others stayed backward, the answer is: location, location, location. At least that's the persuasive theory advanced by Jared Diamond, a UCLA professor, MacArthur "genius" grant winner and author of the best-selling book "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Now, Diamond's book has been adapted into a three-part television series by National Geographic that begins tonight at 10 on Maryland Public Television (Channel 22) and tomorrow at 9 p.m. on WETA (Channel 26). The shows strive for an epic feel, hopscotching the continents...

Could Asia have been the cradle of humanity? By David Ropeik, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2005 Science continues to struggle with one of the most basic questions of all: Where did humans come from. There isn't much question that modern humans came out of Africa, probably in several waves of migration over the past 100,000 years. But it now appears that the ancient ancestors who gave rise to those African humans might have come from Asia. Until recently the only fossils of anthropoids -- the creatures at the base of the branch of the evolutionary tree that gave rise...

Jon Super/Associated Press The rock star Sir Bob Geldof is leading a drive for aid to Africa. LONDON, June 30 - It is virtually impossible these days to open a newspaper or turn on the television here without confronting the cavalier locks, rumpled visage and hectoring tones of Sir Bob Geldof, the former Boomtown Rats lead singer now cast by friends and foes alike as Africa's savior. With awesome ubiquity - a rock concert here, a documentary there, interviews at every turn - he offers his listeners a blend of profanity, rage and messianic imprecation, urging the political leaders of...

I'll reply to this with details.

The whole world watched as 41-year-old Terri Schiavo was slowly starved and dehydrated to death by order of a judicial system that defied Congress, the president and – many believe – the law itself. But the Terri Schiavo story was not unique, as a stunning new edition of WND's monthly Whistleblower magazine – titled "WHO LIVES, WHO DIES?" – makes frighteningly clear. In fact, Terri's case is only the tip of the iceberg. http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=108 Take the case of Marjorie Nighbert, for example. Although she had asked for nothing more than a "little something to eat" and a drink of water,...

The New York Times May 13, 2005 DNA Study Yields Clues on First Migration of Early HumansBy NICHOLAS WADE By studying the DNA of an ancient people in Malaysia, a team of geneticists says it has illuminated many aspects of how modern humans migrated from Africa. The geneticists say there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa; that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australia; and that it consisted of a single band of hunter-gatherers, probably just a few hundred people strong. Because these events occurred in the last Ice Age, when Europe...

A five-year project to reconstruct a genealogy of the world's populations and the migration paths of early humans from their ancestral homeland in Africa will be started today by the National Geographic Society and I.B.M., the society said in a statement. The goal of the program is to collect 100,000 blood samples from indigenous populations around the world and analyze them genetically. Researchers at 10 local centers and at the National Geographic Society in Washington will then assign the people who give blood to lineages that trace the routes traveled by their early ancestors. The program is an effort to...