Free Republic

Last week, National Organization of Women’s spokesperson Kim Gandy asserted that GOP VP nominee Governor Sarah Palin was “not an authentic woman because she doesn’t support women’s issues like abortion.” This week, the Obama campaign charges that Palin is “not a normal human being.” The charge stems from the failure of the teleprompter during Palin’s speech to the Republican Convention on Wednesday. “Usually, a mishap like this causes at least momentary confusion,” observed Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “Where were the ‘ers,’ ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ that a normal human would utter under such stress? They were suspiciously absent from Ms....

~~~snip~~~ Electromagnetic waves are far too slow to be the only means of signalling in an immense universe. Gravity requires the near-instantaneous character of the electric force to form stable systems like our solar system and spiral galaxies. Gravitationally, the Earth ‘sees’ the Sun where it is this instant, not where it was more than 8 minutes ago. Newton’s famous law of gravity does not refer to time. We must have a workable concept of the structure of matter that satisfies the observation that the inertial and gravitational masses of an object are equivalent. When we accelerate electrons or protons...

Speaker Pelosi is deep in it now. I am still looking for a link, but Amy reports that Brendan Daly, Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman issued a statement about her remarks on Meet The Press: “The Speaker is the mother of five children and seven grandchildren and fully appreciates the sanctity of family. She was raised in a devout Catholic family who often disagreed with her pro-choice views. “After she was elected to Congress, and the choice issue became more public as she would have to vote on it, she studied the matter more closely. Her views on when life begins were...

ELTON John didn't see this one coming . . . Real life "Rocket Man" Yves Rossy, 48, is planning a high-flying rocket mission over the English Channel that will be televised on American TV and around the world. The daring stunt will air on the National Geographic Channel in primetime - as well as 165 other countries, officials said yesterday. They will also stream live video of the event on their Web site.

Have you ever had this happen: You are minding your own business, teaching your life science course, it's early in the term. A student, on the way out after class (never at the beginning of class, rarely during class) mentions something about "carbon dating." This usually happens around the time of year you are doing an overview of the main points of the course, but before you've gotten to the "evolution module"... The student is talking about C14 dating and how it "has problems." But you are a life science teacher and can't think of a single point in your...

Imagine yourself going to a news stand and picking up Esquire’s September issue. Its cover isn’t made out of paper as usual, actually, it’s electronic! The cover, which comes with its own battery pack, will flash “the 21st Century Begins Now.” A moving cover? That’s something new.

New design could be a boon to the reconnaissance, small plane industry As the Olympics close, a dizzying couple weeks of record breaking have come to an end. In total 43 world records were smashed. In this spirit aerospace startup QinitiQ announced an important record of its own in the field of alternative energy. In Phelpsian fashion, QinetiQ's Zephyr Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) obliterated the previous world record for continuous solar flight, though some technical disputes may hold off its place in the records books for a short time. According to QinetiQ, the Zephyr flew for 83 hours and 37...

t is estimated that two out of three men and one out of five women suffer from hair loss. It can be very depressing and most affected individuals try to cover up their balding spots with wigs and other camouflage attempts. Some use growth stimulators and hormone inhibitors. Some are satisfied with these treatments, but a lot more aren’t. Many find that wigs and hairpieces don’t look genuine and take too much time to maintain. Growth Stimulators and Hormone inhibitors on the other hand may be effective, but they need to be taken or used daily. That can take a...

In 1943 during WW2, an army Sgt., Ed Davis, was working in Iran near the Turkish border, in charge of locals hired by our army to build a road through Iran to the Soviet border, which would carry supplies to the Soviets instead of flying them in. In short, Ed did a tremendous favor for a little Kurdish village near Ararat. His workers were mostly Kurds and the chief of the village came to Ed and asked if he would like to see Noah's Ark. He said the summer on the mountain had been hottest in many years and the...

Progress on South Africa's Pebble Bed Reactor Canada's SNC Lavalin has gotten a C$253 million contract to help build the second phase of a demonstration Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) for completion by 2014 in Koeberg, South Africa. The small advanced reactor, a South African national project, would produce 165 MWe and could be built in 'packs' of eight. It is hoped that up to 30 of the units would be used in South Africa in coming decades, taking industrial heat-supply roles in the production of hydrogen and synthetic oils as well as electricity. The PBMR design is also a...

Human life may begin at conception (gotta love Peggy Noonan in the WSJ—“what do they think it is, a 1948 Buick?”), but according to Alan Colms, “personhood” is not achieved until a child exits the birth canal alive and in accordance with its mother’s wishes. This is eerily suggestive of Peter Singer’s assertion that babies (alive, out-of-the-uterus, breathing on their own, pooping, crying infants) do not truly have “personhood” for several months after birth, and that therefore, such non-person human beings may be terminated at the will of the parents. Claiming to know when to assign the status of “person”...

Looks Like 2008 may end up being the coolest year of the young century. Imagine that, in the midst of all this global warming...China became the world's biggest polluter in April of this year... Self-righteous USA critics have yet to shift their scorn eastward. We could be in for more cooling for the next decade or so. Doesn't Mother Nature know the science is settled? BBC reports all this grudgingly, and inserts all manner of caveats and finger shaking scolds, admonishing us naive global warming deniers to not let our guard down. This is all temporary! Professor Dinglebulb from the...

Evolution in its earliest days was derided by some for what they believed was a lack of observable evidence. However, a major piece of supporting evidence for evolution has come from computer analysis of cellular compounds. By examining minute details in organisms’ genomes, we have observed how traits were transferred to descendants and how other traits arose at different points in the evolutionary ladder.

An expert from the National Autonomous University of Mexico predicted that in about ten years the Earth will enter a "little ice age" which will last from 60 to 80 years and may be caused by the decrease in solar activity.

NYC's Mayor Bloomberg yesterday proposed to develop wind turbines atop the Big Apple's bridges and skyscrapers. The mayor also tossed out the possibility of building wind farms way out in the Atlantic Ocean, miles from shore, that he said could generate roughly twice the energy of similar land-based facilities and supply 10 percent of the city's electricity needs within a decade...

Breeder reactors: A renewable energy source by Bernard L. Cohen, American Journal of Physics, 1983 (H/T Crowlspace Uranium can last for 5 billion years with a withdrawal rate of 6,500 tonne per year from the oceans [with breeder reactors this would be double current world electricity usage]. This estimate does not include using Thorium which is more common in the earth's crust than Uranium. < > Currently nuclear reactors use about 100 to 200 tons of uranium every year. 10,000 to 20,000 kg of uranium per billion kWh. 200 to 400 times more uranium than the french msr design uses....

University of Reading scientists have developed a robot controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons. And this is a world's premiere. Other research teams have tried to control robots with 'brains,' but there was always a computer in the loop. This new project is the first one to examine 'how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data.' As life expectancy is increasing in most countries, this new research could provide insights into how the brain works and help aging people. In fact, the main goal of this project is to...

The ongoing debate between evolutionists and "Intelligent Design" (ID) theorists has become quite intense of late, thanks in large measure to the happenings in Kansas. Unfortunately, the debate has really produced more heat than light. Browsing through some of the nontechnical literature on both sides, one cannot help but be amazed at the level of vitriol and recrimination that evolutionists and their critics have leveled at one another. It really seems that ID theorists and evolutionists are actually talking past one another, which is usually why honest and intelligent brokers end up yelling instead of finding a consensus.This column will...

Gods, fairies, magic and the like are ways of saying "we don't know," and one simply can't base a scientific theory on a set of assumptions that includes "and something we don't know, but you can imagine it to be anything you like, happens here." Science is a discipline, a rewarding endeavour to understand things in relation to other things and their interactions. The theory of evolution is not a belief; it is a scientifically useful model. As more data support it, it might be a threat to certain beliefs, but it is not a threat to belief in a...

Therefore, to end this futile back and forth, allow me to quote from the National Academy of Sciences: “Scientists no longer question the basic facts of evolution as a process. The concept has withstood extensive testing by tens of thousands of specialists in biology, medicine, anthropology, geology, chemistry, and other fields. Discoveries in different fields have reinforced one another, and evidence of evolution has continued to accumulate for 150 years.” This statement confirms overwhelming support of evolution from the American scientific community. Mr. Brown is right. I would not allow a creationist to teach that theory in a science classroom...

The Chicago Tribune posted a story in the July 30 edition that highlights the often absurd hyperbole all too common in the language of environmentalists and eco-watchers. The story detailed the findings of scientists studying Lake Michigan and the ecology of the Great Lakes, one of them saying it is in "catastrophic" shape. Native fish and vegetation are being crowded out by new species and the "Great Lakes are at a tipping point" the Trib warns. It's all presented as some major disaster that should alarm us all, as if Mother Nature is being ruined, presumably by man. But a...

PROFESSOR PETER SINGER: LOVER OF GREAT APES Anyone remember Professor Peter Singer? He’s the esteemed professor of bioethics at Princeton who advocated legalizing the execution of infants up to 28 days old in his book, Practical Ethics. I guess we have to assume that killing a 29 0r 30 day old human being–or a 29 or 30 year old?– might be an ethical no-no, but that’s not a given with Singer, either. Talk about a poorly titled book! And that’s hardly the only outrageous belief held by this nutty professor. He seems to launch his insanity from a simple perspective:...

PZ just had a book review published in Nature: Science and evolution have an advocate in Kenneth Miller, one of North America's eminent knights-errant, a scientist who is active in defending evolutionary theory in the conflict between evolution and creationism. He has been at the centre of many recent debates about science education, most prominently testifying against intelligent design creationism in Pennsylvania's Dover trial, which decided that intelligent design was a religious concept that should not be taught in public schools. He is also a popular speaker, offering the public a grass-roots defence of good science education. Miller's new book...

Has James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, been taking bribes from George Soros and others? I'm not an attorney so I don't know if Hansen has actually done anything illegal. However, as a political scientist the situation definitely has an odor to it. There is no legitimate reason for any private body to spend $750,000 to "package" a government official the way George Soros allegedly did for James Hansen. There is no legitimate reason for a government official to receive a grant from a private research organization for supporting one of its causes as James...

Media sources such as CNN, and also several questionable academics have come out with a multi-pronged attack on John McCain's knowledge of the "Information Economy" this week. Amongst those is a media professor from American University named Steinhorn Comments By L. Steinhorn, Prof of Communications Steinhorn claims that McCain's funny syllogism of "A Google", his desire to avoid email, and lack of a MySpace webpage prove that McCain does not understand the Information Economy. He points to Barrack Obama's use of YouTube and MySpace to win over young voters as proof that he understands modern economics. This is false on...

The phrase, “Let them eat cake,” is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but some believe that Jean-Jacques Rousseau also used the phrase when writing about a French Aristocrat insensitive towards peasants who could not afford bread at the time. Whoever quoted the line is for history to figure out, but it would seem that this is the same bit of advice that Americans are getting from Congressional Democrats daily. While Americans struggle daily with the high price of gasoline and demand that Congressional Leaders and the President do something long lasting to address the problem in poll after poll. Congressional...

Finntann wrote in his blog about the decline of 'Civil-ization' in this country. While the polite still outnumber the rude, the ranks of the latter are growing. Closely related to the rude are those who think the rules don't apply to them, or who have become successful but are resentful of having had to work so hard for it. Just look at the financial mess we are in: The rules didn't apply to the politicians and their crony capitalist friends. Next we have anger and resentment from those who have overcome poverty and racism to get where they are today....

Climate Sensitivity ReconsideredBy Christopher Monckton of Brenchley AbstractThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity: Radiative forcing ΔF; The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and...

Shortly after I became a daily visitor to the internet, I discovered Steven Den Beste.  To this day, I stand in awe of his intelligence.  Steven was one of the most widely read writers, at that time, blogging prolifically on science, politics, warfare, engineering and anything else that crossed his mind.  A phenomenally analytic and literate mind possessing the ability to reduce the complex to the simple and expose the complexities of apparently simple subjects. Den Beste impressed a wide variety of people and drew enormous attention to his website, USS Clueless.  As one would expect, he also drew the ire and contempt...

Henry Kissinger was reported to have said, “Control the food and you control the people.” Controlling people is as simple as controlling food, water and energy through a variety of controls. “No Farmers No Food,” the bumper sticker distributed by The Adopt a Farm Family ministry, is a message of warning. The Adopt ministry was started by Mary Myers, wife of Peter Myers, former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture who served in the Reagan Administration. She confided to me that God had instructed her to “watch over the food.” At that time there appeared to be no reason for concern. Now...

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

You can consider Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) as definitely not enthused by former Vice President Al Gore's speech Thursday on U.S. energy policy. Voinovich had an initial one-word response — "ridiculous" — to Gore's speech at Washington's Constitution Hall, in which the Democrat called for the United States to end its dependence on carbon-based fuels and begin using renewable energy to produce electricity within the next 10 years. Voinovich elaborated that ruling out carbon-based fuels such as coal would be unreasonable because of the country's vast energy and economic needs. Instead, he said the country should take a multi-pronged approach...

I've been reading Michael Dowd's Thank God for Evolution, and at the same time reading about what's going on at the Altenberg 16. It is pretty clear where the next wave of science and theology is going, and sadly, it looks like its going to be another 150 years of chasing our tail. As is starting to be admitted, Darwinism got us nowhere. The point of Darwinism was to remove God entirely from the process of diversification of life, and perhaps even from Creation itself. The hope of Darwinism has always been the three pillars of natural selection: * Heredity...

"You are looking at a pristine natural habitat destroyed. You're looking at dead fish floating in the water. You're looking at shorebirds and migratory birds and waterfowl covered in oil," said Kathy Phillips, an environmental activist for Assateague Island, whose title is "coastkeeper." She was imagining a major oil spill washing up on the island's shores. "People on this coast don't have any idea of what it involves," she said. Actually, we're not looking at any of that. And neither is she. It's all in her fevered head. And what the hell is a "coastkeeper" anyway?

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

My wife just took up an interest in physics. What would be a good book for her to start with? I've never posted a vanity thread before, but I'm sure there is no better people to ask than my fine freeper friends. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

For a preview of America’s future if global warming advocates get elected (oh wait, BOTH candidates believe in this delusion) you have only to see what’s going on in Australia. Andrew Bolt describes what’s happening. First from a deluded teen ager: "A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events." ..."The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of...

"Psychiatrists have detected the first case of “climate change delusion. Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children’s Hospital say this delusion was a “previously unreported phenomenon. A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events.” More . . .

Can you believe in God and evolution? Yes, if you keep the two separated in logic-tight compartments. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity because for any question about nature - the origins of the universe, life, cells, humans, whatever - if your answer is "God did it," a scientist will ask,...

Chuck Thacker is something of a hero in the world of technology yet outside of it, he remains a virtual unknown. Show people a photo of say Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and I bet quite a few people on the street will know who they are. Certainly they will have heard of them and probably have one or more of their products but Chuck Thacker is a different kettle of fish. And that's a shame given the influence he has had on so much of our lives. In short, Chuck is the man who essentially gave us the...

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may...

Remember Suzan Mazur, the credulous reporter hyping a revolution in evolution? She's at it again, publishing an e-book chapter by chapter on the "Altenberg 16", this meeting that she thinks is all about radically revising evolutionary biology. I can tell that Massimo Pigliucci — one of the 16 — is feeling a little exasperation at this nonsense, especially since some of the IDists have seized on it as vindication of their delusions about the "weakness" of evolutionary theory. He's got an excellent post summarizing some of the motivation behind this meeting, which is actually part of a fairly routine process...

Barack Obama's speechwriters continue their sales job, today giving BHO a speech to read about public service. And, on his site you can find a "Plan for Universal Voluntary Public Service" (barackobama.com/issues/service), where he informs us that "this will be a cause of my presidency". I can hardly wait! Further: Obama will expand AmeriCorps from 75,000 slots today to 250,000 and he will focus this expansion on addressing the great challenges facing the nation. He will establish a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students, with a priority placed on underserved schools; a Health Corps to improve public health outreach;...

As one of the supposed anti-science conservatives liberals are always yammering on about, I was glad when President Bush vetoed the increase in federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. I wrote about the adult stem cell success stories, and since June of last year, there have been even more exciting treatments.

"From 1970 to 2000, there was a widespread view that although natural selection is very important, it is relatively rare," said Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticist at the University of Chicago. "That view was driven largely because we did not have data to identify the signals of natural selection. . . . In the last five years or so, there has been a tremendous growth in our understanding of how much selection there is."

The useful conclusions from this have nothing to do with the correctness of this paper’s data, reasoning, or conclusions. (1) Anthropological global warming (AGW, caused by us) is more difficult to prove than global warming The data showed clear indications of global warming in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hence the difficulty of demonstrating AGW as a substantial driver of current warming, since the natural warming trend was established before massive global industrialization. Proving causation requires more than showing a trend, since the trend was already there. This is a repeated fallacy of general media articles about global...

Are we to believe that in the early 1900s, we could move “238,845,587 cubic yards of material” in Panama, creating the canal where the French failed, but we cannot get oil out of the ground in Alaska in the same time? Are we to believe that we can build a railroad in the 1800s from Omaha to Sacramento in less than ten years, but it will take us longer to drill a hole in the ground and start pumping oil? ANWR is only 50 miles from Prudhoe Bay. Last I checked, Omaha was a little further than that from Sacramento....

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research made a splash last week with their press release claiming that energy usage in Al Gore's Nashville-area compound had actually increased ten percent since 'green' renovations had been completed.  TCPR was made news last year when they first brought Gore's conspicuous consumption to light. Although Team Gore denies any connection between TCPR's 2007 report and the subsequent renovations, the timing is, as they say, suspicious. Your humble Heretic, of course, couldn't pass up an opportunity to highlight the latest release, joining countless others in the blogosphere.  I guess it is basic human nature that...

As a woman who loves sports, I've always found the concept of breasts bothersome. If all goes according to plan, they will fulfill their intended function for about three of the 70 years that I have them. The rest of the time, they alternate between getting in my way and embarrassing me. They are a favorite target of Frisbees and soccer balls. Finding sports bras is a chore. {snip} The idea of an energy-generating bra isn't as crazy as it might sound. A company called Triumph International Japan recently unveiled a solar-powered bra that supposedly will generate enough energy to...

Global Intrigue + More Will Escalate Food Prices Drastically: What Will A Loaf Of Bread Cost Next Year? RFFM.org Guest Commentary by Joyce Morrison The mere thought of a food shortage in America is unthinkable…or is it? Headlines read, “Planting season weather perplexing for farmers.” “Weather may cut yields,” “Further spike in food costs feared due to floods,” “Food shortages,” -- these are headlines preparing us for the fact we will no longer have the cheapest, safest food in the world. All spring the breadbasket of America has been deluged with floods, wind storms, tornados, heavy rain and hail. Illinois...