Free Republic

Depending on who is telling the story, accounts differ as to when the priesthood came to the British Isles. Anglicans tend to give this account: Christianity arrived in the British Isles around AD 47 according to Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. Christians likely entered as metal workers and traders traveling long the tin route between Spain and Ireland. The earliest historical evidence of Christianity among the native Britons is found in the writings of such early Christian Fathers as Tertullian and Origen in the first years of the 3rd century. In the 1st or 2nd century, southern Britain became...

The new Glock 40 10mm with factory optical site mount.  A long slide version with a 6 inch barrel is available.  This could be important in some states, such as Wisconsin, which requires a minimum 5 inch barrel for hunting big game with a handgun.  I saw the pistol at the industry day at the range for the Shot Show in Las Vegas on Monday. I asked if Glock had entered this pistol in the Army competition for a new, more powerful handgun.  The representative did not know. The line to try out the new Glock was fairly long;...

It’s hard to tell my story without sounding like I am blaming people. I think it is important to know the difference between explanations, blaming, and excuses. I just think it’s important for others to be able to identify. Like so many experience, what seemed to me a happy home when I was small, turned into dysfunction, heartache, and disaster over the course of my double-digit years and throughout high school. My Dad was a fun-loving and good-humored man with a tortured soul who eventually battled his demons with alcohol alone. I watched my childhood knight slowly, then suddenly slide...

An MIT professor of meteorology is dismissing global-warming alarmists as a discredited “cult” whose members are becoming more hysterical as emerging evidence continues to contradict their beliefs. During an appearance on this writer’s radio show Monday, MIT Professor emeritus Richard Lindzen discussed the religious nature of the movement. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical. I think that’s what’s happening here. Think about it,” he said. “You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re...

MCNEAL — Once it housed soldiers stationed at Fort Huachuca, then it was moved to McNeal and was filled with the sounds of happy feet dancing and the chattering of ladies at coffee cloches. Now abandoned, there are new inhabitants that really are no fun — killer bees. The irritable, six-legged flying pollinators have been in the building on Frontier Road for a number of years, tending huge honeycombs and creating problems for those who walk their dogs, ride horses or just take a morning stroll. If one puts out nectar for the hummingbirds and orioles in spring within the...

Last year, government scientists tell us, was the hottest year on record. This news is terribly — what's the word? — inconvenient. No, not for polar bears or drought victims or coastal dwellers. It's inconvenient for politicians across the country who, despite whatever data or overwhelming scientific consensus might be proffered, insist on denying global warming. In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students "clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the...

Dr. Luce Irigaray has presented a philosophical statement that likely no other person has ever even considered: that E=Mc², the famed equation by Albert Einstein, is "sexed." Irigaray, who describes herself as a "Feminist Philosopher," wrote her thoughts in the 1987 book Parler n’est jamais neutre. The quote was listed proudly recently by her current employer, The European Graduate School, as a cutting-edge example of their faculty's thinking. The quote itself is as incoherent as it sounds, but we have decided to post it in its entirety below to make certain that all context is given: "Is E=Mc² a sexed...

Of course, the global highlights are what the mainstream media and alarmist blogs parrot. Some may even report on the Global Temperatures and Regional Temperatures portions of the NOAA report. Few will venture beyond that. BIAS OF OMISSION 1 It’s not until readers scroll down to the rankings table in the SOTC report that NOAA introduces uncertainties. See my Figure 1. So, according to NOAA, the “annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F)”, but then NOAA clarifies their global surface temperature anomalies...

Sufficient historical, anthropological and archaeological evidence exists to justify the hypothesis that astronomy, mathematics, medicine and mummification, binary thought and triangulation (pyramids), metal work, cultivation techniques, the earliest priestly writings, and the earliest known trade records are found among the Proto-Saharans of the Upper Nile. Plato wrote that Nilotic scribes had been keeping astronomical records for 1000 years. He should know since he studied with a Horite priest in Memphis for 13 years. None of the advancements I listed above can be positively identified with any one ancient figure. Instead they are connected to great rulers and their scribes, priests...

On June 18, 2006, we celebrated Paul McCartney's 64th birthday by highlighting sixty-four of our most dazzling images, a kaleidoscope of splendor and spectacle, in an 8-minute-long cinematic production accompanied by the music of the Beatles. These same sixty-four scenes from Saturn have been composited into the poster shown here. Credit: Diamond Sky Productions, LLC Released: April 25, 2007 Image/Caption Information

Presently, our solar system is known to contain 4 fully-fledged rocky worlds: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars; 2 ice-giants: Neptune and Uranus; 2 gas-giants, Saturn and Neptune; 5 dwarf-planets, Ceres. Pluto, Eris, MakeMake, Haumea; around 100 moons; and an unknowable number of comets, asteroids and minor planets. Indeed, we’ve only begun to understand the full scope of our local corner of our galaxy, and new information emerges on a monthly-basis, yet there a number of seemingly obvious things that remain unknown. For instance, long before Pluto’s existence was deduced, astronomers scoured the outer solar system in search of another large...

Full Title:New Evidence For Anthropic Theory That Fundamental Physics Constants Underlie Life-Enabling Universe For nearly half a century, theoretical physicists have made a series of discoveries that certain constants in fundamental physics seem extraordinarily fine-tuned to allow for the emergence of a life-enabling universe. Constants that crisscross the Standard Model of Particle Physics guided the formation of hydrogen nuclei during the Big Bang, along with the carbon and oxygen atoms initially fused at the center of massive first-generation stars that exploded as supernovae; these processes in turn set the stage for solar systems and planets capable of supporting carbon-based life...

Mail Coach in snow Talking about climate change in the early 1800s?  This was something of a surprise to me at first.  Then I realized that this piece was written only a decade after the Year Without a Summer, during what is known as the Little Ice Age.  In that context, the theories become quite interesting. In the discussion of cold weather in North America and Europe, you’ll notice no mention of a volcanic eruption.  And can you imagine 19th century naval vessels trying to move glaciers?*  Climate change Climate change 15 January entry from William Hone, The Every-day...

Well, this is more than a little depressing: The politician who tried reducing NASA funding (and successfully shut it down for over two weeks) is now in charge of the senate subcommittee that effectively controls NASA. More than that, one of the most vocal climate-change detractors is now in charge of the United States Senate's Environmental committee. Let's let that sink in for a minute, shall we? Despite all the progress we've made so far with things like unmanned, deep-space space-flight and our efforts toward limiting the negative effects that humans have had on the environment, any future plans are...

The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. But the freshest news from the farm: a new facility using the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China on the agenda for subsequent near-future builds. In the currently-completed setup, customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up...

Jan 10th 2015 at 11:01AM Russia bans transgender people from getting driver's licenses Chris Bruce The Russian government has reportedly decided that it can make the country's roads safer by keeping people with what it considers "disorders" from getting driver's licenses. According to the International Business Times, under the new guidelines, people who are homosexual or transgender will not be allowed to to get a license. The list also includes things like fetishism, voyeurism and exhibitionism as grounds for not getting behind the wheel, notes the BBC News. The ban, which the government says has been devised to curb the...

Once reputed to be effective for killing werewolves, modern day silver bullets are seemingly magical solutions to complex problems. However, most of the time you see “silver bullet” in print it is in the negative as “XYZ is not a silver bullet against [fill in the blank].” And, in a double irony, according to tests run by ballistics experts, silver bullets aren’t even silver bullets. They tend to travel slower, with inferior target penetration, and are less accurate than conventional lead projectiles. That’s why I had to smile at the recent headline from MedPageToday—”OmniCarb Study: Cutting Carbs No Silver Bullet.”...

This morning on Meet the Press, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the city will "explore every option" in regards to getting Initiative 71 enforced in the city. Initiative 71, which would have permitted the legal use of marijuana for recreational purposes, was passed with overwhelming support on Election Day, yet was blocked by Congress. Bowser had previously been against legalized marijuana, but has since changed her position to align with the will of the voters of the District of Columbia. Bowser also said that she intends on "forging a path" for increased autonomy in the District of Columbia. Mayor...

San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes flat—that was the dream of the Hyperloop. Back in 2013, Elon Musk introduced the world to this dream a 60 page white paper. The paper caused a stir. The idea—a levitating, solar-power supersonic train—was both pure geek porn and a transportation revolution in the making. It definitely captured people’s imagination. But would it ever get made—now that was the question. Musk himself said he was too busy to take on the project, but if other people wanted in on the cause, well, that was just fine with him. As it turns out,...

Albert Drexel, in Ein Neuer Prophet? (Stein am Rhein: Christiana, 1971) explains that: "The modernism or neo-modernism within Christianity, and especially within the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, is above all characterized by a turning away from the supernatural and an exclusive predilection for this world, the Aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII interpreted one-sidedly and hence misapplied. Teilhard's ideology was was a definitive precondition for this. Inasmuch as he turned his back to the past, fused God and the supernatural with the process of a universal evolutionism, and proclaimed religion to be an active participation in a...