Free Republic

I apologize for the video only link. Along with the "Obama kids" video, I thought this might be an enlightening complement.

As someone who spends pretty much his entire life chasing, investigating, and writing about mysterious beasts and diabolical monsters, I have to admit that I have come across some extremely wild and far-out stories in my time – and that’s putting it mildly! But, the one strange creature that fascinates and intrigues me perhaps more than any other, is the aptly- and intriguingly-named Mongolian Death-Worm. Now you might very reasonably ask: what on Earth can be so deadly about a mere worm? Well, I’ll tell you. And it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the sort of worm...

Alas, even when The One tries to get snarky and sarcastic about John McCain, he messes it up these days! In this video he is trying to attack John McCain for being too mean in his ads when he actually winds up saying that he wins the most negative ad contest "pretty handily!" . . . . (see video at link)

The first ever eyelash extensions for men are going to hit the shelves in September at Harrods and on Amazon.com. Priced at £5.45, they will come in both thick and fine options.

While diving in the harbor of a small island in Indonesia recently, husband and wife Buck and Fitrie Randolph, with dive guide Toby Fadirsyair, found a strange fish and took some pictures. The oddball creature looks like an anglerfish, but different. Its eyes, unlike those of nearly all fish, point forward and may allow the fish to gauge depth the way humans do. The flat fish has tan- and peach-colored stripes and rippling folds of skin that obscure its fins. About the size of a human fist, it is soft and pliable enough to slip into narrow crevices of coral...

Why all of a sudden am I loading the Latest articles page? It used to be clicking on messages in the upper right corner solved the problem. Now, I finally found "Comments" down the right side a bit, but every time ya hit browse now coming out of a thread, I return to latest articles page! WWWWWHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTZZZZZZZZZ - UUUUP!!??!!!

woman who said her breast implants were damaged in an on-the-job car accident should be compensated for the replacement of only one implant, state appellate judges ruled Tuesday. The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued the decision in a workers' compensation claim filed by Penny M. Rumple Richardson, who said the 2001 accident caused rippling and a decrease in size of her implants.

HIDDENITE -- A teller was robbed at gunpoint at a Hiddenite bank Tuesday afternoon. The suspect was dressed from head to toe. The robbery happened around 3:40 p.m. at People’s Bank on N.C. 90 East, five miles outside of Taylorsville. No one was injured. No one has been arrested. Alexander County sheriff’s deputies and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are investigating the robbery. Deputies say the robber entered the bank, approached the teller and demanded money. The robber pointed a small handgun at the teller. The suspect (deputies have not released the gender) gave the teller a black plastic bag...

Sadhus, or Hindu holy men perform Yoga after taking a dip in Sangam, the confluence of three rivers, the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Saraswati, in the northern Indian city of Allahabad July 21, 2007. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash (INDIA)

A bizarre world of scorching hot ice shrouded in a steamy atmosphere may have been found, according to new observations. Characterising the Neptune-size planet is an important milestone on the way to detecting and characterising Earth-like planets that could harbour life. Astronomers have discovered more than 200 planets orbiting other stars, called extrasolar planets or exoplanets. Almost all of these were detected by the way their gravity makes their parent stars wobble. But this technique, called the radial velocity method, reveals very little about the planet except for the size of its orbit and an estimate of its mass. Transits...

May 11 - The South Korean prosecutor has sought an arrest warrant for Kim Seung-youn, one of the country's richest businessman, on suspicion of kidnapping and beating karaoke bar waiters. Kim Seung-youn, chairman of the Hanwha Group, a South Korean business conglomerate, appeared at a Seoul courthouse on Friday to face assault charges. Police suspect that Kim went to the bar with his bodyguards in early March, seized six workers and shuttled them off to a remote mountain area where he beat them with a 150-cm steel pipe. They also suspect that he punched and kicked one waiter "dozens of...

A Presidential Medal of Freedom that was prepared for award to Apollo 13 astronaut Captain James Lovell, Jr., and which was missing since 1970, was recently recovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the bureau's Chicago office announced on Tuesday. A slight defect in the medal resulted in its replacement being manufactured and presented in its place to Lovell. The damaged medal was intended to be destroyed but instead it found its way out of the White House and into the hands of a private collector in Pennsylvania. On January 5, 2007, that same collector listed the medal for...

Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange 18:00 28 March 2007 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Germaine Greer Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange This is a review of The Invisible Sex: Uncovering the true roles of women in prehistory by J. Adovasio, Olga Soffer & Jake Page, Collins, $27/£13.72, ISBN 9780061170911 Jim Adovasio is the leading expert in the perishable artefacts of the Palaeolithic – baskets, cordage, woven fabric – all associated, if somewhat arbitrarily, with women. To correct the astigmatism that has hitherto seen prehistory as the story of early man, Adovasio – director...

Communist Coke Kvass, a soft drink made from fermented bread, is seen as a quintessentially Russian item. But now Coca-Cola, the ultimate symbol of Western capitalism, is to start producing a version of the drink that is often called "the Coke of Communism". The soft drinks giant is in talks with beverage companies in Moscow over bottling the drink, a murky concoction which can also contain berries, fruit or birch sap. Nikita Volkov, the marketing director of Deka, one of the country's biggest producers of kvass, said that he was unfazed by the new competition. "If their kvass is sold...

One thousand one hundred and four years ago a criminal trial took place in Italy, a trial so macabre, so gruesome, so frightful that it easily qualifies as the strangest and most terrible trial in human history. At this trial, called the Cadaver Synod, a dead pope wrenched from the grave was brought into a Rome courtroom, tried in the presence of a successor pope, found guilty, and then, in the words of Horace K. Mann's The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages (1925), "subjected to the most barbarous violence." For the past several centuries the papacy...

A 29-year-old sex offender from Oklahoma duped two Arizona men into thinking he was a 12-year-old boy and lived with them for two years in a sexual relationship before the truth finally emerged Wednesday, officials said. Neil Havens Rodreick II, who had been living under the alias of Casey Price, was arrested this week along with the men he’d fooled and a possible former cellmate, who is also an Oklahoma sex offender, officials said. “This is extremely strange,” said Susan Quayle, spokeswoman for the Yavapai County sheriff’s office in Prescott, Ariz. “I can’t get over how bizarre this whole situation...

It smells like a mixture of overripe Gorgonzola and putrefying mushrooms. Its texture is that of slugs stuffed with mozzarella. It is natto, or rotten soya beans, and is one of the world’s most challenging foods, as loved and loathed in Japan as black puddings are in Britain or rotten herrings in Sweden. And in the past few days it has become a cult, as natto-mania has swept Japan, emptying supermarket shelves and leaving soya bean fermenters scrambling to catch up with the unprecedented surge in demand. Earlier this month the television programme Revealed! Encyclopaedia of Living recommended two portions...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A peek inside the trunk of a car belonging to a wanted man turned up something police didn't expect -- a Nobel Peace Prize medal. State parole officers looking for a handgun yesterday found the medal, which was stolen in October. The car belongs to a 24-year-old man wanted by police in connection with a series of crimes, including domestic violence, assault and impersonating an officer. The medal belongs to Kay Miller. She was awarded the honor in 1985 for her work with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Last fall, Miller...

Woman in Water Drinking Contest Dies Sacramento, Calif. (AP) A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday. Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner. "She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her...