Free Republic

Oysters and mussels, two pearls of France's gastronomic heritage, are in danger of dying out because of rising greenhouse gas levels in seawater, say scientists. French and Dutch researchers found that rapidly rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in seawater is having potentially devastating effects on the lifecycles of both types of shellfish, slowing down their growth and weakening their shells, leaving them vulnerable to predators. This is the first time this effect has been shown on shellfish, the researchers say. The study, conducted by France's CNRS research centre with the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, shows that higher carbonic acid levels...

Some neuro-scientists see evidence that man is genetically hard-wired to be disposed to religious conviction. If this is so, it might explain why amongst even the French — the most secular culture on Earth — only 25 percent claim to be atheists, and a full 60 percent believe in a spiritual component to life. It might also explain why the environmental movement tends to veer toward a religious, rather than a scientific, sensibility. This oft-observed aspect to environmentalism in general, and global warmingism in particular, has been shrewdly analyzed in a new book, "The Future of Everything: The Science of...

Ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham is reportedly set to star in Tom Cruise's nes Scientology film as an alien bride.Britain's Daily Star newspaper reports that the wife of football star David Beckham has apparently been lined up to play the alien bride in The Thetan-based on the religion, which believes in alien life forms.

It should be the ideal family film for Christmas: the animated adventures of a colony of penguins singing and dancing on the ice floes of Antarctica.But just days ahead of its British release, Happy Feet is struggling to avoid an iceberg of its own, after Right-wing critics accused it of targeting youngsters with anti-mankind messages. Commentators in the United States, where the film opened last month, have labelled the plot – penguins struggling to survive man's wrecking of their ecosystem – as pro-green propaganda hidden in a children's adventure. Fox News presenter Neil Cavuto said: "What I found offensive is...

This time last year we were all debating whether it was politically correct to criticize “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan. Well, after a year of global Bush-bashing - including a loving embrace of that other infamous Bush-hater, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - Sheehan is back in Crawford, Texas. “My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son,” she told the Secret Service after marching back to the ranch on Sunday. Needless to say they didn’t exactly provide her with a personal escort up to the front door. As for the debate over whether Sheehan is fair game? Asked whether the president...

Based on the facts as I see them, the American people are about to get arguably the rudest awakening in the last one hundred years. The middle class will vanish, our social programs will fall into insolvency, and a select few people will make a hell of a lot of money at the expense of the rest of us. Imagine the arrogance necessary for one to believe he’s justified in wrecking three vibrant cultures – the US, Canada and Mexico – just to make his financial bottom line more attractive. Hitler, as twisted and evil as he was, sincerely believed...

There are a number of issues with which a competent republican propagandist could beat the dems and libs to death in short order, and which we don't ever read about. The easily made case that Saddam Hussein was behind the anthrax attacks which followed 9-11 is one such. Another involves toilets. You can get a feel for this one by doing a google search on the two terms 'toilet' and 'smuggling'... One of the hits which turns up notes: Canadian Toilet Smuggling Ring Flushed Out The U.S. has beefed up their Canadian border patrol in midst of severe water shortage...

"Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six." (Revelation 13:16-18, New Revised Standard Version) BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The number 666 -- the "number of the beast," according to the Book of Revelation -- conjures devilish images for many, so forecasts of evil, even doom, are rampant regarding dates or places where the number occurs, including next Tuesday, June 6, or 6-6-06. Fears of 666, long believed to be the dreaded mark of Satan, are based on a "widespread misinterpretation" of the chapter in Revelation...

Long article : Did a preacher's obsessions push Dena Schlosser over the edge? "Stop that!" Carolyn Thomas snapped. Her best friend Dena Schlosser was driving with her eyes closed, hissing like a snake. "SSSSSSssssss..." "Open your eyes and look at the road!" Thomas said. "Put your mind on Jesus." The weird behavior had started as soon as Schlosser and her three girls had gotten in the car with Thomas after an evening service at Water of Life church in Plano. Schlosser was chanting something under her breath--"I'm stupid, I'm evil..." Thomas had told her friend over and over: Talk to...

A California inventor has found a way to create limitless electric power without using up fuel --- potentially the greatest discovery in the history of mankind. Edwin Gray Sr., 48, has fashioned working devices that could: Power every auto, train, truck, boat and plane that moves in this land --- perpetually. Warm, cool and service every American home --- without erecting a single transmission line. Feed limitless energy into the nation's mighty industrial system --- forever. And do it all without creating a single iota of pollution. Already, the jovial, self-educated Gray is forcing scientists to uproot their most cherished...

If gay marriage becomes legal, its opponents have been warning, the next step in America's moral deterioration will be legalized polygamy. These conservatives won't be happy with "Big Love," the HBO series starting tomorrow night.

BEIRUT (AFP) - The leader of the Lebanese fundamentalist Shiite movement Hezbollah claimed that if Muslims had executed British novelist Salman Rushdie others would not dare to insult Islam. Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa or religious edict in 1989 demanding Rushdie's execution over his best-selling novel the "Satanic Verses," deemed blasphemous and insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. "If there had been a Muslim to carry out Imam Khomeini's fatwa against the renegade Salman Rushdie, this rabble who insult our Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway and France would not have dared to do so," Hezbollah chief Hassan...

Demonstrators gathered in San Francisco at Union Square on Tuesday to rally noisily against President Bush and his State of the Union address. Organizers estimated the crowd at about 4,000 people, many of whom beat makeshift drums, clanged pots and pans, blew whistles or just screamed as Bush's speech was broadcast live -- without sound -- on a giant video screen. The World Can't Wait, a national protest group calling for Bush to step down, organized the demonstration to urge the protesters to march in an anti-Bush rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. "Through this political action and this mobilization...

Mon Jan 30, 11:37 AM ET (PRWEB) - Duluth, MN (PRWEB) January 30, 2006 -- A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11. They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about critical events in New York and Washington, D.C. These experts...

The grisly circumstances surrounding the death of a 22-year-old man in northern Saskatchewan are likely to influence the debate over wolf policy in Wisconsin. Wisconsin's Wolf Policy 425 to 455: Number of wolves estimated to be in Wisconsin during the 2004-'05 winter - up from 373 to 410 wolves for the previous winter On Nov. 8, student Kenton Joel Carnegie was walking alone near a remote camp owned by a mining exploration company when it is believed that he was killed by wolves. Though an investigation is continuing, some wolves in the area had been attracted to a garbage dump...

PHOENIX (AP) -- An Arizona bookstore owner charged in the firebombing of a government wildlife lab in Washington committed suicide in his jail cell Thursday, officials said. William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott, Ariz., suffocated after placing a plastic bag over his head while in a one-person cell in Flagstaff, the Coconino County medical examiner said. Rodgers was one of six people arrested earlier this month in connection with ecoterror attacks in Oregon and Washington in recent years. He was accused of setting fire to the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services facility in Olympia, Wash., in 1998....

Tom Cruise has already claimed to know the history of psychiatry. Now he's working on getting acquainted with OB/GYN. The couch-jumping thesp has acquired a sonogram machine with which to personally track the progress of the fetus currently incased in his fiancee Katie Holmes' womb. Cruise revealed the purchase during an interview with Barbara Walters taped Oct. 30 for the veteran newswoman's upcoming special, Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2005, scheduled to air Tuesday on ABC. "I bought a sonogram machine," Cruise told Walters. "I am going to donate it to a hospital when we are...

The recent South Park TV episode in which South Park educates the global community through humor on the dangers of the destructive, mind control cult Scientology has done a great service to societies and families everywhere their show airs around the world.

Katie Holmes is quitting acting, to become a full time wife to Tom Cruise. The 'Batman Begins' beauty is one of Hollywoods most promising up and coming young stars. But at age 26 she wants to ditch her blossoming film career and devote herself to bringing up the baby they are expecting next year. A pal tells me 'Katie has decided to give up acting altogether. She's been telling friends that she and Tom have decided it is best that she stays at home and brings up their new baby.' 'Her decision is raising a lot of eyebrows in Hollywood....

Greenpeace is to be fined after its flagship Rainbow Warrior II damaged a coral reef in the central Philippines during a climate awareness campaign, marine park rangers said.