Free Republic

It's well known that learning to play an instrument can offer benefits beyond just musical ability. Indeed, research shows it's a great activity for the brain – it can enhance our fine motor skills, language acquisition, speech, and memory – and it can even help to keep our brains younger. After years of working with musicians and witnessing how they persist in musical training despite the pain caused by performing thousands of repetitive movements, I started wondering: if musical training can reshape the brain in so many ways, can it also change the way musicians feel pain, too? This is...

The Manchester terrorist phoned police to proclaim his allegiance to Islamic State in the middle of his stabbing spree that left two dead. Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, claimed responsibility for the attack after driving at worshippers in his car outside Heaton Park Hebrew Synagogue as worshippers attended for the holy day of Yom Kippur. He then attacked others with a knife and tried to storm the synagogue, wearing a fake suicide belt. Father-of-three Melvin Cravitz, 66, was killed, along with Adrian Daulby, 53, believed to have been inadvertently shot by police as he ran to block the synagogue doors to stop...

Jay Jones wished death on former House Speaker Todd Gilbert's children in 2022 messagesLast week, Virginians across the political spectrum were shocked to read text messages from Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones fantasizing about murdering a former Republican colleague and wishing death on his children. But this is just the start of Virginia Democrats’ disturbing embrace of political violence.As National Review first reported, in 2022, just after resigning from the House of Delegates, Jones sent a disturbing string of text messages to another legislator stating that if his Republican colleagues died before him, he would "go to their funerals...

President Trump wanted an excuse to send National Guard troops to Chicago, and now he’s got one. The Windy City in recent days has done its best imitation of Los Angeles, where resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations created the justification for a Guard deployment a couple months ago. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hate the notion of the National Guard in the streets of the city, but have failed to rally Chicago residents to do the one thing necessary to avoid the deployment — let federal officers do their job.The word should have gone...

Authorities have arrested a 29-year-old Uber driver in connection to the investigation into the deadly January Palisades Fire. Jonathan Rinderknecht, of Melbourne, Florida, was arrested Tuesday near his home on suspicion of destruction of property by means of fire. If convicted as charged, Rinderknecht faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and up to 20 years in federal prison. "He is charged with starting a fire on Jan. 1," Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said. "It did take a week to reignite, but he is charged with starting the Palisades Fire." The criminal complaint covers the damages and death...

President Trump has unleashed new weaponry in his war against Democrats, liberals and the left. Over the past four weeks, he has initiated what amounts to a unique form of partisan civil war designed to amass power in a nominal democracy and defang, decimate and defund the opposition. Trump’s assault on the left combines the use of the available tools of violent conflict — the military, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE in particular — with the prosecution of critics (and people he just doesn’t like), cuts of essential funds for liberal institutions, the use of regulation to threaten...

Moscow is hopeful that Washington will hear its message on the potential supply of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Maria Zakharova statedMOSCOW, October 8. /TASS/. If the United States makes the decision to supply Kiev with Tomahawk long-range missiles, it will do irreparable damage to US-Russian relations, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said. "A corresponding decision by the US administration, if made, will not just send the confrontation into a downward spiral, but also do irreparable damage to Russian-US relations, which have just begun to display certain elements indicating the resumption of a bilateral dialogue," the diplomat said,...

Kentucky is suing Roblox for allegedly allowing child predators to run rampant on its platform and exposing children to heinous material — including simulators of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The lawsuit, filed Monday by the office of Attorney General Russell Coleman, alleged that the gaming platform with 111 million active monthly users lacks guardrails to protect kids and creates a “playground” for pedophiles to meet potential victims, according to the document obtained by The Post. Due to lax age verification protocols, child predators often create accounts on the massive multiplayer online game and game creation system and pose as...

A loyal dog named Eeyore guided an Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office deputy to his injured "grandmother" after she fell during a late-night walk. Source: OCSO When a local woman took a tumble and injured herself while walking her son’s dog one recent night, her granddog became her lifeline to help. The woman’s husband called the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office after she hadn’t returned from what should have been a 10- to 15-minute walk. More than an hour had passed. “It’s over an hour now,” the husband told the responding deputy, explaining his wife had taken out the 100-pound dog. As...

The Progressive Left’s Descent Into BarbarismCan we re-civilize our society?There often comes a moment in the pursuit of a noble but hopeless cause when the idealist discards both ideals and human bonds, embracing barbarism in the name of a higher purpose. The progressive Left has reached that moment in its moral decline. Once self-styled protectors of the marginalized, progressives now push their opponents beyond the margins—and beyond the pale. Their cause is the defense of victims, yet some have victimized their adversaries to death, while others have mocked and abused the dead afterward. Champions of compassion have mutated into purveyors...

At least 24 people were killed and 47 wounded while protesting against Myanmar's military government after an army motorised paraglider dropped two bombs on the crowd, a spokesperson for the government-in-exile told BBC Burmese. The military attacked on Monday evening as around 100 people gathered in Chaung U township in central Myanmar for a national holiday. Thousands have died and millions have been displaced since a military coup in 2021, which triggered a civil war with armed resistance groups and ethnic militias. After losing control of more than half the country, the army is making significant gains again, through an...

Halloween decorations at the home of Mobile County Sheriff Paul Burch are being heavily criticized after a Facebook post featuring the display was shared. The decorations depict skeleton ICE agents chasing other skeletons dressed in sombreros and Mexican-style ponchos. Whitney Newman posted the photo saying, "It's hard to put into words how disappointing it is to see our elected sheriff use his own front yard to mock and dehumanize a group of people." The post received hundreds of reactions and was shared over 250 times.

You might not like some of the language he uses, but Noah Smith’s lengthy take on the state of American politics is worth a read. It’s not drivel spewed on Salon or MSNBC. It’s a fair take on the MAGA movement and the structural and political disadvantages of the Left, which aren’t going away if they keep this destructive march on most of their action items. Smith concedes there are kernels of truth to the ‘great replacement theory,’ noting the changes in California’s politics. Again, you might not agree with the authoritarian observations he makes about the MAGA movement, but...

I use it on the fundraiser thread, prayer threads, and news that I think will be of great interest.

There's evidence to suggest the ancient creature survived, at least for a little while, with two heads. Image courtesy of Bob Nicholls =================================================================== In 2006, a study published in the journal Biology Letters described a fossil unlike any ever seen before. It captured a prehistoric reptile that lived around 125 million years ago. That, in itself, wasn’t terribly surprising, but the fact that it had two heads really, really was. Bicephalism describes a quirk in animal development that results in an individual with two heads. We’ve seen remarkable examples of it in wild animals, such as this southern black racer...

[Catholic Caucus] A Dissident Damsel Who Defied the Red DragonA martyr of Communist Russia, Mother Catherine of Siena, founded a convent of Third Order Dominicans before being sentenced to more than a decade of solitary confinement.It has been said, purportedly by G.K. Chesterton, that when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing but in anything. Even worse is that the things which people believe are not merely godless but deadly and demonic. Take, for instance, the modern anti-Christian creeds that led to the French and Russian Revolutions and to the rise of the Nazis. These monstrous ideologies...

Comey, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday, was indicted last month on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee -- but Justice Department officials have privately expressed that the case could quickly unravel under the scrutiny of a federal judge and defense lawyers. Daniel Richman -- a law professor who prosecutors allege Comey authorized to leak information to the press -- told investigators that the former FBI director instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions and unequivocally said Comey never authorized him...

Sorry: Ignoring how often recent high-profile shootings have a trans aspect, as most media are trying to do, does no one any good. The latest news: Nicholas Roske, who plotted to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022, claimed (after being caught) to be a woman. Other examples: * Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson was in a relationship with a transitioning biological male. * Robin Westman, the Minneapolis school shooter who killed two kids and injured 21 others in August, identified as a transgender woman. * Audrey Hale, who killed six people at Nashville’s Convent School in 2023, was...

The three main schools of Christian eschatological thought are all related to the controversial theme of the Millennium. Perhaps the key text for explaining the differences between the Pre-Millennial, Post-Millennial and Amillennial camps is found in Revelation 20:1-7 where mention is made of Satan being bound for “a thousand years” (v. 2) and of those who “lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years”. Let’s underline the differences. 1.- Premillenialism The premillenialists can be divided up into two groups: the classic pre-mills and the dispensationalist pre-mills. On the one hand, Classic Premillenialism, stemming from the time of the Church Fathers,...

So Game Wardens in Texas have arrested this guy, 39 year old Ethan McNeely from Oregon. He was crouched in the woods attempting to hunt squirrels with nothing but his hands and teeth near Lake Tawakoni Dam Ethan insists that “I’m a primal predator, not a sportsman” and argued with the officers that “God-given claws and fangs” exempt him requiring a hunting license. Ethan goes on saying “If I catch it with my molars, that’s between me and Mother Nature” while reportedly spitting out a mouth full of tree bark. Game wardens have stated that while his hunting techniques are...