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As a world-class jazz double bassist, composer and band leader, Charles Mingus is one of the most celebrated figures in American music. He was well-known as a bon vivant and his larger than life physical stature towered over the bandstand and fellow musicians alike. His zeal for parties and drink were just as legendary as his sometimes caustic temperament that led him to occasionally punch fellow musicians and sometimes even lay into patrons. He was the Ron Artest of the jazz world—a brilliant artist that sometimes had trouble at the seams of life. But even The Angry Man of Jazz...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- With unexpectedly cold weather in the forecast and pandemic-related curfews in some places, Florida is about to have a Christmas unlike any other in recent memory, and it may involve falling iguanas. The National Weather Service earlier this week warned that South Florida could experience the coldest Christmas Day in 21 years. Morning lows on Saturday could drop into the low 30s and 40s degrees Fahrenheit, the weather service said. “ Brrr! Much colder temps expected for Christmas," the National Weather Service in Miami tweeted earlier this week. “Falling iguanas are possible." Because they are cold-blooded...

Senate Republicans say Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will reach out to Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (Ala.) in an attempt to avoid a messy floor fight next month over finalizing the results of the Electoral College vote. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said GOP leaders will tell Tuberville that voting to suspend the tally of the Electoral College vote next month will be a futile — and politically damaging — move. “Ultimately every senator will have to make their own decision about that but I think there will be people, yeah, reaching out him just to kind of find out”...

Pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell said Thursday that the president's aides are preventing her from being in contact with President Trump and coordinating his efforts to overturn election results in battleground states around the country. In an interview with Zenger News, Powell said she had heard only radio silence from the White House following her meeting with the president in the Oval Office on Friday, seemingly confirming that she was unable to speak to Trump when she visited the White House on Sunday. "I've been blocked from speaking to or communicating with the president since I left the Oval Office on...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — A large explosion was reported in downtown Nashville early Christmas morning. The explosion happened in the area of Second Avenue and Broadway near Commerce Street

Joe Biden's transition team is complaining that Twitter won't transfer millions of followers from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. "Twitter's reluctance to transfer millions of followers from the Trump administration to the Biden administration unnecessarily politicizes what otherwise should be a routine transfer of communication from one administration to the next," spokesman Cameron French told CNN. The Biden team argued the transfer was made from Obama to Trump. However the Obama account had about 13 million followers while Trump has some 60 million. In addition, President Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, over which he will retain control, has nearly...

An 83-year-old Clackamas County woman suffered significant injuries as a result of a common practice by delivery drivers -- leaving a package on a porch without knocking on the home’s door or ringing the bell, a lawsuit claims. Christa Hoven has filed a personal-injury complaint against Amazon, claiming the online retail giant is responsible for her tripping over a box. After a brief March 14 visit with her son at his Happy Valley house, Hoven stepped out of the front door and tripped on a “shoebox-sized package that had been left just in front of (and below) the doorway,” the...

By popular demand we are rebroadcasting a Steyn program first aired two years ago: In this special audio edition of Steyn's Song of the Week Mark celebrates the bicentennial of a beloved Christmas song first performed exactly two centuries ago - Christmas Eve 1818 - in a small church in Oberndorf, Austria - "Stille Nacht", or "Silent Night". For these birthday observances, Steyn welcomes the man who knows more about "Silent Night" and the men who created it than anybody on the planet - the Austrian actor and producer Hanno Schilf, who tells the story of the song, and the...

Pray For the Peace of JerusalemLambs, Sheep, and Shepherds.Micah 5:14A Promised Ruler From Bethlehem 5 [a]Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel’s ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans[b] of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” 3 Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son, and the rest of his...

At long last, 2020 is about to end. This year, one unlike any other in my lifetime, was uniquely terrible. We faced a once-a-lifetime global pandemic, which brought to heel our entire economy and put an abrupt halt to hundreds of millions of law-abiding Americans' very way of life. We endured a once-a-generation national "dialogue" about race, which was unfortunately characterized, in part, by months of intermittent anarchic mayhem the likes of which no first-world country should ever experience. We had a national reckoning about the maturation and rise of an arch geopolitical foe, the Chinese Communist Party. And in...

Way back on Nov. 13, Washington D.C., radio station WASH-FM flipped the switch to its annual 24/7 Christmas music rotation. That's about two weeks before the rest of America. After the severely limited year of 2020, it's understandable more people would haul out the holly and get in the spirit early, but many on social media cried, "No Christmas music until after Thanksgiving!" I love Christmas music, both secular and religious. I have boxes of compact discs, too many to play in one day. So much of the WASH playlist is composed of rock-era standards that celebrate the bells and...

The family and I watched this movie on Christmas Eve night based on a book "The Man Who Invented Christmas" released in 2017 via Amazon Prime. It is the story of how Charles Dickens saved his career as a novelist by writing "A Christmas Carol". As with a Dickens novel, one experiences the whole range of emotions from joy to sadness. The movie goes into detail about the personal demons Dickens was suffering from when his father went into debtors prison and Dickens was forced to work in a boot blackening factory at the age of 12. How this experienced...

Merry Christmas to all. Please remember the REASON God came in the flesh in the form of Jesus, to provide salvation to the world through forgiveness of sins. It also says in the Bible, if one does not forgive, one can not be forgiven. We all want forgiveness when we mess up, but don't want to give it in return. Repentance is also required. One must admit one is wrong and ask God for forgiveness. All of this involves the heart which is a tough thing to change. We must forgive Democrats for being evil and only think about how...

Preposterous and cliche-ridden, this tale of Regency intrigue – with Julie Andrews giving a Georgian Gossip Girl touch – nonetheless leaves you wanting more It cannot be – no, most assuredly and for the good of humanity, it cannot be – that there are people out there who aspire to write like Julian Fellowes. It simply cannot be. And yet. Now has come Bridgerton (Netflix), suddenly into our lives, and as the minutes and the hours and the eight episodes of the new costume drama roll, the thought becomes ever more inescapable. For Bridgerton is the tale, set in 1813...

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The following email was sent to the more than 150 priests of the diocese of Perugia, Italy, on December 24, 2020. Dear fellow priests, With the corona virus, we see each other much less, and we talk among ourselves much less, unfortunately. (Note: When pasting this document into Free Republic, it seems that most of the special formatting is lost, such as bold, italics, underlined words and embedded links. To read the document with the formatting and embedded links go to the link of the document.) At least I want to wish you a Holy Christmas with Baby Jesus in...

It’s just the flu, bro. Tragic to be Christmas Eve Mass and see the church 1/3 filled due to Coronavirus rules, but nobody else was allowed to have a seat. Culture, traditions and core beliefs are important for many reasons. Jordan Peterson talks about the negative physiological changes that occur when something we believe, or expect, doesn’t happen. He also says that traditions, to a degree, are built on thousands of years of shared experience and you don’t ever want to quickly dismiss them. One expects a full church at Christmas and people singing without masks and it was disappointing...

A smart thermostat quickly learns to optimize building microclimates for both energy consumption and user preference. Buildings account for about 40 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and are responsible for one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Making buildings more energy-efficient is not only a cost-saving measure, but a crucial climate change mitigation strategy. Hence the rise of “smart” buildings, which are increasingly becoming the norm around the world. Smart buildings automate systems like heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC); lighting; electricity; and security. Automation requires sensory data, such as indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, carbon dioxide concentration, and occupancy...

Good news exists – even if it rarely appears in the media. During Christmas time, local news outlets are reporting on the goodness of humanity, from strangers flooding a lonely grandmother with Christmas cards to a couple of eight year olds deciding that what they want for Christmas is to help others in need. Here are seven stories exemplifying the Christmas spirit – and demonstrating that the little things sometimes matter the most. Grandma in Nursing Home Receives Hundreds of CardsSusan Wendt, a nursing home resident in Rhode Island, felt alone this holiday season. That’s when she decided to ask...

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