Free Republic

A newly deciphered magical amulet claims to stop evil spirits "who eat flesh and drink blood,"...About 1,600 years ago, the Mandaeans, who have lived in southern Iraq and Iran for millennia, wrote the incantation onto a lead amulet in their language Mandaic. When unfolded, the amulet looks like a long thin piece of lead.The discovery could shed light on the Mandaean religion, which is complex and blends together several beliefs. Both John the Baptist and archangel Gabriel are both important figures who practiced the religion. Modern-day Mandaeans often ritually immerse themselves in water as a form of purification, and they...

Superconductivity is a complete loss of electrical resistance. Superconductors are not merely very good metals: it is a fundamentally different electronic state. In normal metals, electrons move individually, and they collide with defects and vibrations in the lattice. In superconductors, electrons are bound together by an attractive force, which allows them to move together in a correlated way and avoid defects. In a very small number of known superconductors, the onset of superconductivity causes spontaneous electrical currents to flow. These currents are very different from those in a normal metal wire: they are built into the ground state of the...

<p>SACRAMENTO - A Bay Area assemblyman wants to ban from service police officers and police officer candidates who are members of hate groups or have used hate speech in the past, even in “a private discussion forum” online.</p><p>Yet the definition of a “hate group” and “hate speech” used by Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s (D - San Jose) new bill, AB 655, is incredibly broad. Not only does it include armed militia groups and white supremacists promoting “domestic terrorism,” it also includes police officers expressing conservative religious or political views on abortion, marriage, and gender or with membership in a political party or church that does.</p>

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is due to vote on two immigration bills that would provide a path to citizenship for millions living illegally in the United States, including farmworkers and younger immigrants known as “Dreamers.” -snip- The first immigration bill expected in the House this week would offer an eventual path to citizenship to “Dreamers,” those immigrants living in the United States illegally after entering as children. It would also help recipients of temporary migration protections that allow immigrants from several disaster- or conflict-hit countries to live temporarily in the United States. The measure, sponsored by Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard,...

I was a Bernie fan, but Biden’s policies have impressed me. Still, I’m not hailing him as a ‘transformational’ leader just yetK, fine, I was wrong. But, in this case, I’m very happy to be wrong: it seems that Joe Biden may be shaping up to be a progressive president after all. I supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, but I can now see that Biden was the better choice. When Biden announced he was running for president, I was dismayed. I thought he was Hillary Clinton 2.0 and we were going to see a repeat of 2016. (And...

Gun control activist David Hogg pledged to launch a “progressive” competitor to MyPillow but just one month after the company’s soft launch, Good Pillow has yet to debut a product and the “Good Pillow” trademark belongs to someone else. As The Daily Wire reported in February, Hogg intended the company to compete with MyPillow, whose CEO was vocally supportive of former President Donald Trump following his November election loss. Hogg called the effort a “pillow fight ” and even went so far as to recruit a partner, tech entrepreneur William LeGate. “[William LeGate] and I can and will run a...

The five-year survival rate for someone with stage I colon cancer is 92%. But the five-year survival rate for someone with stage IV is just 12%. Beth McCaw-McKinney did everything right. "She ate healthy. She exercised. She always did her breast cancer examinations, pap smears. All that was on time," said Cathy McCaw-Engelman, Beth's sister. But then at age 53 she had her first colonoscopy. "They found a grapefruit-sized tumor in her colon. It was already in her lymph nodes and basically had spread," McCaw-Engelman said. Doctors gave Beth 3 months to live. She lived 3 years. Professor Annette Khaled...

Back in the 1980s, anthropologist Emanuel Vlček visited Prague Castle to examine two skeletons linked to the Přemyslid dynasty, a royal house active between the late 800s and 1306 A.D. Now, reports Czech news outlet iROZHLAS, researchers have used modern technology to analyze these remains and envision what their owners might have looked like.A joint Czech-Brazilian research group drew on facial reconstruction techniques to approximate the appearances of two medieval brothers: Dukes Spytihněv I (circa 875–915) and Vratislav or Vratislaus I (circa 888–921), father of Czech patron saint Wenceslas I.The team, which included archaeologists Jiří Šindelář and Jan Frolík, photographer...

A federal grand jury in Cleveland, Ohio, charged Maejor Page, whose real name is Tyree Conyers-Page, with three counts of money laundering and one count of wire fraud, according to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release. The indictment set forth by the government alleged that Page created a 501(c)(3) Facebook account titled “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.” He allegedly used the account to defraud individuals of over more than $450,000 after the tax-exempt status was revoked by the IRS, according to a press release. “Page is accused of using unprecedented tensions and uncertainty due to widespread civil unrest...

Star of ‘Live and Let Die’ who also featured in ‘Alien’ and played Idi Amin in movie about Israel’s Operation Entebbe, said Judaism was a guiding force in his life LOS ANGELES — US actor Yaphet Kotto, who rose to fame in the 1970s fighting James Bond in “Live and Let Die” and an extraterrestrial stowaway in “Alien,” has died, his agent told AFP. He was 81. In a statement Monday on Facebook, his wife Sinahon Thessa described her late husband as a “legend.” “You played a villain in some of your movies but for me you’re a real hero...

A 2,000-year-old artifact that had ended up in the home of a Manhattan antiquities dealer is now in an Italian museum....It was crafted in the first century for the deck of one of two spectacularly decorated ships on Lake Nemi that the Emperor Caligula commissioned as floating palaces. Recovered from underwater wreckage in 1895, the mosaic was later lost for decades, only to re-emerge several years ago as a coffee table in the living room of a Manhattan antiques dealer...Caligula’s rule only lasted from A.D. 37 to 41, but he enthusiastically embraced the trappings of the position, including an opulent...

The following bills have been introduced by Democrats to help rioters and tie the hands of police. HB 2481 Prohibits law enforcement agencies from receiving certain military surplus equipment from federal government. HB 2928 Regulates and limits use of chemical incapacitants, kinetic impact projectiles and sound devices by law enforcement agencies. Requires local fire and medical agencies be notified before use of such devices. Law enforcement shall enforce these requirements against Federal law enforcement agencies. Allows rioters to file suit against police for violating these regulations. Removes police immunity for actions occurring in riots on or after July 1, 2016....

A federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to release additional information about its purchases of organs harvested from aborted human fetuses, according to a statement issued by Judicial Watch on Monday. Two agencies under the HHS, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), both purchased organs from California-based Advanced Biosciences Resources (ABR) to use in HIV research. ABR partners with Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to dismember fetuses and sell their parts for research. Judicial Watch initially filed a lawsuit in March 2019 after HHS failed to...

Spoken like a true Soviet Marxist– Failed impeachment star witness Alexander Vindman wants conservative media to be sued into oblivion in order to silence opposing voices in the United States. Vindman wrote about this at the Lawfare blog on Tuesday. .Snip. Breitbart reported: Vindman wants the First Amendment restricted so that leftists who believe as he does can shut down unapproved speech in America. This guy took a little bit of the Soviet Union with him when he moved to America. Recent events have made the need for accountability more pressing than ever. Should anyone be surprised that viewers of...

A traversable wormhole would be a shortcut through space. (ESO/L. Calçada) =============================================================== In my last post, I talked about the idea of warp drive and whether it might one day be possible. Today I'll talk about another faster-than-light trick: wormholes. Wormholes are an old idea in general relativity. It's based on work by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, who tried to figure out how elementary particles might behave in curved spacetime. Their idea treated particle-antiparticle pairs as two ends of a spacetime tube. This Einstein-Rosen Bridge would look like a black hole on one end, and an anti-black hole,...

“Carlson has been keen to focus on the supposed failings and absurdities of Democratic elites, and that puts him in as good a position as any to inherit his supporters—those for whom Trump, as an individual candidate and office-holder, carried some extra appeal beyond the standard Republican brand,” Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said. Carlson is a prominent, outspoken figure in the party, as he’s boasted anti-immigration, anti-free trade, populism, and America First economics that Trump supporters value. His show has been rated the most-watched cable news program in...

While last year's Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters, some of whom looted businesses, fought with cops, and burned down buildings were released either without bail or having bail provided for them at the urging on then Sen. Kamala Harris, Jacob Chansley (also known as the Qanon Shaman) who did nothing as violent cannot be released. Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Chansley "is simply too dangerous." "To the inexperienced eye, the violence, theft, and destruction of last year looks like the more serious offense," Lamberth admitted. "However, those criminal acts occurred far from the nation's capital and posed no immediate...

Cultural heritage features, including the remains of an ancient tomb, cart-ruts and agricultural trenches were discovered by archaeologists during works taking place in Gudja.The Superintendence of Cultural Heritage shared details and photos of the discoveries made by archaeologists working under its supervision.The findings were made during the roadworks taking place at Vjal l-Avjazzjoni in Gudja. The plans of the roadworks, which have been approved by the Planning Board, includes the upgrading and widening of adjacent roads in Gudja and Luqa.“These features consist of scanty remains of an ancient tomb, a possible truncated silo-pit or quick-lime pit, ancient quarrying, cart-ruts, and...

Rochester News Man Set on Fire at Lyell Avenue Apartment, Dies at the Hospital Mar 16, 2021 The man who was burned when he was set on fire at a Lyell Avenue apartment has died at the hospital. Two boys -- ages 16 and 14 -- were arrested this week for the attack on Friday. Police say the teens sprayed the man with a flammable liquid as he sat in a chair, then lit the man on fire. The unnamed victim had second- and third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. WHAM1180's Bob Lonsberry reports the man was mentally...

It wasn’t the original plan for the pallet to be discarded like this. The failed launch of a Soyuz rocket in 2018, in which NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin were forced to make an emergency landing in the Kazakh steppe, caused a disruption to the spacewalking schedule, leading to the leftover pallet. NASA’s spacewalk on February 1, 2021, involving astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover, was notable in that it concluded a four-year effort to upgrade the space station’s batteries. These batteries store energy collected by solar arrays, but in 2011 NASA decided to make the...