Free Republic

Explanation: First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak. From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across...

Mansour Abbas attended a conference of the Islamic Northern faction last night. The chairman of 'RA'AM' Mansour Abbas, who for many in Israeli politicians is considered a legitimate partner, last night attended a conference of the radical northern Islamic faction. The United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas, visited the Solidarity Tent last night (Saturday) with Sheikh Kamal Khatib, which was established in the village of Qana after his arrest. Sheikh Khatib, who serves as deputy chairman of the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, led the incitement and riots on the Temple Mount. And called security forces "Nazis." In...

Twenty-one people, including two of China’s top marathon athletes, died after freezing rain and high winds struck a 62-mile mountain race in northwestern China, local officials said Sunday. Liang Jing, 31, an ultramarathon champion, and Huang Guanjun, the winner of the men’s marathon for hearing-impaired runners at China’s 2019 National Paralympic Games, were among those found dead, according to state news media. The deaths prompted outrage in China, with online commentators questioning the preparedness of the local government that organized the race, held at Yellow River Stone Forest Park in Gansu province. Hours into the event Saturday, the weather suddenly...

As a deadly battle raged in the Gaza Strip between Hamas terrorists and Israel, Jewish Americans are seeking support from their community amid a rash of anti-Semitic sentiment and attacks. "A lot of people are definitely scared," actor Jonathan Lipnicki, 30, told the Los Angeles Times. "It's a scary time for the Jewish community." Palestinian supporters in the U.S. are taking to the streets to terrorize the Jewish communities in American cities and the Fairfax District of L.A. has banded together to form a neighborhood watch to help people from Orthodox Jewish community walk home safely, according to the report....

Fear the Walking Dead TV show discussion thread

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) is fighting back at “offensive” allegations it “manipulated” Craig McLachlan’s accusers. In January 2018, a number of media organisations published allegations McLachlan had indecently assaulted four women during a 2014 stage production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Victoria Police later charged him with seven counts of indecent assault and six counts of common law assault against four women on the set of the Rocky Horror Show in 2014. He was acquitted of all charges in December last year. The actor broke his silence earlier this month in a highly emotional interview with Channel 7’s...

After school walkouts, protest marches and an FBI investigation, authorities concluded that a black girl was responsible for creating an Instagram account that sent racist messages to students at White Bear Lake High School. The city of White Bear Lake was torn by controversy last month as tearful students made protest signs and gave speeches outside their school after an anonymous Instagram profile called members of the school’s Black Excellence Club racial slurs. Protesters subsequently demanded action be taken to hold whoever ran the profile accountable. However, it looks like they will not get their wish, as the black student...

Donald Trump is getting dragged into court for using the term "China virus" ... a new lawsuit says the former President caused a lot of harm to Chinese Americans with the phrase. Trump's getting sued by the Chinese American Civil Rights Coalition ... and they're pissed over him constantly referring to COVID-19 as "Chinese virus," "Wuhan virus" and "Kung Flu" while he was in office. Play video content10/10/20 INFLAMMATORY LANGUAGE Fox News According to the lawsuit, obtained by TMZ, the CACRC claims Trump's use of the derogatory terms contributed to the recent rise in violence against Chinese and Asian Americans...

Little is known about the broad effects of the new class of mRNA vaccines, especially whether they have combined effects on innate and adaptive immune responses. Here we confirmed that BNT162b2 vaccination of healthy individuals induced effective humoral and cellular immunity against several SARS-CoV-2 variants. Interestingly, however, the BNT162b2 vaccine also modulated the production of inflammatory cytokines by innate immune cells upon stimulation with both specific (SARS-CoV-2) and non-specific (viral, fungal and bacterial) stimuli. The response of innate immune cells to TLR4 and TLR7/8 ligands was lower after BNT162b2 vaccination, while fungi-induced cytokine responses were stronger. In conclusion, the mRNA...

Apples-to-apples, consumer price inflation nowadays is running close to the high inflation readings of the late 1970s. That should be a red flag for policymakers as monetary decisions are focused on actual outcomes, not forecasted. But reported inflation statistics do not show the 1970s inflation-style inflation because they no longer include actual house prices. The old consumer price index included house prices in measuring the owner’s housing cost, whereas the present-day price index base owners’ housing cost on an arbitrary, non-market rent measure. The only way to make a price series strictly comparable over time is to use the same...

What would history have been like if the Japanese had flubbed Pearl Harbor? (It could have happened, war is very chancy, conspiratorial history suggests most opportunities to defend against stealth attack plans dragging us into WW2 were ignored, some say deliberately.) Japanese and Chinese cultures are quite distinct. My experience is that Chinese people are extremely clever and hardworking, and American history doesn't record that was ever thought to be evil. Japanese people are known for loyalty to a fault, as was shown when they had the highest combat casualty rate in WW2. If you factor in your experiences with...

Last week, Oregon became the first state to mandate businesses to only allow those who show proof of Covid vaccination to allow their customers to not wear a face mask. It’s a clear indicator of a two-tier society forming in leftist regions of the country, as Democrat Naomi Wolf noted in a video she released. “Hi, this is Naomi Wolf from DailyClout and the Five Freedom’s Campaign,” she began. “I’m so sad to be reporting that I’m here in the beautiful state of Oregon and Oregon became the first state in the union to mandate vaccine passports as a condition...

Customs and Border Protection officers at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry seized more than 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine — worth an estimated $2.5 million — in a shipment of watermelons last week, authorities said. Officers arrested the driver, a 47-year-old Mexican national, on allegations of attempted drug smuggling. It was the second major seizure of methamphetamine at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry announced in the past week. On Tuesday, authorities said they recently found more than 2,400 pounds of meth worth $5.5 million in a medical supply shipment.

The New York Times said on March 17, 2020, under the headline “Hundreds of Scientists Scramble to Find a Coronavirus Treatment.” It was day seven of the pandemic, when the global death toll was 7,138. “When people get infected,” the Times said, “the best that doctors can offer is supportive care—" ... The global death toll was more than 3.3 million as this story went to press, ... The NIH and WHO are still recommending Tylenol and water in 2021. ... Even with the rollout of vaccines, they are “not the whole answer,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH,...

This Mass Homily focuses on the misunderstanding that unity/divesity can have in our lives.Unity in Diversity A Pentecostal message...

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci once gave a full-throated endorsement of gain-of-function research in a 2011 Washington Post op/ed that was later edited to obscure Fauci’s role in promoting this psychotic mad science. In his original op/ed pushing gain-of-function research, Dr. Fauci stated that “much good can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory.” It was later changed to “insights can come” by fake news editors at Jeff Bezos’ lobbying rag, but reprints of the op/ed in other outlets kept the original language. “Safeguarding against the potential accidental release or...

Friends it's Sunday night again and time to relax. Warm up the tubes for another 4 hours of classic radio Americana. Listen LiveInfo *tonight's show will be available at the "Info" link starting tomorrow.

In upstate New York, an idled coal plant has been restarted, fueled by natural gas, to mine cryptocurrency. A once-struggling Montana coal plant is now scaling up to do the same. A University of Cambridge index pegs the annual power consumption of bitcoin mining at around 130 terawatt-hours, more than three times higher than at the beginning of 2019. That would be more than the power consumption of Argentina. It bought the Greenidge coal-fired power station in 2014 after the plant in Dresden, N.Y. had been shut a few years earlier because it was economically unattractive to operate. Atlas first...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday said "we should tone down the rhetoric." when asked about an uptick in attacks against Jewish people in the United States in the last week that at least appears to be correlated to the fighting that broke out between Israel and Hamas overseas.CBS News' John Dickerson tried to gauge Sanders' view on the notion that some Democratic lawmakers may have inadvertently contributed to the "vitriol" against American Jews with their harsh critiques of the Israeli government. Dickerson specifically noted that some members of Congress, likely referring to Sanders' allies Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and...

(President Trump's Operation Warp Speed Update) (Case numbers continue down - Vaccination maintains a moderate pace) Total Vaccine Doses Delivered: 357,250,375 (20,694,700 J&J) Administered: 285,720,586 (10,163,242 J&J) People Vaccinated, At Least One Dose: 163,309,414 Fully Vaccinated: 130,014,175