Free Republic

One of California’s most beautiful consequences from winter rainstorms are waterfalls. Along Big Sur’s coastline, crystal-clear rainwater is gushing down the mountains and flowing out to the Pacific Ocean. Sunny and calm weather this week allowed outdoor enthusiasts to hike out to iconic waterfalls, including Salmon Creek Falls, McWay Falls, Black Swift Falls, Limekiln Falls, and Pfeiffer Falls December’s rainstorms dropped 17.64 inches of rain on Big Sur, according to the National Weather Service. An abundance of rivers and streams flow into this rugged region of wilderness on the far south end Monterey County. When runoff from storms reach steep...

Thin structures that dramatically slow the passage of seismic waves have been identified where Earth’s outer core meets the mantle. ...Ultra Low Velocity Zones (ULVZs) – are made of layers of different material, probably left behind from when the Earth's outer regions were a magma ocean. In particular, at least some ULVZs could have arisen from the same event that caused the Moon's formation. [M]ost of what we know about the interior structure of our planet comes from observing seismic waves. These waves are to geophysicists what X-rays are to doctors – the internal workings of the planet can be...

I'm writing today to share a recent development that you will undoubtedly find interesting. After a year's worth of research and analysis, True the Vote submitted three official complaints to the Georgia Secretary of State's office regarding occurrences in the 2020 General and 2021 Run-off Elections. As a result, on January 3, 2022, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a statewide investigation into ballot trafficking in Georgia. You can read more about the announcement here - Georgia Opens Investigation Into Possible Illegal Ballot Harvesting in 2020 Election Shockingly similar findings will soon be released to appropriate authorities in five...

The Republican Party needs to send Alvin Bragg a fruit basket — and do so every day for the next four years. The newly sworn-in Manhattan district attorney has just made the largest in-kind contribution to the GOP in modern history in the form of the already-notorious memo he sent to his underlings announcing how his office would handle its caseload. Simply put, Bragg’s approach is to pretend crime isn’t crime, that criminals aren’t criminals and that punishing people for breaking the law is bad. Basically, unless someone murders someone else, Bragg is going to try to keep convicted criminals...

Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held a press conference on Thursday to address concerns about governmental misconduct on Jan. 6 and the months following. “January 6th last year wasn’t an insurrection … but it may very well have been a ‘fedsurrection,” Gaetz said. “Congresswoman Greene and I are not here to celebrate January 6th. We are not here to obsess about it, but we are here to expose the truth,” Gaetz stated. “To ask key questions about what happened on January 6th, who animated the violence, the extent to which the federal government may have been...

A total of 874 committees will distribute the kits in rural areas under eight primary health centers in developmental block areas of VaranasiVARANASI With the help of monitoring committees, the distribution of Covid-19 medicine kits began in Varanasi on Saturday as a preventive measure to check the third wave of Covid-19, said additional chief medical officer (ACMO), Dr Sanjay Rai. District magistrate (DM) Kaushal Raj Sharma had procured a large quantity of Covid medicines for the city from the government and monitoring committees had been roped in to distribute the medicine kits, he said. “A total of 874 committees...

Recently, a female cat with an adorable 'mustache' has been capturing hearts on Instagram – with people comparing her to the late Queen star Freddie Mercury. And now, the Mail has compiled an impressive group of cats that share striking resemblances to a number of famous faces. The comparisons include Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, comedy legend Charlie Chaplin and even Caped Crusader Batman.

In the Netflix reboot titled “Cobra Kai,” now in its fourth season, the original actors have returned as adults who run their own dojos, but are still clinging to their old rivalry, which infects their own karate-obsessed children. Cobra Kai’s ruthless sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) also returns, as does his gray-haired henchman Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith). Martial arts fervor sweeps over the suburbs of Los Angeles, and kids join Miyagi-Do, Cobra Kai and Lawrence’s upstart Eagle Fang as if they were street gangs. The animosity becomes so vicious that one student is literally paralyzed during a fight at...

Scientists have found that antimatter particles fall down, not up, just like regular matter... Physicists at CERN have discovered that antimatter falls down. Sure, it sounds like an obvious thing, but scientists haven’t yet been able to confirm that it responds to gravity in exactly the same way as regular matter does. A new experiment provides the best answer so far. Antimatter is much like the matter that makes up everything around us, with one important difference: its particles have the opposite electric charge. And that simple difference has some major implications – whenever a particle and its antiparticle meet,...

Statistics show that black males are disproportionately getting in trouble and being suspended from the nation's school systems. Based on three years of participant observation research at an elementary school, Bad Boys offers a richly textured account of daily interactions between teachers and students to understand this serious problem. Ann Arnett Ferguson demonstrates how a group of eleven- and twelve-year-old males are identified by school personnel as "bound for jail" and how the youth construct a sense of self under such adverse circumstances. The author focuses on the perspective and voices of pre-adolescent African American boys. How does it feel...

Two Arizona State University students who were reprimanded after a viral video showed them confronting White students studying in a campus multicultural center last year have accused the school of "openly" discriminating against them. "Dear White People, A.K.A. ASU — You openly discriminated against us on November 16 when you handed down your decision from your racially biased investigation," the students, Mastaani Qureshi and Sarra Tekola, said in a more than nine-minute video posted to social media last week. "We're being persecuted for defending our multicultural center from racism and sexism … ASU is a violent place," Qureshi said. The...

A handful of congressional Democrats are investigating whether former President Donald Trump can be prevented from holding elected office again through the application of an obscure portion of the 14th Amendment. Section 3 of the amendment, enacted in 1868 and best known for enshrining the Equal Protection Clause, prevents any government official who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US from holding office again. According to The Hill, approximately a dozen Democratic lawmakers have publicly or privately spoken about applying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to Trump, whom they accuse of inciting the Jan. 6 riot that disrupted...

Russia’s lead negotiator for coming talks with the U.S. said that Moscow’s demands on Ukraine must be addressed urgently and warned the Biden administration against resorting to the economic pressure it has threatened to try to get the Kremlin to back down. In advance of Monday’s talks with the U.S. in Geneva, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov sketched out an unyielding stance. He said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military ties to Ukraine represent a threat to Russia even if the country isn’t formally admitted into the alliance. Mr. Ryabkov rebuffed the Biden administration’s calls for the Kremlin to reverse...

We all know the two great pizza quotes, right? The first is Sam Sifton's Pizza Cognition Theory, which goes like this: "The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes...becomes, for him, pizza." The second is the old chestnut about pizza and sex: even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. Then we get to the St. Louis-style pizza made popular by their local chain, Imo's , which seems to buck both of these statements. Of the myriad styles of pizza we've got in this country, it's got to be the most maligned.* Its thin, unleavened cracker crust bears...

The GOP has a duty to condemn the riot and those who refuse to acknowledge it. We’re in an acrimonious period of partisan tribalism and have been for some time. Both parties are guilty of overwrought denunciations of their political opponents. My criticisms are often aimed at Democrats; on the anniversary of Jan. 6, I’m addressing squarely those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral College’s results, and violently attempted to overturn the election. These apologists say those who stormed the Capitol were innocent...

Destroying the world’s major semiconductor market might be more of an invasion deterrent than actual open conflict, military paper suggests; Taiwan should adopt a ‘scorched earth policy’ and wipe out its own semiconductor foundries in the wake of any Chinese invasion as a deterrent, US military academics have suggested. First spotted by Nikkei, a paper in the US Army War College’s quarterly academic journal Parameters suggests the US and Taiwan can detour Chinese invasion of the island by creating a ‘deterrence by punishment approach via a legitimate and credible threat' to destroy the country’s own chip fabs if invaded. The...

The brain is one of the mysteries of creation that we are only just starting to understand through science and medicine. As more knowledge about the mechanisms of the brain is uncovered, researchers are also constantly revising their theories about how it works. As we discussed in Chapter 3, an early theory was that depression was caused by a neurotransmitter deficiency in the brain. But science has moved ahead to understanding the brain as functioning primarily through connections between neurons, through how the brain gets wired and rewired, in a process called neuroplasticity. The brain is constantly changing and adapting,...

Boston marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev was ordered by a federal court to turn over the $1,400 in coronavirus relief funds he received, along with other money sent to him, to his victims as restitution. SNIP But so far, he has paid only $2,203, court documents reveal. Tsarnaev has $3,885.06 in his inmate account, funds that came from the COVID-19 relief check he received on June 22, 2021, as well as deposits from individuals and groups, including the Officer of Federal Defenders in New York. ​ Federal prosecutors say Tsarnaev ​has splurged on “gifts,” “support,” and “books” to his siblings —...

@jonkarl Former VP Dick Cheney also just told me this: “I’m deeply disappointed we don’t have better leadership in the Republican party to restore the Constitution.” He noted that his daughter is an exception.

SYDNEY (AP) — The leaders of Japan and Australia signed a “landmark” defense agreement Thursday that allows closer cooperation between their militaries and stands as a rebuke to China's growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met in a virtual summit to sign the Reciprocal Access Agreement, the first such defense pact signed by Japan with any country other than the United States. The agreement follows more than a year of talks between Japan and Australia aimed at breaking down legal barriers to allow the troops of one country to...