Free Republic

Spartan citizens lived in luxury. Spartan armies were not invincible. Spartan politics had quite a bit in common with Athenian democracy. Classical Sparta, in short, was very different from the austere hyper-militarized society of popular myth…Why the Sparta you know Never Existed | April 8, 2022 | toldinstone

With two weeks to go before the hotly contested Pennsylvania Republican Primary, a new poll shows that race is now a statistical 3-way tie between Dr. Mehmet Oz, Kathy Barnette, and Dave McCormick. Kathy Barnette is surging due to her debate performance and Oz's heavy negatives with GOP voters pic.twitter.com/LxQLyVWuFK— Jack Posobiec ?? (@JackPosobiec) May 9, 2022 According to the new Trafalgar Group poll, Trump endorsed Oz was at 24.5 percent, Barnette was at 23.2 percent and McCormick was at 21.6 percent in the race to be the nominee for the seat of retiring GOP Senator Pat Toomey. The survey...

Bill Gates isn’t an immunologist and he doesn’t even play one on TV. But the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft has immersed himself in the study of the world’s problems and donated billions of dollars to tackle the scourge of malaria in Africa through his philanthropic foundation. So when he speaks, people listen, which makes what he said last week about COVID-19 interesting. “It wasn’t until early February, when I was in a meeting, that experts of the foundation, said ‘there’s no way'” that COVID-19 could have been contained, he said. “At that point, we didn’t really understand the fatality rate....

Emmanuel Macron has warned it could take decades for Ukraine to join the EU as he proposed a new political organisation on the continent. During a speech marking Europe Day in Strasbourg, the French president said 'we all know perfectly that the process of allowing (Ukraine) to join would take several years, in fact probably several decades.' He added: 'That is the truth, unless we decide to lower the standards for accession. And rethink the unity of our Europe.' He also said that Europe must learn from its past mistakes to ensure Russia is not 'humiliated' in peace negotiations.

An experimental drug being clinically investigated for its effects on body weight in obese and overweight people has delivered record-breaking weight loss for participants in the trial – on par with surgical options, the company behind the drug suggests. Tirzepatide, developed by American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly), is a once-weekly injection that promotes weight loss by mimicking the effects of natural hormones called incretins. These hormones lower blood sugar after we eat, in addition to regulating metabolic processes related to digestion. In the case of tirzepatide, which is not yet available on the market pending further clinical...

Neuralink prototype device from 2019. (Neuralink) The human brain is said to be the most complex biological structure ever to have existed. And while science doesn't fully understand the brain yet, researchers in the expanding field of neuroscience have been making progress. Neuroscientists have made substantial inroads towards mapping the complex functions of the brain's 85 billion or so neurons and the 100 trillion connections between them. (To put this astronomical number into perspective, there are upwards of 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.) Enter Neuralink, a Silicon Valley start-up backed by Elon Musk that has developed a...

In and around the shrinking, toxic Salton Sea, there’s enough lithium to meet the United States’ entire projected demand and fuel the electric vehicle revolution. Three companies are working to demonstrate new lithium extraction technologies in the area, and if their tech works at scale, it could produce the greenest lithium that the world has ever seen.How The Troubled Salton Sea Could Become The World’s Largest Lithium Supplier | May 4, 2022 | CNBC

The energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine disabused many politicians of the notion that the world could make a swift transition to green energy powered by solar, wind and wishful thinking. As food prices skyrocket and the conflict threatens a global food crisis, we need to face another unpopular reality: Organic farming is ineffective, land hungry and very expensive, and it would leave billions hungry if it were embraced world-wide. For years, politicians and the chattering classes have argued that organic farming is the responsible way to feed the world. The European Union pushed last year for members...

At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, left-wing protesters tried shutting down Sunday mass to protest in support of abortion. They are forced out by security & parishioners.

Michigan State Police seized a voting machine as part of an investigation into possible unauthorized access to election equipment. Law enforcement and officials at Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's office had a warrant and took a voting machine from Irving Township into custody, officials told CNN and The Epoch Times. "The Township intends to fully cooperate with law enforcement, and the Township attorneys have been in contact with the Michigan State Police regarding this matter. The Township has no further comment at this time," Irving Township supervisor Jamie Knight told The Epoch Times. County clerk Pamela Palmer told CNN...

The confidential Pfizer documents that the FDA have been forced to publish by court order reveal that 82% to 97% of women who were mistakenly exposed to the mRNA Covid-19 injection either suffered a miscarriage or suffered having to witness the death of their newborn child upon giving birth.But Pfizer claimed – “There were no safety signals that emerged from the review of these cases of use in pregnancy”. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to delay the release of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine safety data for 75 years despite approving the injection after only 108 days of safety...

Dow set to fall at open as markets come off another volatile week Stocks fell sharply Monday, pushing the S&P 500 to a fresh 52-week low, as the market sell-off continued and traders struggled to find their footing from last week’s big market swings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 460 points, or 1.4%. The S&P 500 fell 2.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 3.2%. The S&P 500 traded as low as 4,003.17 on the day, as all sectors except for consumer staples dipped into the red. Amid the losses, the benchmark 10-year Treasury note yield hit its highest level...

MOSCOW, ID — To accommodate people who prefer sprinkling donuts with coffee instead of fully immersing their donuts in coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts recently announced plans to open new branches of their popular donut shops in communities with a large number of practicing Presbyterians.

The Donbass, once serving as the industrial and coal-mining heartland of Ukraine, was thrust into years of bloodshed beginning in the spring of 2014, after Kiev sent troops to try to crush local resistance to the February 2014 Maidan coup. Russia was not given any opportunity to resolve the conflict in Donbass peacefully, President Vladimir Putin has said. "If there was even once chance to solve this problem by other, peaceful means, of course we would have taken it. But we were not left with such a chance, simply weren't given it", Putin said, speaking to Artyom Zhoga, whose son...

The Supreme Court leaker should be found, arrested and put into solitary confinement immediately, and so should every one of the those persons protesting outside the Supreme Court and at the homes of the conservative justices. The absence of outrage at the Court leak is astonishing. Chief Justice John Roberts called it "appalling." Little Red Lying Hood Jen Psaki said the White House would not condemn the leak or take any position on those protesting outside the homes of the Justices. They're obviously pleased with the leak regardless of the damage it has caused the Court as it gives democrats...

Bill Gates released another bizarre video on Friday. This time trying to sell his GERMs to the world. According to Gates the GERM team will monitor sovereign nations and decide when they need to suspend people’s civil liberties, force them to wear masks and close borders. The global team will be made up of 3,000 disease experts under the World Health Organisation (“WHO”) and will receive around $1 billion per year in funding. And the GERM team’s most important job is to engage in GERM games.In Gates’ new book, ‘How to prevent the Next Pandemic’, he described the GERM team:I...

As Karl Popper demonstrated, evaluating a scientific proposition requires falsifiability—theories or hypotheses can’t be proved or disproved if they can’t be subjected to empirical tests. When the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed, we were criticized for being overly optimistic about the effects we predicted it would have. Now the evidence is in. Our critics were wrong, and the economic data have met or even exceeded our predictions. In 2017, we predicted that reducing the federal corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% and introducing full expensing of new-equipment investment would boost productivity-enhancing business investment by 9%. Though...

AMARILLO, TX—A local woman stunned critics Friday by successfully executing a record-breaking 37-point turn in front of Lawndale Elementary School on Bivins St. The driver, identified as Cheryl Alessa, only held up traffic for 12 minutes as she performed the daring expert maneuver. Alessa dropped her kids off for school on 25th Ave and then proceeded to make a wrong turn in a northward direction. To avoid a minor delay on her way to a yoga class she promptly initiated the 37-point turn on the packed street. Bystanders began laying on their car horns and raising their voices at the...

The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Rep. Conor Lamb (Pa.) in the state’s Democratic Senate primary race on Sunday, arguing that his time in Congress combined with his history of winning tough elections makes him a better choice than his top rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. “Pennsylvanians deserve a senator who is more than just a plus-one vote for the Democratic caucus in the Senate; it’s crucial that voters elect a candidate who would add value by representing the commonwealth,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.

FOURTH WEEK OF EASTER JOHN 10:1-10 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus identifies himself as the sheepgate and says, "Whoever enters through me will be saved." Well, does this mean that only explicit Christians will be saved? Does it mean that unless you are baptized, you don’t receive the Holy Spirit? There are two extremes to be avoided here. On the one hand, the exclusivist claim that only baptized Catholics can be saved. That is not the teaching of the Church. But the other extreme (I think more prevalent today) is that one’s religion is finally a matter of indifference, as...