Free Republic

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) has been assigned law enforcement protection after receiving death threats over her opposition to the state's election recount, according to multiple reports, as the second full week of the Republican-ordered audit comes to an end. Friday marks two weeks since Arizona started the recount of 2.1 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, which was ordered by the GOP-controlled state Senate to determine whether widespread fraud took place in the 2020 presidential election and U.S. Senate race. The ballots are being hand counted, and an audit official earlier this week said at least some...

Victor Hugo on Gutenberg's Press, "The Invention of Printing ... is the Mother of Revolution." HISTORY OF WRITING The invention of "writing" was around 3300 BC. Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in "The 50 Key Dates of World History" (October 19, 2007): "No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history." Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, "The Immortals"): "It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who...

Chinese archaeologists have examined a batch of bamboo slips unearthed from a Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) tomb and found they recorded the long-lost rules of "liubo", an ancient Chinese board game. More than 5,200 bamboo slips were excavated from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun near Nanchang in eastern China's Jiangxi Province. Over 1,000 of them were recently confirmed to be inscribed with the rules of liubo, according to the institute of excavated text research at Peking University, which is in charge of examining the items. Liubo, literally "six sticks," is a two-player board game dating back...

The neighbors who are divided over a growth of bamboo at a Mt. Pleasant residence came face to face Tuesday night, and neither side appeared to blink. A hearing convened by an appeals board of the Central Westmoreland Council of Government heard from Myra Posner, who has grown bamboo in her yard for the past 22 years, and her next-door neighbors, Tara Greenawalt and Dan Gelzheiser, who say the bamboo has invaded their yard and is a nuisance. Defining bamboo as a grass which cannot exceed 10 inches seems to be a serious overreach by the ne

ASUSTEK wants to release an eco-friendly laptop made out of bamboo. The Asus Eco Book has a case made out of laminated bamboo strips. Since there is a lot of bamboo in the world and it grows fast it makes it an ideal renewable resource for making PCs out of, thinks Asustek. The processing does mean a few toxins get into the mix, but generally bamboo makes for an eco-friendly alternative. An early version has been shown to hacks at Reuters and engineers are checking to see if the bamboo can take the heat. Asustek has made a leather computer...

Ancient bamboo slips reveal tomb owner's identity On December 6 over 200 bamboo slips inscribed with ancient Chinese characters were discovered packed in a silk bag tucked into the Xiejiaqiao No.1 tomb in Hubei Province. The tomb is over 2,200 years old. The ancient documents were found nine days after archaeologists uncovered a 2.46-meter-long coffin wrapped in four tiers of embroidered silks. Amazingly, the shroud has remained intact underground after thousands of years. "Tombs from the Han Dynasty have been found in many places across the country, but it is rare to find such a well-preserved one. This will provide...

TOKYO (Reuters) - A would-be Japanese bank robber asked staff how he should carry out the crime before meekly obeying a request to leave and then accidentally stabbing himself in the leg with a knife he was carrying. The 58-year-old unemployed man went into a branch of the Saitama Resona Bank in the town of Kumagaya, north of Tokyo, on Wednesday, intending to rob it, a police spokesman said. According to local media reports the man first asked a bank teller, "Any idea how you rob a bank?" The teller alerted another member of staff, who asked the man to...

Ancient vessel retraces voyages of the past By Stefanos Evripidou IT LOOKS like a tree house stuck on a bamboo banana. In reality it's the incarnation of a pre-Pharaonic reed boat, designed and built to unravel the mysteries of prehistoric navigation. The Abora II drifted in to Larnaca marina yesterday. Weighing in at six- tonnes, the vessel is a totra-reed boat. It is 11.5 metres long, 3.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep. The man responsible for building the huge boat is Dominique Goerlitz, a biology teacher at a school in Germany. As a student, Goerlitz was fascinated by the...

<p>SANTA MONICA -- In the Robert Redford Building, toilets flush themselves with rainwater -- except for the urinals, which use no water at all -- the floors are made of bamboo and the carpets from hemp.</p> <p>All of which help make it, the actor said during a dedication ceremony in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica on Thursday, one of the "greenest" buildings in America and a glimpse into the environmentally friendly future.</p>