Free Republic

Day 1: Sperm joins with ovum, to form one cell smaller than a grain of salt. The new life has inherited 23 chromosomes from each parent, 46 in all. This one cell contains the complex genetic blueprint for every detail of human development – the child’s sex, hair and eye color, height, skin toneDays 3 – 4: The fertilized egg travels down the fallopian tube into the uterus, where the lining has been prepared for implantationDays 5 – 9: During this time, the fertilized egg implants itself in the rich lining of the uterus and begins to draw nourishment.Days 10...

..we don’t allow hate speech on Facebook, Instagram, or Threads.... We define hate speech as direct attacks against people — rather than concepts or institutions— on the basis of what we call protected characteristics (PCs): race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious affiliation, caste, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, and serious disease. Additionally, we consider age a protected characteristic when referenced along with another protected characteristic. We also protect refugees, migrants, immigrants, and asylum seekers from the most severe attacks, though we do allow commentary on and criticism of immigration policies. Similarly, we provide some protections for non- protected characteristics, such...

“We will fight for reproductive freedom,” Harris told a crowd of staff, “knowing if Trump gets the chance he will sign a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state.” Harris’s campaign has abortion rights activists — already desperate to see the Democrats win – electrified and rushing to endorse her. It also puts Republicans into a bind. Fighting against reproductive rights has long been a winner for the GOP. But now, that fight has become the party’s kryptonite... For the first time in a generation, abortion rhetoric was largely absent from the Republican National Convention earlier this...

In 2019, The Economist examined China’s potential to become a scientific superpower. Today, it is clear that China has achieved this status. Chinese scientists have gained prominence in high-quality science measures, surpassing both the United States and the European Union in producing high-impact papers,,. China leads the world in physical sciences, chemistry, and Earth and environmental sciences. It dominates publications on advanced technologies such as perovskite solar panels and hydrogen extraction from seawater. China also excels in quantum computing, with research teams achieving significant breakthroughs, such as setting a record for the number of entangled quantum bits... China’s patent production...

In 2018, a study of aerial photos of 700 Pacific Islands showed that 89% were the same size or growing. This rather destroyed the idea that sea levels were swallowing small nations. The New York Times said nothing. Indeed, the only Pacific things shrinking were deserted sand drifts. No islands bigger than 10 hectares were getting smaller. Measured in square kilometers that’s “0.1”. Despite the media headlines and delegations from Kiribati and Tuvulu begging for money to hold back the tide, no islands with people living on them were shrinking. None, not one island in the Pacific big enough to...

For almost 400 years America has seen its citizens educating their children and themselves, though both the scope, structure and quality of education has changed somewhat during that time. For much of the history of the United States, education of children took place primarily at home, often along with private schools for some, and locally managed and supported schools for others. Education included the general ethos of Christianity and Biblical morality as well as academic subjects. The New England Primer and later, the nation-wide McGuffey's Readers (120+ million copies) were the primary instruments of education, and in helping to form...

The Saturn V was, and still is, the largest object to leave the surface of the Earth. At 363 feet in height -- or over 30 stories tall -- the rocket weighed 6.3 million pounds, about the weight of...50 Boeing 747s... The rocket was the loudest creation made by human hands, except for the cacophony created by nuclear explosions. ...The five rocket engines of the Saturn V's first stage were the most powerful ever built...requiring 7.7 million pounds of force... To house the Saturn V, NASA built the Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center, which remains one of...

The Social Security Act, enacted on August 14, 1935, provided a new federally administered system of social insurance for the aged financed through payroll taxes paid by employees and their employers. Under the system, which applied only to workers in commerce and industry, people would earn retirement benefit eligibility as they worked. With some exceptions, benefits would be related to workers' average covered earnings, and workers could not have earnings and still be eligible for benefits. No benefits were provided for spouses or children, and lump-sum refunds were provided to the estates of workers who died before age 65 or...

A senior member of Hamas has hailed the systematic slaughter of civilians in Israel on October 7, vowing in an interview that if given the chance, the Palestinian terror group will repeat similar assaults many times in the future until Israel is exterminated. “Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” Hamad said in an interview with Lebanese TV channel LBC on October 24, which was translated and published Wednesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “We must remove it because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation....

Taking into account all the peace initiatives proposed to end the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs over the last 83 years, we must consider the possibility that the Palestinians—or at least their leaders—do not want to establish their own state. Their sight is currently set on the big prize—the entire state of Israel—and they are playing for time.... The Jerusalem Mufti Hajj Amin Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s...suggested that the Jews be deported from Palestine. Rejecting the idea of a Jewish state, he promised that if such...

Over the last few weeks, a Russian blitz has claimed more than a dozen villages in northeast Ukraine, near the country’s second-largest city. This summer, Russia will likely continue its offensive push... Russia’s ability to carry out these attacks is in some ways surprising. War is expensive...Yet Moscow has managed to keep paying for its war machine.... to China, the benefits of a Russian victory in Ukraine may outweigh the costs. Among those benefits: The war has entangled the U.S. and its allies in a faraway conflict, straining the U.S. military’s ammunition stockpiles. It has made Russia, a big military...

[Excerpts of excerpt of over 2700 word article] in the first days of the Yom Kippur War, when Golda Meir descended into her darkest hour,...the problem of resupply weighed on her mind, she called her ambassador to the U.S. at three in the morning and told him to wake up Kissinger and Nixon to get things flowing. In her memoirs she explained her behavior. “I knew that President Nixon had promised to help us, and I knew from my past experience with him that he would not let us down,” she writes. “Let me, at this point, repeat something that...

A coalition of Arab nations, led by Egypt and Syria, had surprised the Israeli military with a coordinated, all-out assault on the Jewish nation as it observed the holiest day of its year, Yom Kippur. Armed with the latest in Soviet weaponry, Arab forces quickly destroyed Israeli warplanes and tanks in numbers so shockingly large that a complete conquest of Israel — previously unthinkable — suddenly seemed all too possible. In desperate need of rearmament, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sent multiple appeals to the United States for military aid. Some of President Richard Nixon’s military advisors counseled against such...

And the Fertility Rates by State largely corresponds to the voting divide in the 2020 pres. election: Fertility Rates by State: Presidential Results 34 posted on 4/29/2024, 9:39:18 PM by daniel1212 (Turn 2 the Lord Jesus who saves damned+destitute sinners on His acct, believe, b baptized+follow HIM)

WITH a controversial Israeli attack in the news, I have thought back to another controversial Israeli attack, one that took place 29 years ago today: the strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq. The daring, risky bombing dealt a fatal blow to Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. I was then President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, after having been his chief foreign policy adviser for several years. Sunday afternoon, I was on my back porch in Arlington, Va., wading through...my perpetually mounting paperwork. My progress was interrupted..the duty officer was requesting that I go to...

In recent years, the fertility gap by religion has widened to unprecedented levels.... With birth rates at just 1.8 or 1.9 children per woman, versus a conversion-adjusted “replacement rate” of 2.44, religious communities in America will tend to decline by about 25 percent in each generation... Virtually 100 percent of the decline in fertility in the United States from 2012 to 2019 can be explained through a combination of two factors: growing numbers of religious women leaving the faith, along with declining birth rates among the nonreligious.... Since 2002, the share of reproductive-age women who attended church weekly or more...

according to new research from the University of Utah. Males' upper bodies are built for more powerful punches than females', says the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology... For years, Carrier has been exploring the hypothesis that generations of interpersonal male-male aggression long in the past have shaped structures [as if there was no Designer] in human bodies to specialize for success in fighting... It's already known that males' upper bodies, on average, have 75% more muscle mass and 90% more strength than females'. But it's not known why. "The general approach to understanding why sexual dimorphism evolves,"...

Sirens sound across Israel's north, south, Jerusalem and West Bank ■ IDF: Over 200 missiles, drones launched from Iran, most intercepted; army base in southern Israel sustained minor damage ■ U.S., U.K. and Jordan reportedly intercept drones ■ IDF deploys GPS jamming ■ Israeli war, security cabinets convened ■ Israel intensifies emergency guidelines, shuts down schools and large gatherings U.S. Embassy in Israel directs U.S. government employees to take shelter until further notice Israeli cabinet members authorize Netanyahu, Gallant and Gantz to make decisions on response to Iran's attack IDF: Residents of northern Golan, Nevatim, Dimona, Beer Sheva, Eilat no...

Roosevelt, argues Arnold Beichman, misread Stalin—and proved naive about communism itself.... Professor Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who has argued that the 1989 counter-revolution in Central Europe vindicates President Roosevelt’s wartime diplomacy,... However, I argue that, from the time he took office in 1933, FDR ignored informed assessments from within the State Department of the nature of Soviet diplomacy and that, consequently, the peoples of Central Europe for some four decades paid the price.... In the early years after the Bolshevik revolution, some U.S. diplomats who had begun to specialize in Soviet affairs believed that we should have as few dealings with...

Joe Ronnie Hooper had his share non-judicial punishments (authorized by Article 15 of UCMJ), racked up 115 confirmed kills and was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was also one of the most decorated soldiers in American international combat. Born in the summer of 1938 in South Carolina, Joe Ronnie Hooper was relocated as a child to Moses Lake, Washington where he attended Moses Lake High School... Originally a Navy man, Hooper first enlisted in December of 1956. After graduation... Hooper enlisted in the US Army as a Private First Class...Now a Staff Sergeant, Hooper requested a tour in...