Free Republic

After 10 years and many thousands of replies, I am leaving FR. I don't really care, and I don't know why anyone else would. I am leaving before I am banned (again). Truth doesn't seem to matter on FR. I don't know if it is donations or sympathetic opinions that do, but I have been suspended twice when I followed the rules and the people who complained to the moderators didn't, yet the moderators sided with them. For the record, evolution is a fact and the Shroud of Turin is a fraud. I would prove it if the admin moderators...

This Mattel toy set would peobably get you arrested today. I want one.

Mine was the Johnny Reb cannon. I got it sometime between '64 an '66 I guess. The link is to a vintage ad for the toy. If you have a favorite, check youtube to see if there is a link and let us know. Merry Christmas!

Tangled web of spider evolution The long Permarachne spinneret now known to be a tail (centre bottom) The species once described as the world's oldest spider is a more primitive version of the web-spinning modern spider, scientists have found. The parts of the Attercopus spider's described as spinnerets - the appendages that allow web-spinning - were not spinnerets after all. That means that the oldest "true" spider may have arrived 80m years later than previously thought. The results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and his colleagues first described Attercopus...

With the aid of a straightforward experiment, researchers have provided some clues to one of biology's most complex questions: how ancient organic molecules came together to form the basis of life. RNA, the single-stranded precursor to DNA, normally expands one nucleic base at a time, growing sequentially like a linked chain. The problem is that in the primordial world RNA molecules didn't have enzymes to catalyze this reaction, and while RNA growth can proceed naturally, the rate would be so slow the RNA could never get more than a few pieces long (for as nucleic bases attach to one end,...

Tonight, the Discovery Channel will have a special on the Shroud of Turin featuring the late Raymond N. Rogers. Rogers published a paper in the scientific journal Thermochimica Acta. that is generally viewed as undermining the carbon 14 dating of the shroud in 1988 that proved the Shroud was a fake. 1. Rogers was not authorized to conduct the tests by the Church. 2. The Church said they could not authenticate that the samples he used came from the Shroud. 3. If the Samples were really from the Raes sample and the Riggi Sample, they were taken and distributed illegally....

And, it should be pointed out, Mr. Obama has a relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, having not only endorsed Blagojevich in 2002 and 2006, but having served as a top adviser to the Illinois governor in his first 2002 run for the state house. That 2002 endorsement came at the same time that Axelrod had such serious concerns about whether Blagojevich was ready for governing he refused to work for his one-time client. According to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., Mr. Obama's incoming White House chief of staff, Emanuel, then-state senator Obama, a third Blagojevich aide, and Blagojevich's campaign co-chair, David Wilhelm,...

PRESS RELEASE from the Office of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 10, 2007 Statement from Governor Rod R. Blagojevich “On this historic day, I am pleased to join many Illinoisans who are excited and proud to support Senator Obama in his bid for the Presidency. I know that Senator Obama will fight to make sure that working families have access to health care, good paying jobs, and opportunities to provide for their children. Senator Obama supports the very best of these Democratic values; they are values that he and I share, values I know he will fight...

Is there a God or a multiverse? Does modern cosmology force us to choose? Is it the case that the apparent fine-tuning of constants and forces to make the universe just right for life means there is either a need for a "tuner" or else a cosmos in which every possible variation of these constants and forces exists somewhere? This choice has provoked anxious comment in the pages of this week's New Scientist. It follows an article in Discover magazine, in which science writer Tim Folger quoted cosmologist Bernard Carr: "If you don't want God, you'd better have a multiverse."...

Many studies of evolution focus on the benefits to the individual of competing successfully – those who survive produce the most offspring, in Darwin's classic 'survival of the fittest'. But how does this translate to the evolution of species? A new article considers an aspect of the natural world that, like survival of the fittest individual, is explained by natural selection: namely, mutualism -- an interaction between species that has benefits for both. The work shows that some species of butterfly that live alongside one another have evolved in ways that, surprisingly, benefit both species.

First let me thank General Shinsecki for his service and say that I am appalled at the internment of Japanese-American's during the Democratic Roosevelt administration. My question to FReepers is, did Obama know he was announcing the appointment of the only General of Japanese descent on PEARL HARBOR DAY. Why today? "shisecki" apparently means "relative" in Japanese for what it's worth.

NBC, in a move as harsh as it was swift, forced out three top programming executives Friday after a disastrous crash of its fall television season. The three -- Katherine Pope, Teri Weinberg and Craig Plestis -- all lost their high-profile jobs amid one of the most sweeping shake-ups in television. The purging signals the desperation of NBC Universal bosses to fix the network, which slid back into fourth place last week.

Scientists have discovered a more efficient way of building a synthetic genome that could one day enable them to create artificial life, according to a study. The method is already being used to help develop next generation biofuels and biochemicals in the labs of controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter. Venter has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming, but the prospect is highly controversial and arouses heated debate over its potential ramifications and the ethics of engineering artificial life. Artificially engineered life is one of the Holy Grails of science, but also stirs...

Rush: “Ladies and gentlemen, I want to start the hour here by restating the origins of Operation Chaos and the goal, because I am continuing to receive mail, e-mail from people, you, who listen in this audience, who are getting panicked and paranoid that Mrs. Clinton is going to end up winning this whole thing and that it will be my fault and that if that happens, you are never, ever, going to listen to this program again.” “Former US president Bill Clinton said he would back his wife Hillary if she became secretary of state but has even bigger...

science serves humankind by expanding our knowledge and understanding of the universe. It also gives us technologies that benefit our lives and drive social evolution. But it also teaches how to think rationally and sceptically. I often use the phrase "science as a way of knowing", because, for me, that is why it is important. It is the best method we have of understanding how things are. It doesn't bother me too much that students, as the report suggests, are being taught how to pass exams. In my experience, most people do university degrees not for the intellectual stimulus, or...

IRAQI and US forces have arrested the "number one butcher" responsible for beheadings in the volatile Diyala province north of Baghdad. "Iraqi forces received intelligence on a very dangerous terrorist known as the number one butcher who was responsible for a beheading squad that slaughtered innocent people," Major General Mohammed al-Askari said. The suspect, Riyad Wahab Hassan Falih, "also supervised the training of terrorists specialising in beheading Iraqis", he said. The arrest came amid a series of operations across the province in which Iraqi army troops backed by local tribes apprehended 65 people in 72 hours. In an operation early...

Over the summer, Sonja Prohaska decided to try an experiment. She would spend a day without ever saying the word “gene.” Dr. Prohaska is a bioinformatician at the University of Leipzig in Germany. In other words, she spends most of her time gathering, organizing and analyzing information about genes. “It was like having someone tie your hand behind your back,” she said. But Dr. Prohaska decided this awkward experiment was worth the trouble, because new large-scale studies of DNA are causing her and many of her colleagues to rethink the very nature of genes. They no longer conceive of a...

Dr. Ronald M. Davis, a former president of the American Medical Association who campaigned against tobacco, alcohol, obesity, illicit drugs and unhealthy lifestyles in his career as a public health official, died Thursday at his home in East Lansing, Mich. He was 52. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Brenda Craine, a spokeswoman for the medical association.

The evolution of novel characteristics within organisms can be enhanced when environments change in a systematic manner, according to a new study by Weizmann Institute researchers. Merav Parter, Nadav Kashtan and Uri Alon suggest that in environments that vary over time in a non-random way, evolution can learn the rules of the environment and develop organisms that can readily generate novel useful traits with only a few mutations. Details are published November 7 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology In this study Parter, Kashtan and Alon began with the observation that environments in nature seemingly vary according to common...

When Missouri Sen. John Loudon and his wife, Gina, decided to adopt their third child, they knew three things: They wanted a little boy, they would name him Samuel and he would have Down syndrome. "This was always part of the plan," said Gina Loudon as their now 3-year-old Sammy darted in and out of the living room in his slippers, giggling loudly. "We didn't know much about how it was going to happen, but we just knew." The politically active couple with deep roots in the anti-abortion movement said their passion for Sammy spurred them to take legislative action...