Free Republic

Football banana-throwing racism What’s the basis for the racist symbolism of hurling bananas at black football players? by David Catchpoole Published: 30 August 2016 (GMT+10) Australian Rules Football player Eddie Betts, of the Adelaide ‘Crows’, was not even aware that a Port Adelaide ‘Power’ supporter in the grandstand had hurled a banana towards him until he was told about it after the game had finished. When a spectator threw a banana towards a player at an Australian Rules Football match recently, it triggered a frenzy of outrage in social and other media.1 Within hours, an online video clip of the...

Ralph Elliott had volunteered to pick up food for the Christmas Eve party he and his wife had hosted for more than 50 years. But as he stepped into his car with an armload of chicken at a Popeye's restaurant in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, Elliott was fatally shot during a robbery attempt in 2009.

Ancient Oxygen-Rich Rocks Confound Evolutionary Timescale by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Many origin of life researchers have for decades argued that the early earth must have had a “reducing” atmosphere, meaning that it had very little oxygen. This argument has no direct evidence to support it other than the knowledge that oxygen destroys the delicate molecules that comprise cells today. If the first living cells evolved, they would have needed an atmosphere with little or no oxygen. But new research supports the idea that the earth’s surface was always oxygenated...