Free Republic

A New Book Makes the Case That Fantasy Art Is America’s Least Understood Fine-Art Form—See the Wild Images Here Taschen presents 500 pages of dragons, wizards, and fantasy maidens.

Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to consider the role legal marijuana could play in the prescription opioid epidemic.Warren asked for more research into medical marijuana and painkiller addiction in a letter to the CDC director, Thomas Friedan."Opioid abuse is a national concern and warrants swift and immediate action," Warren wrote. Her request comes as politicians, including the presidential nominees, search for the best response to the opioid epidemic. The use of prescription opioids doubled between 2000 and 2014, according to the CDC. And Massachusetts experienced its highest number of unintentional opioid...

Dressing up like Wolverine or Cersei Lannister is probably more fun than scouring the classifieds for menial jobs. Imagine you're a college graduate stuck in a perpetually lousy economy. That's a problem Japanese twenty-somethings have faced for more than 20 years. Two decades of stagnation after the collapse of the 1980s real-estate and stock bubbles — combined with labor laws making it tough to fire older workers — have relegated vast numbers of Japanese young adults to low-paying, temporary contract jobs. Many find themselves living with their parents well into their twenties and beyond, unmarried and childless. Then again, they...

One definition of “pornography” deems it—The depiction or portrayal of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse (as by lurid details) a quick intense emotional reaction. With but a moment’s thought, you can see that this will apply to many sorts of things besides sex. In fact, it is quite possible to develop an unhealthy voyeuristic/vicarious interest is such things as movies, sports, and current events (to name just three). Let’s consider each of these briefly: While one may like a particular movie or admire the talents of a particular star, it is quite another matter to watch...

Obama delivers only hot air By Donald Kirk SEOUL – Theodore Roosevelt, a great American president with a clearly imperialist agenda, uttered one of the most famous lines in US history in 1901 when he advised a crowd, "Speak softly and carry a big stick". These days, US President Barack Obama seems to have gotten that aphorism reversed. He speaks a lot but doesn't seem to be carrying a big stick. That was the impression he gave after winding up his 11-day Asian odyssey in Japan at a tepid weekend gathering of Pacific rim leaders banded together in the Asia...

On Saturday, my wife and I went to see Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage, which is a strange mix of UFOlogy, panspermia, the destruction of Earth by fire (2 Pet. 3:10), the Edenic Tree of Life, and determinism vs. randomness. Cage’s character, John Koestler, is giving a lecture to his astrophysics’ class at M.I.T. when he presents the conundrum of determinism vs. randomness. 1 When the class asks him what he believes, he picks randomness. “There is no grand meaning, there is no purpose.” He ends the session with “I think s**t just happens.” The perfect summary of an atheist’s worldview....

<p>Things in any virtual world are not what they seem. So maybe it makes sense that a Carnegie Mellon University professor would offer this confession about his course, "Building Virtual Worlds."</p> <p>He's not really teaching virtual reality at all.</p> <p>That may be hard to believe after spending an afternoon in Randy Pausch's master's level course, and watching as his students don headgear so they can interact with colorful 3-D creations like cows, barking dogs and butterflies -- each animated by students using special effects wizardry out of some Hollywood back lot.</p>