Free Republic

Every year, Rachel Bronson, President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, who has a degree in political science from Columbia, gets up in front of a fake clock to announce that the world is doomed. And the media eagerly covers the annual imminent warning of doom as if it came with an open bar. Bronson is not an atomic scientist. Or any kind of scientist. Unless you believe politics is a science. And if politics is a science, then Bronson is the Lysenko of the field, predicting doom out of bias and ignorance. This year, the Doomsday...

The modernization of the Russian armed forces has taken another step forward with the delivery in 2016 of the first shipments of the modern multipurpose Su-30SM fighters. In the spring a squadron of eight planes was deployed to the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea while in the fall two planes were added to the fighter air regiment in the Rostov Region. Recently, a group of Su-30SMs was sent to a separate Russian Fleet attack air regiment in the country's north. In 2017 the fighters will also be delivered to Russia's naval aviation in the Baltics and by 2018 the Aerospace...

Superman too super a role model 17:01 19 November 04 Superman is too good a role model. Fans of the man from Krypton unwittingly compare themselves to the superhero, and realise they do not measure up. And as a result, they are less likely to help other people. Researchers made the discovery whilst examining how people’s decision-making can be influenced by surreptitiously placed ideas, usually via seemingly unrelated questionnaires or word puzzles. For example, one study has shown that people primed with helpful words were more likely to help a friend pick up spilt pens. Such effects usually last only...