Free Republic

A new study reveals that those "smart" thermostats installed, often at great expense, in homes actually cause the energy consumption to rise, not fall. "Engineering estimates from the California Technical Forum …. predict that smart thermostats will produce substantial reductions in energy consumption," the report, called "The Human Perils of Scaling Smart Technologies: Evidence from Field Experiments," said. It was released by authors from Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, University of Southern California and University of Alabama. They studied the smart thermostat impact on energy consumption using data over an 18-month period including more than 16 million hourly electricity use...

As a crowded group of Clemson University students and local residents danced and jumped around at an apartment clubhouse late Saturday night, Jeremy Tester felt something strange beneath his feet. "You could hear the floor about to go through, kind of," he said, "but nobody thought it was going to happen. They just kept going." But suddenly the floor gave way. Dozens of partiers dropped into free fall and landed in a mass of sprawling bodies in the basement. Police said 30 people were injured when the floor of the apartment clubhouse collapsed during a party on homecoming weekend in...

National conservative leaders are wondering who, if anyone, can stop Mitt Romney from walking off with the Republican nomination after his narrow win in Iowa and his expected comfortable victory in New Hampshire next week. The name that keeps surfacing is Rick Perry, which says a lot about the desperation that the anti-Romney forces are feeling now. [snip] Perry insiders say that the plausible course forward for the candidate is to make this a one-on-one race with Mr. Romney so that the conservative vote doesn't split in two, three or four ways. South Carolina has a history of deciding the...

CLEVELAND (AP) — Thousands of people cast ballots in Cuyahoga County on Election Day without signing in at their polling places, the latest voting mishap for a county where problems in the May primary delayed results six days. Nearly 12,000 people voted illegally Nov. 7 in the state's most populous county. More people voted than signed in at 533 of 570 precincts, according to board of elections records. “We need to bring in the booth officials and find out what happened,” elections board Chairman Bob Bennett said at a meeting Monday. “We paid a lot of money for training.” Elections...

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is raising the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House. The prosecutor in the criminal case against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff said in a Jan. 23 letter that not all e-mail was archived in 2003, (((GET THIS: ***the year the Bush administration exposed the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.***)))) (They aren't even faking journalistic integrity in leaving out the word "allegedly.") Lawyers for defendant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby this week accused prosecutors of withholding evidence...

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- An inmate mistakenly released by Ohio authorities arranged his own way back to the Colorado prison where he has to serve two more years. The Stark County jail let Ricky Lee Claycomb go on Tuesday after he was acquitted of a rape charge. His jailers never saw the paperwork to ensure his return to Colorado, the sheriff said. So Claycomb, 37, took a bus back to the state where he has been serving a robbery sentence and, after visiting his mother, had a relative drive him to the prison. "He was nice enough to call ahead,"...

An overwhelming majority of voters believe it was wrong for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry to have mentioned in Wednesday's presidential debate that Vice President Cheney's daughter was a lesbian, according to the latest Washington Post tracking survey. Nearly two in three likely voters -- 64 percent -- said Kerry's comment was "inappropriate," including more than four in 10 of his own supporters and half of all swing voters. A third -- 33 percent -- thought the remark was appropriate.

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Canada's first space mission outside Earth's orbit -- a $5-million instrument aboard the crippled Japanese probe Nozomi -- has missed Mars and is now officially out of action for good. The project, led by University of Calgary professors, was launched five years ago to study the thin atmosphere on Mars. But Japan couldn't do the manoeuvres required to insert the probe Nozomi into orbit around Mars. The probe carrying the Canadian-made instrument designed to measure the Martian atmosphere flew on by and will drift through space indefinitely. Physics and astronomy professor...

A man sleeping on a beach ended up with a barnacle stuck to his penis. The 23-year-old had been lying in shallow water to escape the heat in Bor, Yugoslavia. He had to go to the accident and emergency department of the local hospital after being unable to get rid of the crustacean himself. Hospital sources say a nurse initially failed to remove it with tweezers. Daily newspaper Glas Javnosti reports medics only managed to free the barnacle when the embarrassed man got an unplanned erection. A hospital spokesman said: "We are not allowed to comment on the patients we...

EXETER - What began as a night of routine prank phone calls for four local teens ended with their arrest after they called the Stockbridge Funeral Home and reported an alleged murder. Jonathan Stevens, 17, of Durham; Curtis Ouelette, 17, of Newmarket; Matthew Pilar, 19, and his brother Miles, 17, of Lee, were all arrested on Dec. 20 by Lee Police on charges of harassment and criminal liability, Lee Police Chief Chet Murch said. They were all released from police custody on $500 personal recognizance bail and will be arraigned in Durham District Court on Jan. 22, 2003. "What started...

Tenet Defends CIA Pre-9/11 Efforts Thu Oct 17,10:36 AM ET By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA (news - web sites) Director George Tenet defended his agency's counterterrorism efforts Thursday, detailing its secret successes against al-Qaida while acknowledging that it could have better handled some information on two future Sept. 11 hijackers. AP Photo Tenet and FBI (news - web sites) Director Robert Mueller appeared before the House and Senate intelligence committees, culminating five weeks of public hearings on intelligence failures leading up to the attacks. Before Sept. 11, he said, the CIA had a large...