Free Republic

The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using “inertial mass reduction,” and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.” Dubbed the “UFO patents, The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build prototypes of some of the outlandish tech to prove it worked.Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a number of different departments...

The U.S. Commerce Department is relinquishing its hold over the group that manages the Internet’s architecture amid pressure to globalize its functions in the wake of reports about NSA surveillance. The National Telecommunications & Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency, said Friday it is transitioning the function to the “global Internet community.” The decision marks a dramatic change. Since the Internet’s inception, the United States has played a leading role in the management of critical back-end Web work, including management of .com and other domain names. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has performed those functions under...

"After 11 years of Republican majority, we pared it down pretty good. I am ready to declare ongoing victory. It is still a process."--House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the federal budget In the presidential campaign last year, Democrats were said to be counting on some misfortune--terrorists attacking on American soil, the Iraq War taking a turn for the worse, the economy going south--to help them beat George W. Bush. That didn't happen, of course. But now disaster has struck, and it's becoming increasingly clear that Democrats are better off for it. In ripping through the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina...

Neanderthals 'had hands like ours' By Helen Briggs BBC News Online science reporter The popular image of Neanderthals as clumsy, backward creatures has been dealt another blow. Neanderthals used tools and had a capacity for speech It was always thought they were a somewhat ham-fisted lot. However, computer reconstructions of fossilised bones show their hands had almost the same manual dexterity as ours. Far from being "butter fingered", they would have been adept at using implements such as axes and knives. The finding is important because it casts doubt on the idea that Neanderthals died out because of a physical...