Free Republic

".....Yuma,Colorado, a farming town of 3,500 people near the Kansas border, celebrated last month as homegrown Republican Cory Gardner was elected to the U.S. Senate. Gardner, a high school football player and the son of a farm equipment dealer, defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Udall to help the GOP gain control of the Senate in the second-most expensive congressional race of all time.Gardner represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District for four years, an expansive territory that covers the mostly flat and rural eastern third of the state. Farmers there mostly grow corn to feed cattle, and water comes from the quickly...

The New Republic magazine celebrates its 100th anniversary with a special section called “100 Years, 100 Thinkers.”Unfortunately, the categories into which these “minds who’ve defined our century” are helpfully slotted are almost parodically First World, elite-uptown-liberal:“Architecture.” “Environmentalism.” “Songwriting.” “Diplomacy.”And of course, “American Civil Rights.” (Zzzzzzzz….)Unless you count “Medicine,” no hard sciences were deemed worthy of consideration.An alien browsing this section would be forgiven for assuming that man never set foot on the moon.But who cares when someone named Alice Waters “made (local) lettuce sexy!”(And besides, The New Republic assures us that “Martians need only watch one of [Richard Pryor's] concert...

Stardust got in their eyes. In the spring a group of astronomers who go by the name of BICEP announced they had detected ripples in the sky, gravitational waves that were the opening notes of the Big Bang. The finding was heralded as potentially the greatest discovery of the admittedly young century, but some outside astronomers said the group had underestimated the extent to which interstellar dust could have contaminated the results - a possibility that the group conceded in its official report in June. Now a long-awaited report by astronomers using data from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite...

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), headquartered in Geneva, is releasing videos that predict what weather reports will be like in 2050 These are based on what happens if climate change is allowed to continue Earth's average temperature could rise by more than 4°C (7.2°F) by the end of the 21st century, according to researchers This could lead to more extreme weather around the world such as storms, droughts and flooding The videos are being released ahead of the UN Climate Summit 2014 What will weather reports be like in 2050? Rather dramatic and unnerving if climate change gets out of...

"Star Trek: Voyager" actor Robert Picardo says he way too old to experiment with Bill Nye the Science Guy ... in the bedroom. Picardo is asking a judge to stop his soon-to-be ex-wife from spreading rumors he's in a gay relationship with Nye.   The actor says in court docs -- obtained by TMZ -- Linda Pawlik lured him over to her house July 4th by falsely telling him the family dog was missing.  While he was there, he claims Linda had a P.I. attach a GPS device to his car. Days later ... Linda started telling family friends the...

Each new climate-change study seems more pessimistic than the last. This May and June, for example, were the hottest ones on record for the planet. Effective countermeasures now could actually ward off many of these threats at relatively modest cost. Yet despite a robust scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are at the root of the problem, legislation to curb them has gone nowhere in Congress. In response, President Obama has proposed stricter regulations on electric utilities, which some scientists warn may be too little, too late. Why aren’t we demanding more forceful action? One reason may be the frequent...

According to new research from Boston University, young children with a religious background are less able to distinguish between fantasy and reality compared with their secular counterparts. In two studies, 66 kindergarten-age children were presented with three types of stories - realistic, religious and fantastical. The researchers then queried the children on whether they thought the main character in the story was real or fictional. While nearly all children found the figures in the realistic narratives to be real, secular and religious children were split on religious stories. Children with a religious upbringing tended to view the protagonists in religious stories as...

Climate change skeptics have suggested a recent slowdown in the warming of the Earth is evidence that global warming is a farce and that climate models can't be trusted, but new research suggests the slowdown, or "pause," was not a significant disruption of larger trends. The planet has been slowly warming over the last century or more. But in the last 15 years, that rate of warming has slowed. Temperatures are still high by historical standards; but between 1998 and 2013 they were slightly below what climate models had predicted. A small number of scientists and policy makers have pointed...

"Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.” Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No. Anonymous commenters on some underground website? No again. The statement that paedophilia is “natural and normal” was made not three decades ago but last July. It was made not in private but as one of the central claims of an academic presentation delivered, at...

BBC report: “Impartiality in science coverage does not simply lie in reflecting a wide range of views, but depends on the varying degree of prominence (due weight) such views should be given.” LONDON, July 7 (UPI) --In an internal report released today by the BBC trust addressing the broadcaster's impartiality in science reporting and the gender balance of its contributors and presenters, the BBC has officially taken the position that it will be giving climate change deniers less airtime in an effort to provide more accurate reporting that better reflects the weighted view of the scientific community. When they set...

Valeria Tanco (L), and Sophy Jesty pose with their new baby girl, Emilia, at their home in Knoxville, Tennessee April 7, 2014.Several liberal media organizations are reporting the results of a new same-sex parenting study which suggests that gay parents do a better job of raising children than the general population. There are four imporant points to understand about that study, however.Here are a few of the headlines:CBS News: "Children of same-sex couples healthy, well-adjusted, study finds"NBC News: "Children of Same-Sex Parents Are Healthier: Study"The Huffington Post: "Children Of Gay Parents Are Happier And Healthier Than Their Peers, New Study...

Medical science is making bold new leaps every day. Not only is there a new medication out that is just like the old medication, except it costs 10 times as much, but the American Medical Association has decided that gender is purely imaginary.For thousands of years, human ignorance convinced us that there were two genders. Now the AMA says that gender is imaginary. You can be any gender you want. Change gender every week. Or every day. We’re in Hopechangeistan now. Biology, like economics and military science, are purely imaginary fields. “Science” says so. In other action Monday, the AMA...

President Obama, in an address speech to UC Irvine graduates Saturday, took aim at congressional Republicans and others who dispute climate change, saying they posed a threat to the future.

In a sweeping initiative to curb pollutants blamed for global warming, the Obama administration unveiled a plan Monday that cuts carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by nearly a third over the next 15 years, but pushes the deadline for some states to comply until long after President Barack Obama leaves office. The 645-page rule, expected to be finalized next year, is a centerpiece of Obama's plans to tackle climate change and aims to give the United States more leverage to prod other countries to act when negotiations on a new international treaty resume next year. Under the plan, carbon...

“Science guy” Bill Nye faced off against Blaze contributor S.E. Cupp and conservative economist Nick Loris in a heated debate about global warming on CNN’s “Crossfire” Tuesday night after Cupp said the “scare tactics” used to address the issue have failed to convince the public. “Even if what Van [Jones] and the White House are saying is all true, the scare tactics have not worked,” she told Nye. “Only about 36 percent of Americans believe that global warming is a serious threat to our way of life.”

Nasa has released pictures of a prototype space suit, parts of which American astronauts could one day wear on the first manned mission to Mars. The public voted on three different designs for the Z-2 and the "Technology" design won by a landslide with 63 per cent of the vote. The design uses luminescent wire to form a light on the front of the suit that can be personalised to help astronauts identify other individuals on their team. The Z-2 is a prototype so will not be making any future trip to Mars itself as it does not have the...

President Barack H. Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20500 April 28, 2014 SUBJECT: Request to Prepare the USA for Dangerous Cold Climate. Dear Mr. President, Good morning. This letter is sent to you as a heartfelt request that you take immediate action to insure that the United States of America is fully prepared for the historic, potentially dangerous, new cold climate that has begun. This request is backed up by research over the past decades into the causes of climate change along with the real status of the Earth’s climate. Key findings of that research...

In a new national poll on America's scientific acumen, more than half of respondents said they were "not too confident" or "not at all confident" that "the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang." The poll was conducted by GfK Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. Scientists were apparently dismayed by this news, which arrives only a few weeks after astrophysicists located the first hard evidence of cosmic inflation. But when compared to results from other science knowledge surveys, 51 percent isn't too shameful -- or surprising. Other polls on America's scientific beliefs have arrived at similar findings....

snip "We looked at the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency, due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route," explained Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat. This information was relayed to Malaysian officials by 12 March, but Malaysia's government did not publicly acknowledge it until 15 March, according to the Wall Street Journal. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day, to focus on the areas the information described. However, some...

Three Los Angeles City Council members want city, state and federal groups to look into whether hydraulic fracturing and other forms of oil and gas “well stimulation” played any role in the earthquake that rattled the city early Monday morning. The motion, presented Tuesday by Councilmen Paul Koretz and Mike Bonin and seconded by Councilman Bernard Parks, asks for city departments to team up with the California Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to report back on the likelihood that such activities contributed to the 4.4-magnitude quake....