Free Republic

The first UFO term in the title means, of course, “Unidentified Flying Objects;” the second means “United Fakenews Organizations.” Why suddenly are UFOs trending everywhere? Previous UFO eruptions occurred in 1947, 1952, and 1965. However, the UFO furor of 2020-2021 differs from all others because it is the first substantial UFO scare after President Carter created the Department of Education in 1979. Formally, it all started six months ago, when the requirement for U.S. government agencies to reveal what they know about the UFO had been sneaked into the massive COVID-19 relief bill with significant bipartisan support. The support was...

Karl Popper, one of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, argued against classical inductivist reasoning in science. He argued that a scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable -- similar to the statistician's practice of proving the null case rather than the hypotheses itself. Questioning the claim of human-made climate change, I am often dismissed as a "denier" and asked why I don't accept that in this particular arena, "the science is settled." But anthropogenic global warming (AGW) a.k.a. "climate change" isn't science at all by Popper's standards and is, in fact, a perfect example of that which Popper rejected:...

The executive order listed in the title is here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-protecting-public-health-and-environment-and-restoring-science-to-tackle-climate-crisis/ Lots of revocations in Section 7 that are worth parsing out.

Sure, the Frankfurt School Agenda dictated #8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime.But what have you done to equip yourself with non-lethal weapons?The hooks aren't to cause injury, they're to fix deployment of a security bolo to neutralize the assailants, to wrap the cord around the net so the bad guys can't get your loved ones.They have truck mounted wall & ground penetrating imaging that can see exactly what you have in your house. It will only take them 30 days. The militarization of domestic police depts from about the time Bubba met Loretta Lynch on...

Kooky CNN doc Jonathan Reiner just doesn't seem to be able to stay in his medical lane. In recent months, we caught Reiner putting on his legal-analyst [dunce?] cap, accusing President Trump of "negligent homicide" and "criminal endangerment." On this morning's New Day, Reiner veered into the foreign policy field, declaring that for months, he's believed that only "regime change" in the US could bring the pandemic under control. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

In 2020, fan girls everywhere appear to have pivoted from fangirling over Harry Styles to fangirling over science (OK, and still a little bit of Harry Styles). The most recent example? Kelly Ripa. And the boy catching her eye is none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci himself. Dr. Anthony Fauci quickly became an icon this year as one of the main figures leading the country through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci even told InStyle in July, “With all due modesty, I think I'm pretty effective." As always, Dr. Fauci is right. (Although, we'd definitely give him more credit and say...

The study, "Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States," assessed the working memory, personality, mood and fluid intelligence of test subjects; the researchers surveyed 850 U.S. residents between March 13 and March 25..."The decision of whether or not to follow social distancing guidelines is a difficult one,...This decision critically relies on our mental capacity in retaining multiple pieces of potentially conflicting information in our head, which is referred to as working memory capacity," study author Weizhen Xie (Zane) told PsyPost.

A new study... provides an updated estimate of the likely number of alien civilizations that could exist in the Milky Way. The analysis...starts with revising the Drake equation... "The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life," said Westby in a press release. "Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy." Westby and Conselice...built a key assumption in to their estimate: Life on another planet will arise in a similar way to how it did on...

Climate change is a product of white supremacy, a NASA scientist has claimed on Twitter. Dr Kate Marvel, associate research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, tweeted to her 41,000 followers that: Climate justice and racial justice are the same thing, and we’ll never head off climate catastrophe without dismantling white supremacy

Some children in the inner city context grow up never knowing anything else. So when they’re exposed to a country setting, the mountains, the beach, it may be exciting, but it can also be uncomfortable and even scary for them. They’d rather retreat back to the confined, polluted and unsafe environment they’re used to. But we can all agree that they miss out. In the same way, most men have been conditioned to women being on contraceptives. They can hardly imagine the world without them and they need help (hello women!) being taken there for the first time and shown...

Most people do not have a good understanding of real science, and can therefore be taken in if a claim is presented in ‘science-y’ language. Thus purveyors of medical pseudoscience will freely use terms like energy, vibrations, frequencies, resonance and so on in describing their interventions but none of these terms are being used in the precise way that a physicist would use them. Many pseudoscientists will also refer to the latest ideas in real science to imply that their claims are derived from the latest cutting-edge theories. One example would be claiming that homeopathy is consistent with quantum mechanics...

SCIENCEDIRECT.COM A mid-2000’s study linking anti-gay prejudice to shorter lifespans for lesbians, gays, and bisexual individuals has been retracted on grounds that it was an “erroneous” finding.The study “Structural stigma and all-cause mortality in sexual minority populations” was conducted by researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and was published by the peer-reviewed academic journal Social Science & Medicine in February 2014.The study purported to have found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who live in communities with high levels of anti-gay sentiment tend to die earlier than lesbians, gays and bisexuals who live in communities that are...

It is easy to see that the Democrats were the victims not only of their incompetence but also of corruption in science -- corruption that has a considerable amount of Democrat effort put into it. Here is an example from the past: In the mid-1980s, I was invited to an international scientific conference in Moscow relating to environmental pollution. It was obvious from the abstracts published before the opening of the conference that human civilization was guaranteed to die out by the year 2000 because of pollution. I was young, believed in science, and so upset that even my boss...

Researchers say a massive cavity the size of two-thirds of Manhattan was found under a glacier in Antarctica. The pocket is a sign of "rapid decay" and just one of "several disturbing discoveries" made recently regarding the glacier, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a news release Wednesday. "[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," said Pietro Milillo of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster." The growing cavity sits in West Antarctica at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier, which is about as big...

A legislative proposal in Connecticut would mandate instruction on climate change in public schools statewide, beginning in elementary school. Connecticut already has adopted science standards that call for teaching of climate change, but if the bill passes it is believed that it would be the country's first to write such a requirement into law. "A lot of schools make the study of climate change an elective, and I don't believe it should be an elective," said state Rep. Christine Palm, a Democrat from Chester who proposed the bill. "I think it should be mandatory, and I think it should be...

On Sunday, Britain's Daily Star reported that Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie — two white actresses — are competing for the role of Cleopatra, sparking outrage across social media. Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) demanded that the African queen should be played by a woman of color, even though the historical Cleopatra was Greek, not black. "Stop whitewashing Cleopatra!!!" tweeted Kendra James, a writer and editor at Shondaland.com. "Film the story of literally any other queen on the vast African continent."

The oceans are warming faster than previously estimated, setting a new temperature record in 2018 in a trend that is damaging marine life, scientists said on Thursday...."Global warming is here, and has major consequences already. There is no doubt, none!" the authors wrote in a statement.

EDISON - A recent study has ranked New Jersey 47th in the U.S. for the least Christmas-friendly states. The survey was done by GetCenturyLink. The rankings were based on online activity and areas of culture.

A feminist academic affiliated with the University of Arizona has invented a new theory of “intersectional quantum physics,” and told the world about it in a journal published by Duke University Press. Whitney Stark argues in support of “combining intersectionality and quantum physics” to better understand “marginalized people” and to create “safer spaces” for them, in the latest issue of The Minnesota Review.

The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a "rape manual"), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Why? Because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us" (my emphasis of what I am rapidly coming to learn is an 'in' word). Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray's thesis on fluid mechanics.Fluids you see, have been unfairly neglected. "Masculine physics" privileges rigid, solid things. Her American expositor Katherine Hayles...