Free Republic

Much is made about observed differences between sexes and among races. The nation’s academic and legal elite try to sell us on the notion that men and women and people of all races should be proportionally represented in socio-economic characteristics. They make statements such as “Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the U.S. population, they (constituted) 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015” and “20 percent of Congress is women. Only 5 percent of CEOs are.” These differences are frequently referred to as disparities. Legal professionals, judges, politicians, academics and others often operate under...

<p>One evening, after the honeymoon, Dick was working on his Harley in the garage. His new wife was standing there by the bench watching him.</p> <p>After a long period of silence she finally said, "Honey, I've just been thinking, now that we're married, maybe it's time you quit spending so much of your time out here in your garage. You probably should consider selling your Harley and all that welding equipment; they take up so much of your time. And that gun collection and fishing gear, they just take up so much space. And you know the boat is such an ongoing expense; and you hardly use it. I also think you should lose all those stupid model airplanes and your home brewing equipment and what's the use of that vintage hot rod?</p>

There isn’t a better way to prove your love for somebody than to travel to paradise with three other couples and 24 single men and women and see if your significant other will stay loyal or jump in a hot tub and prove that they are cheating trash. That said, thank God Temptation Island is back. In the new trailer for the USA Network’s revival of the reality series, original host Mark L. Walberg returns to oversee four couples as they decide to stay together or give into — as the title of the series suggests — temptation. The four...

The Bachelor Mansion has been announced as one of the homes burned in the devastating California Woolsey Fire. According to Variety, the famed reality show location did not escape the blazing fires that have spread across southern California. The 'lower house has reportedly been destroyed, while flames have reached the back patio of the main house and are continuing to advance,' says the site.

When her mother told her that President Donald Trump had tweeted about her case, Reality Winner braced for the worst. After all, ever since her arrest for leaking a top-secret document, strangers on the internet have called her a traitor, mocked her name and gloated over her legal predicament. But Trump didn’t gloat and he didn’t mock, at least not her. The day after a federal judge handed her a record-setting prison sentence, Winner heard her mother read the president’s words through a phone receiver at the Lincoln County jail, where she’s been incarcerated for more than a year. “Gee,...

Bill Loud was not the first person to play the role of a father on television. What made him a pioneer was that he was not acting — and that he was often not acting responsibly. In 1973, when PBS broadcast “An American Family,” Mr. Loud, who died on Thursday in Los Angeles at 97, was the tan and philandering head of an affluent real-life household whose domestic dramas in Santa Barbara, Calif., were captured on camera for 300 hours and edited into 12 hourlong episodes now regarded as the genesis of reality television. “An American Family” shocked American families....

Coffee with Scott Adams. On Periscope. Episode, "Scott Adams talks about civil war, #walkaway, The weed poison pill, Mike Lee, eliminating ICE"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCloTOCdJSs

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday that many Americans support President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, but contended that their voices are being drowned out. “We simply, as a people, seem to be united that the president's position is wrong. I hear more of that on TV than I hear reality. I think that there are a lot of people [who say], ‘Thank you for standing up for us,’” Cramer said on CNBC. Just after midnight on Friday, the United States and China exchanged $34 billion worth of tariffs. The American duties affect products such as water boilers, X-ray machine...

Temptation Island is returning to U.S. television. The controversial series aired on Fox from 2001-2003 and entailed couples agreeing to live with several singles of the opposite sex in order to test their relationships. No networks have been specifically announced.

Every generation tends to believe that its views on the nature of reality are either true or quite close to the truth. We are no exception to this: although we know that the ideas of earlier generations were each time supplanted by those of a later one, we still believe that this time we got it right. Our ancestors were naïve and superstitious, but we are objective—or so we tell ourselves. We know that matter/energy, outside and independent of mind, is the fundamental stuff of nature, everything else being derived from it—or do we? In fact, studies have shown that...

‘Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” observed― Philip K. Dick in “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.” Somewhere deep in a file drawer, or on a computer server humming away in a basement, are thousands upon thousands of numbers, with names and identities attached. They’re called grades. They represent an objective reality, which exists independent of what people want reality to be. They sit silently, completely indifferent to indignation, angry petitions, irritable gestures, teachers’ removal from classrooms—all the furor and clamor of institutional politics. Those numbers are now solely within the control of...

C.S. Lewis once discussed the question of how angels (and such things) could pass through a wall. His response was intriguing: he suggested that they could do so not because they were less substantial, but because they were more substantial. Just as a rock is more substantial than water or air, so, he posited, an angel (or such) is more substantial than our materiality. Of course, this is completely arguable and unprovable. But it is a useful image for thinking about another aspect of reality, that which the Church describes as “mystery.” Our tendency in thinking about anything we do...

To cleanse the palate, I’m not even going to scold him for making a mockery of the legislative process. We elected a game-show host president, for fark’s sake. Besides, as a matter of self-promotion, this stunt isn’t half bad. Drew Christensen is all of 24 years old and has been a state representative since he was 22(!). He’s not just a backbencher, he’s a freakishly young backbencher. His influence in the statehouse is about as small as it can possibly be. What do you do with your time when the odds of one of your bills becoming law is essentially...

"According to preliminary information, the man was moving around his apartment in virtual reality goggles and fell on a glass table, as a result of which he was injured and died from loss of blood at the scene," the spokesperson said according to the state news agency. The Ukranian Russian language website Korrespondent.net reported that the virtual reality game had not been properly mapped to the dimensions of the man’s apartment, possibly causing the accident. His body was reportedly discovered by his mother when she came to the apartment to visit. Further investigations into the circumstances of the man’s death...

Science editor for the site’s U.K. operation quickly disables her Twitter account after coming under fire A science editor at BuzzFeed UK raised a few eyebrows last week after some curious remarks about Communism. “All I want for Christmas is full Communism now,” editor Kelly Oakes tweeted — before locking down her account after it was picked by right-wing media and the always ferocious James Woods. The screenshots tell the story. A spokesperson for BuzzFeed declined to comment on the matter. Oakes, who does not report to the website’s U.S.-based science desk, did not immediately respond to a request for...

One year ago this month, former President Barack Obama's administration was working behind the scenes at the United Nations to slip a resolution through the body’s General Assembly attacking Israel. It was one of Obama’s final, sneaky, and reprehensible acts in office. It put an exclamation point on his long, nasty, personal feud with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Previously, our president had gone so far as to interfere in an Israeli election and then unleashed his minions when Netanyahu had the gall to accept an invitation to address Congress. Fast forward to this Wednesday, Netanyahu was thanking Obama’s successor...

Today, we are increasingly faced with a contrived reality. A mirage. Images shone on a wall (television screens, cell-phone, laptops) portraying what our captors wish for us to believe (is reality). What is truth? Let me suggest that truth, increasingly, is a byproduct of force. Are any important matters reasoned true today, or are we stuck in a battle of messaging wills? In this, let me suggest, the Left are winning, as we’ve abandoned reason, and are left with, whatever message can be advanced enthusiastically enough, to run roughshod over the other. As Goebbels stated; “If you tell a lie...

Since sexual harassment can be in the eye of the beholder, the only evidence that meets civil standards of proof, argues a university complaints investigator, can fairly decide what happened. https://academicmatters.ca/2011/10/false-allegations-of-sexual-harassment-misunderstandings-and-realities/

Marxist Brown is at war with Donald Trump California Gov. Jerry Brown says the world needs ‘brain washing’ on climate change. Sounding indeed brainwashed, Brown said, “The problem ... is us. It’s our whole way of life. It’s our comfort ... It’s the greed. It’s the indulgence. It’s the pattern. And it’s the inertia.” I hate to be a party pooper but the totalitarian trio of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot also said the world needed brainwashing. But I digress. Brown arrived at the Vatican in Rome Friday for 14 days of “climate talks.” Yet Sacrament Bee reporter Christopher Cadelago,...