Free Republic

Original released by Arista Records 1982

One just stumbled into a trial period of Sirius XM. Any recommendations? Astute political/historical/current events talk programs? New music? Contrast with the same stuff on the FM dial... all genre considered... Comedy, just for fun, etc, lest one lose one's sense of humor listening to the news?

SiriusXM PGA Tour host Mark Lye made inappropriate comments about the WNBA on the air Saturday and was fired by the end of the weekend. “You know the LPGA Tour, to me, is a completely different tour than it was 10 years ago,” Lye said Saturday on PGA Tour Radio. “You couldn’t pay me to watch. You really couldn’t, because I couldn’t relate at all. It’s kind of like, if you were a basketball player, and I’m not trashing anybody, please don’t take it the wrong way. “I saw some highlights of ladies’ basketball. Man. Is there a gun in...

For every Chicago Bulls home game during Michael Jordan's career, first at Chicago Stadium and then at the United Center, he was welcomed onto the court with the same introduction song: “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project. Parsons had released the instrumental track in 1982, using it as the opening song for his Eye in the Sky album. Two years later, a Chicago disc jockey named Tommy Edwards was settling in at a local movie theater when “Sirius” began playing over the cinema’s speaker system. “I know this song,” the longtime radio personality recalled to NBC Sports. “It’s ‘Sirius’ by...

It’s August, and that means we will have  ☆*¨`*☆StArrY, StArrY NiGhƮs☆*¨`*☆So grab your dog and your camera…and head out to capture some magnificent images under the night sky. The Perseids Meteor shower is at its peak tonight.Photo by Andrew RhodesEnjoy it while you can.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

SiriusXM will debut a new permanent 24/7 single artist channel on May 18 with the launch of The Beatles Channel. Launching at 9:09am, the channel will feature programming produced in collaboration with and fully authorized by The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. The channel will focus exclusively on music produced by the band and its four members other projects. Among the programs to be heard on the channel will be: Breakfast with The Beatles – A morning show hosted by musician Chris Carter My Fab Four – A daily guest DJ show playing their four favorite Beatles songs The Fab Fourum...

Explanation: Earth's annual Geminid meteor shower did not disappoint, peaking before dawn on December 14 as our fair planet plowed through dust from active asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Captured in this southern hemisphere nightscape the meteors stream away from the shower's radiant in Gemini. To create the image, many individual frames recording meteor streaks were taken over period of 5 hours. In the final composite they were selected and registered against the starry sky above the twin 6.5 meter Magellan telescopes of Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Rigel in Orion, and Sirius shine brightly as the Milky Way stretches toward...

Explanation: Is there anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? One night last month, there were quite a few things. First, the red-glowing orb on the lower right of the featured image is the full moon, darkened and reddened because it has entered Earth's shadow. Beyond Earth's cone of darkness are backscattering dust particles orbiting the Sun that standout with a diffuse glow called the gegenschein, visible as a faint band rising from the central horizon and passing behind the Moon. A nearly horizontal stripe of green airglow is also discernable just above the horizon, partly blocked...

Explanation: What's that in the sky? Although there was much to see in this spectacular panorama taken during the early morning hours of a day in late September, the brightest object in the sky was clearly the planet Venus. In the featured image, Venus was captured actually through a natural rock bridge, itself picturesque, in Spitzkoppe, Namibia. The planet, on the left of the opening, was complemented by a silhouette of the astrophotographer on the right. Above and beyond the rock bridge were many famous icons of a dark night sky, including, from left to right, the Pleiades star cluster,...

Egyptians livelihood rested on knowing when the annual flooding of the Nile was about to occur. To this end, they relied on the first seasonal spotting of Sirius at dawn. Sirius is the brightest star in the sky, and you can just pick out the flicker of Sirius in early August low to the southeast if you know exactly where to look for it. Sirius lies at a declination of just under 17 degrees south of the celestial equator. It’s interesting to note that in modern times, the annual flooding of the Nile (prior to the completion of the Aswan...

The dominoes began falling Tuesday night, after midnight. The black woman in a mini-skirt who punched Cumia in the face in Times Square in Manhattan and called him a “white m-f-” probably did not know he was a national radio personality. To her, “Ant” was just a white photographer taking her picture. And she did not like that. Cumia liked being attacked even less. He called her lots of names -- the kind that would have gotten him fined had he said them on the air during his stint as a terrestrial radio star. But no N-bombs. That is all...

Explanation: Orion's belt runs just along the horizon, seen through Earth's atmosphere and rising in this starry snapshot from low Earth orbit on board the International Space Station. The belt stars, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka run right to left and Orion's sword, home to the great Orion Nebula, hangs above his belt, an orientation unfamiliar to denizens of the planet's northern hemisphere. That puts bright star Rigel, at the foot of Orion, still higher above Orion's belt. Of course the brightest celestial beacon in the frame is Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major. The station's Destiny Laboratory module...

Familiar objects often mistaken for UFOs include bright stars, planets and satellites, but high – if not highest – on the list is Sirius in the constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog. Sirius has attained UFO status for several good reasons: at magnitude -1.5 it’s the brightest star in the sky, it “moves” both slowly and rapidly and shoots out light of different colors. Because it’s bright, and for many of us, falls along an easy line of sight on March evenings, we’re bound to notice it. No star sparkles more intensely especially when hovering low in the sky.

Explanation: A broad expanse of glowing gas and dust presents a bird-like visage to astronomers from planet Earth, suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. This portrait of the cosmic bird covers a 1.6 degree wide swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major. Of course, the region includes objects with other catalog designations: notably NGC 2327, a compact, dusty emission region with an embedded massive star that forms the bird's head (aka the Parrot Nebula, above center). Dominated by the reddish glow of atomic hydrogen, the...

Magli simulated what the sky would have looked like from Turkey when Göbekli Tepe was built. Over millennia, the positions of the stars change due to Earth wobbling as it spins on its axis. Stars that are near the horizon will rise and set at different points, and they can even disappear completely, only to reappear thousands of years later. Today, Sirius can be seen almost worldwide as the brightest star in the sky -- excluding the sun -- and the fourth brightest night-sky object after the moon, Venus and Jupiter. Sirius is so noticeable that its rising and setting...

The Internet music listeners should be plugged into whether or not the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee will reform how the government sets its royalty payments. The new chairman, Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R.Va.) is a self-described fan of web radio and the chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus, so the expectation is that he will bring an end to the music feudalism, where broadcast radio pays nothing in recorded performance royalties, but web-based music services, what the government calls “non-interactive transmission,” pay 50 percent of their revenues. In the last Congress, bills in the House and Senate...

So I'm driving along and turn my Sirius radio on and still, nearly two months later, there is no FoxNews Talk. See, I like Hannity. He's A great cheerleader but, that's as far as his content is and I can't stand his idiotic setups throughout the week where he and his guests get involved in a discussions that devolves into mindless drive that, on the radio, is crosstalk. That probably works on TV but on the radio it's just aggravating noise. So I like Tom Sullivan and other hosts as an alternative and FoxNews Talk was opening me to other...

Explanation: Some beautiful things begin as grains of sand. Locked in an oyster, a granule grows into an iridescent pearl, lustrous and lovely to behold. While hurtling through the atmosphere at 35 kilometers per second, a generous cosmic sand grain becomes an awe-inspiring meteor, its transient beauty displayed for any who care to watch. This years Geminid meteor shower peaked last week with sky enthusiasts counting as many as 150 meteors per hour, despite the din of bright moon. Pictured above the Taftan volcano in southeast Iran, a meteor streaks between the bright star Sirius on the far left and...

The market for pre-owned vehicles continues to keep up the pace in this challenging economic environment, forcing the car makers that have made a business out of selling used cars come up will all sorts of solutions meant to put them ahead of the pack. In the US, the competition on this segment is fierce. There are, however, only a limited number of things you can do, as a producer, to increase the appeal of a so-called certified pre-owned car. And most of those things have something to do with aftermarket gadgets and systems. Hyundai, one of the biggest players...

The AP reports today that Dr. Laura Schlessinger will move directly from terrestrial radio syndication, through her Take On The Day shop, to Sirius XM as of January 3, 2011. Schlessinger voluntarily decided to leave terrestrial radio after the mid-August N-word controversy, and hadn’t made any announcement about her radio plans past December 31. (She already has a full schedule of other activities, including personal appearances and her writing.) It’s unclear whether this news was supposed to get out over the holiday weekend, because the AP story says “Sirius XM said Monday it has a multi-year deal with Schlessinger.” There...