Free Republic

Why would a country undermine phonics? One of the most startling queries I ever received came from a teacher in Israel. Here is the entire communication: I watched some of your youtube videos with thirst and feel the frustration that I feel when I tutor private elementary students, who come without any clue as to how to read English, as if for 5-6 years all they had done was filling workbooks and learning word lists. Older students keep telling me their teachers insist on guessing from texts and looking for clues when words are unknown, and they fear to use...

Since 2003, the black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster has been associated with sound. This is because astronomers discovered that pressure waves sent out by the black hole caused ripples in the cluster's hot gas that could be translated into a note—one that humans cannot hear, some 57 octaves below middle C. Now a new sonification brings more notes to this black hole sound machine. This new sonification—that is, the translation of astronomical data into sound—is being released for NASA's Black Hole Week this year. In some ways, this sonification is unlike any other done before...

A loud explosion-like sound was heard across many neighbourhoods of Helsinki late on Saturday night, but the source of the bang remained a mystery on Monday. The boom prompted discussion on social media, from people in the neighbourhoods of Oulunkylä, Kumpula, Käpylä, Arabia, Kulosaari, Metsälä, Meilahti and Kulosaari claiming to have heard the noise at around 11:45pm on Saturday. Speculation as to the source of the sound has also been broad. Some have suggested that it could have been a meteor crashing into the atmosphere, an earthquake or even a supersonic bang caused by an Air Force fighter jet. However,...

Tesla is giving its owners another way to express their individuality from behind the wheel of their vehicles. As if they needed it. The EV maker released its Holiday Update, Firmware 2020.48.25 on Christmas Day, adding a few little gifts for recently built Teslas, including the ability to make the car fart or bleat like a goat at the outside world on command. Through the new Boombox feature, users can now change their horn noise to a bunch of stock sounds including goat, applause, La Cucaracha, holiday music, coconuts and fart, each projected outward from an external speaker near the...

Some people heard it as a boom, some as a bang, some as a series of explosions. Imagine the noise of a dump truck being dropped from 100 feet in the air onto pavement. It shook buildings. Many people said it sounded like it was coming from inside their building on their block. But it wasn’t just local; people heard it around the same time across a huge swath of northern New York. In response to an Enterprise Facebook post, people wrote that they had heard it as far west as Cranberry Lake, as far north as Malone, as far...

GUANGZHOU, China — A crisis over a mysterious ailment sickening American diplomats and their families — which began in Cuba and recently appeared in China — widened on Wednesday. The State Department evacuated at least two more Americans who fell ill in China after hearing strange noises, officials said. Many other employees at the American Consulate in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou and their family members are also being tested by a State Department medical team that has been flown in, officials said. It is unclear how many of them are exhibiting symptoms, but officials expect more American personnel...

In another thread, I came across Donald Trump doing a passable job of the Green Acres theme. Here in the Dallas area, the Ticket sports station has their own variation of the theme. My question to the vast collection of musicologists out there in FReeperland is about the instrumentation deployed on that familiar theme. What in the heck are those instruments that gave it such a distinct, rustic flavor? Was it Moog synthesizers or traditional string and woodwinds? I'll admit to being pretty much of an idiot when it comes to the "behind the scenes" stuff involved in creation of...

Fascinated by the Strange Sky sounds occurring over the world for the last 3 years I decide to take a closer look at them in Ableton Live (Digital Audio Workstation software) and the results were most interesting.

Yep, that's definitely it. The railgun, hailed as the future of the United States Navy, sounds exactly like this. No joking here at all.

Click here to hear it.

It’s easy to dismiss trees as inanimate features of the landscape, but these living, breathing organisms aren’t as stoic as they appear. Trees, it turns out, make all kinds of noises as they grow and respond to their environment. Happy, regularly growing trees sound different from drought stressed trees. Now, a team of researchers from Grenoble University in France is trying to pick out these cries for help amidst all the normal tree white noise in order to provide better, more targeted aid to trees suffering from drought, according to National Geographic. In the case of drought, trees undergoing stress...

As we move toward an age of quiet gadgets that do everything possible not to get in our way, we’re losing our appreciation for all the magic under the hood. Not long ago, the sounds our devices made reminded us that they were doing something truly important, whether that task was connecting us to the Internet or bringing us back to the beginning of our favorite VHS movies. A child born today has a greater chance of hearing a real cloned dinosaur roar than a busy signal. But for those of us who lived through the beginning of the PC...

"Investigative reporter Linda Moulton Howe will discuss the large number of strange and unexplained horn-like sounds filling the air since March 2011 and the possible cause. She'll also talk about the increased number of dolphins stranded in Cape Cod & the New Jersey shore since January 2012."

You may have already read in today's paper that Gov. Jerry Brown is pretty worked up over criticism of his recent contract deal with the prison guards union - so worked up, in fact, that he called us personally to sound off about the issue. As the story noted, Brown has faced some pushback from Republicans, but the piece didn't include the fact that some of the harshest criticism has come from the fourth estate, most notably the Sacramento Bee. An editorial in that paper criticized specific provisions of the contract -

4:50 p.m. - Few Republican lawmakers were as stung by Rep. Mike Castle's surprising loss to his conservative GOP opponent as Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. In a hallway just off the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, she sounded off about her place as a moderate in the GOP, and voter anger she says she understands. Visibly sad, Snowe called Castle "an outstanding public servant who was committed to the common good of his state and country." The longer Snowe talked about the state of the GOP and the Tea Party movement, the more riled up she got. "Understand, there are...

Must be heard at a decent volume to be fully appreciated: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E4ud-9dTPo

Asked his definition of "rich," McCain tossed off "$5 million," then seemed to recognize comments he had tossed off in the past that had come back to him in ads by the opposition. "I'm sure that comment will be distorted," McCain said. "The point is we want to keep people's taxes low. ... I don't want to raised anybody's taxes." McCain, who in the past has rarely talked about his captivity during the Vietnam War after he crashed as a Navy aviator, spoke of the mistreatment by guards — and of the guard he showed his faith by tracing a...

This is a short video of an animated morning dove standing on a branch and it's coo.

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma. The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn't shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked with tinnitus.) This sound, first discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments -...

The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz: Identify sounds from science fiction movies and TV. How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?