Free Republic

Today’s post is an excerpt from #TransformationTuesday: Tadpole Edition, Originally posted 4-10-18Ever wonder what made America great? I think it was the fact the country was founded by people who possessed the three defining characteristics of the Age of Enlightenment.Reason:Skepticism: Individualism:Three characteristics that are pure anathema to oppressive authoritarian regimes.Sadly, I note, these are three characteristics growing rarer and hence more valuable with each subsequent generation of frogs.How to boil a frog: Place in cool water and gradually turn up the heat.If you don’t believe me, ask the Australians.Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

It turns out we seriously underestimated the central nervous system. It's hard to say what's crazier: the fact that Tufts University researchers spent a year cutting out the tiny eyeballs of tadpole embryos and sticking them back on to the tadpoles' tails, or: the fact that, when they hatched, a few of the tadpoles COULD ACTUALLY SEE OUT OF THE EYES ON THEIR TAILS. As you know, this is not the way vision is supposed to work--your eyeballs are supposed to be connected to a big fat nerve that carries incoming signals back to your brain, which combines the information...

Idyllwild, Calif. (AP) -- Researchers have released dozens of tadpoles into a Riverside County stream in hopes of reviving a frog species endangered in the region. San Diego Zoo officials say zoo researchers bred the 36 mountain yellow-legged frog tadpoles that were released Tuesday into a stream near the town of Idyllwild. The mountain yellow-legged frog is on the federal Endangered Species List in Southern California and has recently been proposed for listing under the California Endangered Species Act.

Residents, officials and scientists have been baffled by the apparent downpour of tadpoles in central Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture. Clouds of dead tadpoles appear to have fallen from the sky in a series of episodes in a number of cities in the region since the start of the month. In one incident, a 55-year-old man who was caught in a tadpole downpour described hearing a strange sound in the parking lot of a civic centre in the city of Nanao. Upon further exploration, he found more than 100 dead tadpoles covering the windshields of cars in an area measuring 10 square...

July 3, 2005 -- Summer plans for dozens of French kids wanting to visit New York City are toast — the apparent victim of anti-French feelings here since the start of the Iraq war. World Exchange, a nonprofit organization that coordinates a summer exchange, is scheduled to have 92 French students land in New York this week. But only 30 have a place to stay. The organization can't find New Yorkers willing to take the rest.

Tadpoles take blame for human hiccups Why do we hiccup? It's a question that has vexed great minds for millennia and now, at long last, an international team may have come up with the answer. Hiccups are sudden contractions of the muscles we use to breathe in. Just after the muscles start to move, the glottis shuts off the windpipe, producing the characteristic "hic" sound. Surprisingly, ultrasound scans reveal that babies in the womb start hiccuping after two months, before any breathing movements appear. That suggests that hiccups in adults are just the remnant of some primitive reflex, which occur...

MEN who put their career before having a family should beware: the ticking of the biological clock is as important for fertility in men as it is in women. American scientists have discovered that genetic damage to sperm routinely starts to cause infertility in men as young as 35. The strongest biological evidence yet for a significant drop in male fertility in the late thirties is a warning to the increasing number of grey-haired fathers who are leaving it later to have children. The popular worry that career women risk losing the chance to have children has long been supported...