Free Republic

Buying “nips” in Boston may soon be nipped in the bud. The city of Boston is considering a possible ban on miniature liquor bottles, known to Bostonians as “nips” and to others across the country as “minis” or “shooters,” due to the amount of waste they add to the city. Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo on Monday proposed banning city liquor stores from selling the mini bottles, which hold between 1.7 to 3.4 fluid ounces, in order to combat both alcohol abuse and mounting waste in city streets. “The fact that this handled even one of these two issues would...

Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) recently donated 25 tiny homes to homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Schwarzenegger donated $250,000 to the nonprofit Village for Vets, which went towards purchasing 25 tiny homes for retired service members who had previously been homeless, according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. ADVERTISING

Despite all the advances in consumer technology over the past decades, one component has remained frustratingly stagnant: the optical lens. Unlike electronic devices, which have gotten smaller and more efficient over the years, the design and underlying physics of today's optical lenses haven't changed much in about 3,000 years. This challenge has caused a bottleneck in the development of next-generation optical systems such as wearable displays for virtual reality, which require compact, lightweight, and cost-effective components. At the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), a team of researchers led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L....

A new national poll points to an extremely close contest between President Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden as the race for the White House shifts to a likely general election battle between the two. According to the poll, the president enjoys a nearly 2-to-1 margin over Biden in the 2,500 solidly red counties that Trump overwhelming won four years ago over 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In the 360 solidly blue counties where Clinton crushed Trump, Biden is up by a 2-to-1 margin. But in the approximately 300 swing counties where the margins in the 2016 presidential election were...

When Amy and Brady King started experimenting with how to build durable, reusable temporary housing that would be easy to transport and assemble, they were imagining a product to assist people after natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods that usually struck far from the Northwest. But their first big customer ended up being close to home and for an ongoing, social emergency — the Northwest’s homelessness crisis. Three years ago the Kings launched Pallet, an Everett, Wash. company that sells temporary shelters made of hard, plastic panels. Brady King, a contractor and trained firefighter, was inspired to tackle the...

ATLANTA - R&B singer and reality TV star Tameka “Tiny” Harris, the wife of Atlanta rapper and activist T.I., reported more than $750,000 worth of jewelry was stolen from her Lamborghini SUV while she dined in Midtown, police confirmed. Harris told Atlanta police she returned to her vehicle after having drinks with a friend on Sunday night and discovered the jewelry was gone, WSB reported. Her wedding rings, watches and stud earrings were among the jewelry she said she left inside a blue velour bag on top of the center console of her SUV, according to the news station. She...

When Pennsylvania-based aerospace company Astrobotic launches its lander to the Moon within the next couple of years, a four-wheeled robot no bigger than a toaster will be along for the ride. The robotic rover, built by Carnegie Mellon University, will help test just how small rovers can get and still survive on the Moon’s surface.Last week, NASA awarded Astrobotic a contract of $79.5 million to carry up to 14 NASA-sponsored payloads on its lander, named Peregrine. Along with those, the lander will carry another 14 from other commercial companies, research organizations, and space agencies. That’s a total of 28 payloads...

Tiny Parham & His Musicians plays"Lucky '3-6-9'" on Victor 38082 (recorded July 22, 1929)

Once upon a time an American family’s home was their castle and the bigger the better, but growing concerns about meeting mortgage payments and the environmental impact of large houses has helped fuel a new movement of people who are happy to live small. The Tiny House Movement is a growing group of people who are happy to downsize the space that they live in and enjoy simplified lives as a result. While the average American home is around 2600 square feet, the typical small or tiny house is around 100-400 square feet.

Even small changes in solar activity can impact Earth's climate in significant and surprisingly complex ways, researchers say. The sun is a constant star when compared with many others in the galaxy. Some stars pulsate dramatically, varying wildly in size and brightness and even exploding. In comparison, the sun varies in the amount of light it emits by only 0.1 percent over the course of a relatively stable 11-year-long pattern known as the solar cycle. Still, "the light reaching the top of the Earth's atmosphere provides about 2,500 times as much energy as the total of all other sources combined,"...

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio — Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds. The base’s indoor flight lab is called the “microaviary,” and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. “We’re looking at how you hide in plain sight,”...

Are you still concerned about radiation crossing the Pacific from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, despite the steady stream of scientific advice that it poses no danger? Now you can check radiation readings from right here in Berkeley, thanks to the monitors that the Department of Nuclear Engineering has on the roof of Etcheverry Hall. A team of scientists working under Kai Vetter is testing air and water quality (from rainwater) every day.

It appears Mona Lisa, who has been captivating people for centuries, just got much more interesting. Art detectives have discovered that one of the world’s most famous paintings contains small letters and numbers put there intentionally by Leonardo Da Vinci: Hidden in the dark paint of her pupils are tiny letters and numbers, placed there by the artist Leonardo da Vinci and revealed only now thanks to high-­magnification techniques. Experts say the barely distinguishable letters and numbers represent something of a real-life Da Vinci code. The revelation could have come straight from the pages of Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da...

<p>It's a little early to issue a death certificate for the career of Michael Moore -- but his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," has grossed just $14 million in seven weeks of release.</p>

Measuring a tiny eighth of an inch by quarter of an inch, this carefully crafted piece of engineering is the world's smallest working train model. The five-carriage train, which is 35,200 times smaller than a real train, nips around an oval route even taking in a ride through a tunnel on its three-quarter inch track. Created by New Jersey train enthusiast David Smith, the miniscule model was built using nothing more fancy than a craft knife and a steady hand...

ARLINGTON, Va., August 27 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today, U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign released its latest television ad, entitled "Tiny." The ad highlights Barack Obama's belief that Iran "doesn't pose a serious threat" even though they support terrorism, are developing nuclear capabilities and repeatedly threaten to eliminate Israel. If Barack Obama doesn't consider those "serious threats" then he is dangerously unprepared to be president. The ad will air in key states. VIEW THE AD HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhH2q6h7_Ow Script For "Tiny" (TV :30) ANNCR: Iran. Radical Islamic government. Known sponsors of terrorism. Developing nuclear capabilities to "generate power" but threatening to...

Experts on invertebrates have expressed "profound shock" over a government report showing a decline in zooplankton of more than 70% since the 1960s.The tiny animals are an important food for fish, mammals and crustaceans. Figures contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) document, Marine Programme Plan, suggested a fall in abundance. Charity Buglife said it could be a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions". They said it could have implications for creatures all the way up the food chain, from sand eels to the seabirds, such as puffin, which feed on the fish. Defra described the Marine...

Man with tiny brain shocks doctors 12:17 20 July 2007 NewScientist.com news service New Scientist and Reuters The large black space shows the fluid that replaced much of the patient’s brain (left). For comparison, the images (right) show a typical brain without any abnormalities (Images: Feuillet et al./The Lancet) A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull. Scans of the 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull,...

Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 7:33pm BST 10/07/2007 The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years. But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact. Searching for Babylonian financial...

Tiny uncrewed aircraft to fly into hurricanes 20:05 12 September 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht The tiny aircraft weigh just 15 kilograms (33 pounds) or so and can be launched from atop a truck (Image: Aerosonde/NOAA)Related Articles Each aerosonde costs about $50,000 and can be reused, unless it drops into the sea (Image: Aerosonde/NOAA) A small uncrewed aircraft is set to fly through the fierce winds surrounding the eye of a hurricane to take the first continuous data on how such storms gain their strength, according to a plan by NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association....