Free Republic

April 13, 2003 Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes People with synesthesia--whose senses blend together--are providing valuable clues to understanding the organization and functions of the human brain By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard When Matthew Blakeslee shapes hamburger patties with his hands, he experiences a vivid bitter taste in his mouth. Esmerelda Jones (a pseudonym) sees blue when she listens to the note C sharp played on the piano; other notes evoke different hues--so much so that the piano keys are actually color-coded, making it easier for her to remember and play musical scales. And when Jeff Coleman...

Surveying the Walls of Uruk Can Technology Discover the Ancient City of Gilgamesh? German archaeologists working at the ancient site of Uruk (modern Warka, just east of the Euphrates River in southern Iraq) have begun mapping the canals, walls and building foundations of the sprawling, buried city—without even lifting a spade. Over the past two winters, a team headed by Margarete van Ess of Berlin’s German Archaeology Institute has laid out a grid system over the site and begun to map the buried ruins with a magnetometer an instrument that measures differences in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field...

Why People Find the Bible Difficult THAT MANY PERSONS FIND THE BIBLE HARD to understand will not be denied by those acquainted with the facts. Testimony to the difficulties encountered in Bible reading is too full and too widespread to be dismissed lightly.In human experience there is usually a complex of causes rather than but one cause for everything, and so it is with the difficulty we run into with the Bible. To the question, Why is the Bible hard to understand? no snap answer can be given; the pert answer is sure to be the wrong one. The problem...

DOES LEARNING BETTER WITH AGE? Age 2... I learned to see clearly with my first pair of glasses. Age 5... I learned that our dog didn’t want to eat my spinach either. Age 8...I learned that when I wave to people, they don’t always wave back. Age 11... I learned that friends are not always friendly. Age 14... I learned to cry when I sing “Silent Night.” Age 17... I learned to cry over matters of the heart. Age 20... I learned that silent company is often more healing than words of advice. Age 23... I learned that I'm glad...

Vol. 16 No. 2    THE GROWTH OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN THE 1920S Randall G. Holcombe    The federal government has grown substantially in the 20th century. In 1913, just prior to World War I, federal government expenditures were 2.5 percent of gross national product and by 1990 they had risen to 22.5 percent of GNP. The relatively small size of the federal government before World War I shows that it exhibited minimal growth in the 19th century, in stark contrast with its tremendous growth in the 20th century. [1] Figure 1 shows real per capita federal expenditures...

  Top Ten Misconceptions About IslamQuestions & AnswersTen Misconceptions About Islam MISCONCEPTION #1: Muslims are violent, terrorists and/or extremists.This is the biggest misconception in Islam, no doubt resulting from the constant stereotyping and bashing the media gives Islam. When a gunman attacks a mosque in the name of Judaism, a Catholic IRA guerrilla sets off a bomb in an urban area, or Serbian Orthodox militiamen rape and kill innocent Muslim civilians, these acts are not used to stereotype an entire faith. Never are these acts attributed to the religion of the perpetrators. Yet how many times have we heard the...

Physics + Dirac = poetryBeautiful equations are as concise as haikus and as compelling as verse, writes Graham Farmelo Graham Farmelo Thursday February 21, 2002The GuardianWho was the 20th century's greatest English-speaking poet? TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Sylvia Plath? Not for me; my nomination is the theoretician Paul Dirac, honorary poet laureate of modern physics. It is a status he richly deserves because of his amazing ability to write down fundamental equations - the poems of science. Whereas poetry uses highly-charged combinations of words, equations are the most succinct descriptions of the aspect of reality they describe. Dirac's most famous...

The Liberal LexiconA Conservative's Dictionary of Libberish In the amazing world of American politics, it often seems like the two major parties simply can't communicate, separated by the very words invented to describe the problems in the first place.  For decades, the Democrats have been refining their Anti-American, Pro Victimology rhetoric until, in today's setting, they speak a powerful specialized language, like scientists or mathematicians. Even the smallest expression contains volumes of earlier thinking under its simple surface.  Leftists have spent years distilling their endless self-pity and hollow complaints into a deliberately aggressive secret lingo which they understand among themselves, but...

<p>This partial transcript from Hannity & Colmes, March 12, 2002 was provided by the Federal Document Clearing House.</p> <p>Click here to order last night's entire transcript.</p> <p>HANNITY: Also coming up tonight, the showdown over a Bush judicial nominee: Can Senate Republicans save the appointment of Charles Pickering? The great one, Mark Levin, will be here.</p>