Free Republic

A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images—similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits. "Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when...

Black faculty, administrators, and staff at Michigan State University are angry at the selection of a white woman as the school’s new provost. It’s a “travesty,” wrote MSU Black Faculty, Staff and Administrators Association President Eunice Foster about the hiring of Northwestern University’s Teresa Woodruff. According to the Lansing State Journal, Foster also said many in the black community consider it “unbelievable,” “outrageous,” “unconscionable,” “shocking,” and “appalling” in her letter to MSU President Samuel Stanley Jr. “To those of us seeking a just, inclusive, and equitable campus,” Foster wrote, “this appointment is a misjudgment of what Michigan State University…needs now,...

FULL TITLE: Muslim from Texas who joined the Islamic State: “I saw some crucifixions. You know, that’s just normal life there.” Of course it was normal life in the Islamic State, because the Islamic State adhered scrupulously to Sharia within its domains. And crucifixion is a Sharia punishment, based on the Qur’an: “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That...