Free Republic

China kicked off its largest-ever military parade on Wednesday, a show of its growing firepower and geopolitical clout as President Xi Jinping seeks to cast Beijing as the custodian of a post-U.S. international order. Flanked by Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, a smiling Xi strolled up a red carpet to take his seat for the lavish event at Tiananmen Square to mark 80 years since Japan's defeat at the end of World War Two. More than 50,000 spectators packed into stands joined a vast choir singing patriotic songs as the dignitaries took their seats on the...

Have the greenies ever heard of these crazy things called trees? First, the story, from a report out at The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday: In May this year, on the flat plains of an Icelandic geothermal reserve, a gigantic vacuum cleaner designed to suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the sky was switched on. The machine, called Mammoth, would not be entirely out of place on a Mad Max set. It will soon start extracting up to 36,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere a year to be fossilised, locking it safely and permanently underground. And, here’s some context, from...

Star Trek legend George Takei told Americans Friday that they should be willing to endure higher costs of living in order to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Americans: we can endure higher prices for food and gas if it means putting the screws to Putin. Consider it a patriotic donation in the fight for freedom over tyranny,” Takei tweeted on March 4. Takei has an estimated net worth of more than $12 million, according to Fortune. Meanwhile, there are almost 40 million Americans already living below the poverty line.

Looking for experienced-based recommendations on vacuum food sealers. 1. brand and models 2. size(s) 3. why I need/don't need the hand-held vacuum attachment 4. bag sizes that make sense a. primary use case is dry goods b. if you recommend, I will also try wet foods. 5. brand and size oxygen absorbers 6. brands to avoid And whatever other gems you might have from doing this yourself. This will be our first step into truly LONG-term food storage. One of the goals is using a vacuum sealer (aside from shelf-life) is to reduce the cubic volume required to store what's...

The Nazi fascination with fantastical science and the occult has long made for spectacular entertainment. From Indiana Jones trying to save the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazis, to comic-book super-soldier serums, to the reoccurring use of supernatural charlatanism to dupe the Germans in Hogan’s Heroes, pop culture has propagated the idea of the Nazis as obsessed with mysticism and mad science. And pop historians have eagerly provided background for these tales.How much of it is true?Quite a lot, it turns out. Recently released in paperback by Yale University Press, Eric Kurlander’s book Hitler’s...

Sir James Dyson is lithe, rangy, tanned, beadily alert and, despite never using his own award-winning Supersonic dryer, boasts gloriously fluffy hair. ‘It blows my hair to smithereens and gives too much root uplift,’ he says. This week he was particularly busy, even by his exactingly high standards as Britain’s best-known inventor. On Wednesday, fed up with trying to get politicians to do something about the dire lack of engineers in this country, he opened a university to train them; the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. And, oh yes, he took on Jean-Claude Juncker. When the European Commission president...

'Fox News Sunday' host Chris Wallace told network anchor Shep Smith on Friday that it looks to him like Donald Trump is effectively the president already. Wallace said that Trump has done so much more than president-elects generally do before their term begins that he is giving off the impression that Barack Obama has retired early. "He’s almost more the president than the president is," Wallace said. "He’s not waiting until he actually takes the oath of office on January 20th," he concluded. "He’s kind of the Commander-in-Chief already." Trump visited victims of last week's terrorist attack at Ohio State...

US Ambassador Robert Ford resigned from his State Department post a month ago, after a long and difficult time as the envoy to Syria. Ford showed great personal courage in his service while Bashar al-Assad instigated attacks on Western embassies and eventually provoked a massive civil war which has turned into a regional threat, thanks to the collapse of his power in large regions of Syria. The collapse of American policy in Syria over the past year was presumed to have prompted Ford’s departure, which he confirms with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview today.This is interesting for more...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks. We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don't have that. Instead, we're faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President's response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

WWIII over CIA backed rebels? No thanks We needed a President and Secretary of State who could stymie Russia on the diplomatic front. We needed a President who was up to the task of managing the world stage. We needed a Commander in Chief who would be either feared or respected by our allies and enemies alike. We don’t have that. Instead, we’re faced with Middle Eastern chaos, a rapidly expanding global terrorist force, and a refugee crisis that is spreading to every corner of the globe. The President’s response has, so far, consisted of a feckless UN speech and...

CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — Since Dylan Green was 2 years old, he has had a passion for vacuum cleaners. Dylan, who has autism, was never into “normal” toys, his mother Jodie told WTVR. The middle school student turned 14 over the weekend and celebrated his birthday with a party that included close friends, family and a vacuum salesman. In an effort to help make her son’s birthday special, Dylan’s mother sent an email to the Kirby Company, the Cleveland-based makers of the Kirby vacuum. “I am reaching out to you in hopes for an answer to an unusual request for...

HAWARDEN, Iowa | Police said a Hawarden, Iowa, man shot at three vacuum cleaner salesmen on Saturday. No one was hurt. Samuel Harrison, 50, was charged with felony going armed with intent and intimidation with a dangerous weapon, and misdemeanor assault and operating while intoxicated - second offense. Harrison shot at the Omaha-area sales crew in the 4800 block of Buchanan Avenue about 3:15 p.m. Saturday, police said. No one on the crew was hit. "For whatever reason, Mr. Harrison became upset about them in the area and he fired off several rounds out of his shotgun," said Sioux County...

Vacuum Cleaners: The Freeper's Guide Here, in a nutshell, are the critical basics on vacuum cleaners. These facts will be of use if you are buying a new or new-to-you one. Thanks to the babel of modern advertising and increasingly shoddy manufacturing standards, FACTS are harder to find, and little known. Here they are. No brand names are mentioned in this piece. There are two general kinds of vacuum cleaners: canister vacs and upright vacs. I will not talk about in-home central vacs. The question of what kind of vac to choose is purely yours, but many who vacuum thicker...

It is called “The Hyperloop” and, according to the designer, it will be a revolutionary “fifth mode” of transport, eclipsing trains, planes, boats and automobiles. (snip) Billionaire Elon Musk’s CV is impressive, to say the least. He made his initial fortune from PayPal ... his SpaceX venture ... founded Tesla (snip) he would be publishing plans for the Hyperloop on Monday, August 12 (snip) Mr Musk will not be patenting the design and it will be “open source”, meaning anyone can modify it, or try to build it.

BRISBANE, Australia, May 31, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Australian pro-life leader Teresa Martin saw something she never expected to see when she drove past the Marie Stopes facility at Bowen Hills in Brisbane. “We were stunned at the billboard,". The billboard, advertizing Miele Australia vacuum cleaners, reads, "Suction so powerful it's scary." The inadvertent placement of advertising for vacuum cleaners on the side of an abortion clinic was part of a national advertising campaign for Miele Australia. Miele told LifeSiteNews.com the company sought removal of their advertising from the billboard the moment they became aware of its location. LifeSiteNews contacted Marie...

Nanosuit Lets Insects Survive in Vacuum by Jillian Scharr April 17 2013 01:57 PM ET A fruit fly larva chills out while viewed through a scanning electron microscope, a process the scientists thought would have killed it. " There are very few organisms that can survive in a vacuum, and usually fruit fly larvae are not one of them. But almost by accident, researchers have discovered a way to create a “nanosuit” around the insects that allows them to survive in a vacuum, or space devoid of matter, for more than an hour.  Researchers at the Hamamatsu University School...

(Reuters) - A fire that caused an estimated $400 million in damage to a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine docked in Maine may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner, authorities said on Wednesday. The fire in the forward compartment - which includes crew living, command and control spaces and the torpedo room - of the USS Miami on May 23 took about 12 hours to extinguish and injured seven firefighters. "Preliminary findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space," the shipyard's public affairs office...

...is a total vacuum of leadership.