Free Republic

Rural residents turn to cheap heating fuel ... Monte Miller shovels a load of coal into a bucket and makes the short journey from his storage shed to his home on the edge of Bayfield, joking aloud that his wife likes to keep the temperature at a steady 75 degrees. “But we don’t have any problem doing that with coal,” Miller and his wife, Marsha, have been using coal as their main source of fuel since they moved to their home in 2000. Each year, the couple uses about 2 tons of coal to keep their 2,500-square-foot house warm throughout...

President Donald Trump. It's fair to say pollsters, political commentators and experts on both sides of the Atlantic didn't believe they would ever see that. And neither did I. If you listened to us all on the airwaves it was clear that most believed common sense would prevail and prevent someone so polarising and unpredictable being elected to the most powerful office in the world. But there was one expert in a TV studio that, if it had had a voice, would have been saying something like "I told you so". EagleAi was designed and built by Havas for ITV...

People size you up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating? Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions. In her new book, "Presence," Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you: Can I trust this person? Can I respect this person? Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both. Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional...

For those of you along and east of the Rockies and south, still a nice weekend is expected. The only exception will be in the northern Plains and Upper Midwest where a system will be passing through delivering a chance for some chilly rains. The rest of us, especially those of us along and east of the Mississippi River, will see quite a bit of sunshine. In addition, we will see some nice warming temperatures. By Sunday afternoon, the 60 degree temperatures will reach as far north as

This animated video with a background sound of wild birds depicts a deer and rabbit becoming friends in the wild.

Thanks for using my site. Bruce

12/19/2007 - EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska -- Volunteers gathered more than 5,500 cookies for the single Airmen living in the dormitories Dec. 14 during Operation Cookie Crunch at Eielson Air Force Base. "The importance of the cookie drive is for morale building," said Jeanette Pauer, OCC project coordinator and wife of Lt. Col. Brett Pauer, a member of the 353rd Combat Training Squadron. "Providing home-baked cookies for our single Airmen is a simple sentiment that sends a message that there is big family here at Eielson who appreciates them." With temperatures (at times) dipping down to minus 30 F,...

Droughts, paradoxically, seem to make the verdant Amazon rainforest even greener, a new study suggests, giving scientists hope that global warming's effects on the lush South American ecosystem won't be quite as bad as has been predicted.

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen's University-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts. "Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed," reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. "It's something we'd envisioned for the future - but to see it happening now is quite remarkable." One of 44 Canadian research initiatives to receive a total of $100 million (IPY) research funding from the federal government, Dr. Lamoureux's...

With food, dance, art, and most important, a good dose of personal interaction, the Quad-City’s Arab community provided people at the Bettendorf Family Museum a good look into the Middle Eastern world and its culture. About 100 people attended the event Saturday that was part of the Museum’s monthly Explore the World presentation. Featured countries were Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt. But other Arab countries, such as Lebanon, also were represented. Education was what it was all about, and it was effective for both the children and the adults. Chris Migiel of Bettendorf said she had no idea that...

Volunteers Spark Warmth at Burn Center Troops deployed to Afghanistan give there off time to help local burn victims. By Sgt. Victoria Willoughby 345th Mobile Public Affairs FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, Jan. 16, 2007 -- An all too familiar call echoed through the Forward Operating Base Salerno burn clinic and medical staff and hospital volunteers scrambled to receive two young Afghan sisters badly burned in a heater explosion at their home. "A heater in their home had a malfunction and it exploded, burning all four of the children and burning down the entire house. Two of the children...

It has been unusually warm here in Western Kentucky. I took this photograph tonight in my backyard. Paducah has been above normal almost daily since the beginning of the month.

According to David Rind from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), 2005 is going to set the all-time record for global warmth. He told Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post (October 13, 2005) only a major volcanic eruption could intervene. But Eilperin also interviewed Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, who told her that Goddard's findings were "mighty preliminary." That's because there's more than one history of global temperature. Three receive the most citations. NASA's record begins in 1880, as does another history from the U.S. Department of Commerce, developed at the Department's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). But the...

The global surface temperature for all of 2003 is expected to be +0.45 C above the 1961-90 annual average, according to the records maintained by Members of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This value makes 2003 the third warmest year just behind 2002 (+0.48 C). The warmest year remains 1998 (+0.55 C). Calculated separately for both hemispheres, the 2003 temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere (+0.57 C) and for the Southern Hemisphere (+0.33 C) are both likely to be the third warmest in the instrumental record from 1861 to present. The high temperatures recorded over land influenced the overall values in...