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POPSSteal my content, please!
I completely agree with Scoble on this one, although I can understand why people who make their living directly from their creations have a hard time letting go of the fear of giving away at least some of the rights to their content. Cory Doctorow began releasing all of his literary work under creative commons licenses years ago, allowing people to freely download and distribute his work under some light provisos. I downloaded and read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" on my palm pilot, freely and legally, and was hooked. Because of that, I've read a huge amount of his writing, become a mammoth fan, and will likely purchase every book he publishes. I've also published everything I've written, shot, and produced under a similar license. While that certainly hasn't brought me traditional commercial success, it has definitely accelerated serendipity countless times for me, and if you trace out the effects of those 'lucky' events, it's helped shape both my career and life.
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POPSThe language you speak affects your personality A study of bilingual women suggests that when you switch from speaking one language to another, your personality and your perceptions change as well. I've experienced this myself switching between German and English.
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POPSBrain That Changes Itself "The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself'
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POPSThings Americans don't like to talk about Read the whole article, it is illuminating to say the least. I thought this passage said it best: " If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they'll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America.... They don't get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different Way. You see, they love America the way a 4-year-old loves her Mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world."
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POPSCan You Become a Creature of New Habits? “The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
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POPSScience Behind Mysterious 'Fifth Taste' Revealed In the late 19th century, French chef and veal-stock inventor Auguste Escoffier suggested that a fifth taste was responsible for his mouth-watering brew. Though Escoffier's dishes were popular, his theories were dismissed until 1908, when Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda showed that an amino acid called glutamate underlies the taste of a hearty variety of seaweed soup. In honor of Ikeda, the taste was dubbed umami, the Japanese word for delicious. It took another 80 years for umami to be recognized by science as comparable to the other four tastes. In the meantime, monosodium glutamate became wildly popular as a flavor enhancer. But MSG can cause headaches and dizziness, and has been tenuously linked to long-term neurological disorders. Between the public dissatisfaction with MSG and growing demand for artificial meats and dairy products, an umami alternative is welcome.
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POPSMechanism Behind Mind-body Connection Discovered The study reveals how stress makes people more susceptible to illness. The findings also suggest a potential drug target for preventing damage to the immune systems of persons who are under long-term stress, such as caregivers to chronically ill family members, as well as astronauts, soldiers, air traffic controllers and people who drive long daily commutes.
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POPSLargest, Strangest & Scariest Collective Activities in the World "As humans we have a difficult time comprehending large numbers, and vast collections of people perhaps in particular. There is something simply surreal about a pilgrimage that attracts more people than the population of Texas or a festival that draws thirty thousand revelers deep into one of the harshest deserts on Earth. These three events are vastly different in terms of geography, history and purpose but are all impressive in their own way and right as these images show."
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POPSWhy we need high oil prices I know this sounds crazy, but i honestly believe that high oil prices in the short term (1-5 years) is a very good thing if it forces us to find alternatives. I am definitely concerned that if oil prices drop temporarily, the momentum behind alternatives such as wind and solar will die off - leaving us exactly where we are today - way too dependent on oil and way to harmful to our environment.
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POPSThe Role of Light on Human Health Rea envisions "real-time light prescriptions" to help people receive or avoid light at the appropriate times. Simple measures to control when and how much circadian light we receive could help nightshift workers stay alert on the job and sleep more effectively during the day, help cure jet lag, decrease depression, and generally help everyone get a proper night's sleep. The ability to modify circadian rhythm could potentially mitigate the negative health effects that some researchers believe are brought on by disruptions to the light-dark cycle. Recent studies have found a link between health and changes in the natural circadian rhythm. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published a series of articles, for example, that showed night shift workers had a higher incidence of breast cancer; and, last year, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer cited night work as a potential breast cancer risk factor.
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POPSNatural African beauty - the Miss Authentica contest
From the slideshow captions: "African women, don't lighten your skin. It's a gift from God." These lyrics are a line from a song specially commissioned for a beauty competition with a difference in Ivory Coast. Only women with natural, untreated skin - confirmed by skin experts - can enter the competition which goes by the name, Miss Authentica. The organisers hope to encourage women to stop using dangerous skin-bleaching products…and instead celebrate the beauty of their natural skin. Skin-bleaching is big business in much of Africa. Proof of this are the many posters of smiling, fair-skinned women holding up the latest pots and tubes of skin-whitening creams that adorn the continent's cities…75% of women in Ivory Coast use skin-whitening creams of some sort. Many continue to use the bleaching products despite being aware of the dangers. One of the most common ingredients is hydroquinone, which has been banned in some countries because of claims that it is carcinogenic.
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POPSSome answers to "But why didn't she fight back?" More: If women are raised being told…that: -it is not okay to set solid and distinct boundaries and reinforce them immediately and dramatically when crossed (”mean bitch”) -it is not okay to appear distraught or emotional (”crazy bitch”) -it is not okay to make personal decisions that the adults or other peers in your life do not agree with, and it is not okay to refuse to explain those decisions to others (”stuck-up bitch”) -it is not okay to refuse to agree with somebody, over and over and over again (”angry bitch”)… -it is not okay to use your physical strength (if you have it) to set physical boundaries (”dyke bitch”) -it is not okay to raise your voice (”shrill bitch”)… If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways. And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.
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POPSMan slaps stranger's crying child I don't care what you say about "kids today are out of control", you don't slap somebody else's child. Period. I would also say, you never slap a child across the face, period.
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POPSWhy we stand in line to vote - a historical photo essay Over the last few days when looking at the photographs of people standing in line at early voting sites across the country, I've been reminded of so many pictures I've seen of election lines before - lines of voters from throughout the world, voters who have had to fight for the fundamental right to vote, voters for whom standing in line is perhaps the easiest part of everything they've had to do to bring about change. … So when I think about whether we'll have to wait in long lines on Tuesday, I'm not intimidated. I know that we won't be standing in those lines alone, we'll be accompanied by the history of millions of people a whole lot braver and tougher than we'll ever need to be to stay in line for a few hours.
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