8
POPSThe Story of Schroedinger's Cat (An Epic Poem) Or atom--whatever--but when it emits, A trigger device blasts the vial into bits Which snuffs our poor kitty. The odds of this crime Are 50 to 50 per hour each time. The cylinder's sealed. The hour's passed away. Is Our pussy still purring--or pushing up daisies? Now, you'd say the cat either lives or it don't But quantum mechanics is stubborn and won't. Statistically speaking, the cat (goes the joke), Is half a cat breathing and half a cat croaked. To some this may seem a ridiculous split, But quantum mechanics must answer, "Tough shit. We may not know much, but one thing's fo' sho': There's things in the cosmos that we cannot know. Shine light on electrons--you'll cause them to swerve. The act of observing disturbs the observed-- Which ruins your test. But then if there's no testing To see if a particle's moving or resting Why try to conjecture? Pure useless endeavor! We know probability--certainty, never.'
21
POPSWhy do we nod our heads for "yes" and shake them for "no"? Dear Cecil: "With reference to your column on gestures, did you leave out or just not know that in Greece the five fingers spread out and thrust forward at someone means " in your face"? - Had to Tell You. Cecil replies: "Thank you for sharing that with us. Just shows you how the Greeks continue to enrich civilization. " :lol:
5
POPSReport Shows Greater Peril for World's Threatened Animals and Plants The newest report also includes assessments of 845 species of corals. Already more than a quarter are considered threatened, with climate change added to the list of threats they face. Still, IUCN cautions that the health of marine life could be worse than expected, as relatively little is known about biodiversity in the oceans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIJHaQ8EGn0
9
POPSItaly to Declare Independence from US Military On the eve of the G8 summit (July 8-10 in L'Aquila), the No Dal Molin organization is inviting people from all over Italy and the world to celebrate the Fourth of July in Vicenza and "declare our independence from the US military, freeing the land from the presence of a new war base." July 4th is the holiday with which the people of the United States celebrate their own independence. This year it will also be the day on which Vicentines, and all those who support peace and defense of the common good, declare their own independence from military servitude. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/43766
7
POPSLuxury Pirate-Hunting Cruise Testimonials from previous participants in the Somali Cruise: "Six attacks in 4 days were more than I expected. I bagged three pirates, my wife nailed two, and my 12-year old son sank two boats with the mini-gun. This wonderful cruise was fun for the whole family" -- Fred D., Cincinnati, OH "Pirates 0, Passengers 32! Well worth the trip! Can't recommend it highly enough!" -- Ben L., Bethesda, MD
3
POPS The Felid Purr: A Bio-Mechanical Healing Mechanism Given the data on anabolic frequencies, fracture and healing research, the exact match of the frequencies and amplitudes of the cat's purrs to vibrational therapy research, time proven adages, biomechanical therapy, studies on tendon and muscle repair and Dr. Cook's study, it is certainly not a leap of faith to speculate that the cat's purr is a healing mechanism. Having a natural way to increase strength, and decrease healing time, would indeed be very advantageous and would explain the purr's development.
2
POPSJudge Says Hyperlinks Should Be Banned to Save Newspapers Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan: No linking or paraphrasing? Let's Screw Up the Entire Internet to Save Newspapers! You can copyright a news story, but you can't copyright the news. "The news" just means "things that happen in the world." What would it mean, in practice, to make it illegal to paraphrase a copyrighted news story? Summing up, for example, political events, or a sports controversy, or even a fashion trend, could be interpreted as paraphrasing copyrighted material. So let's ban talking about anything. And banning links will help us make our references even more obscure, by making it impossible for anyone to refer to source materials! Good idea, Posner.
8
POPSMurdoch CEO Labels Bloggers “Political Extremists” The source of the establishment’s move to claim that bloggers and alternative media outlets are “extremists” or at worst “terrorists,” as we first reported in September 2006, was a White House strategy document that the government had been following since 9/11. In a September 5, 2006 speech President George W. Bush referred to the document as “an unclassified version of the strategy we’ve been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001,” that takes into account, “the changing nature of this enemy.” The strategy paper on how to ‘win the war on terror’ cites “conspiracies” as one of the wellsprings of terrorism and threatens to “address” and “diminish” the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda.
16
POPSThe "What The Hell Is This Shit Helmet Award" goes to... Tanyamm! As the current holder of the much coveted Helmet Award, I think the time has come to pass it on. I'd like to give it to Tanyamm, who every day makes us all smile with her fabulous LOLcat clips and is always so polite, sweet, funny and just an all 'round great gal, who I am proud to call a fellow clipper. It was also she, who suggested we should honour each other, so no one could be more deserving of this very, very, very prestigious award. *drumroll* "THE HELMET AWARD" *applause applause applause* Congratulations, Tanyamm!! The Helmet Award is now yours and you're free to pass it on to whomever you choose. Wear it with pride. .:D
12
POPSIs God Trying To Talk To Someone In America? What's worse, many pastors avoid talking to their congregations about repentance and self sacrifice. So, like the vampire Lasat, they drain them of true spiritual life, while seducing them with voter-pamphlet sermons and feel-good theology. The organized church is in big trouble today--the message of repentance is a flat subject among churchgoers. People want to pull a voting lever, offer vocal support for whatever politician pays lip service to a few hot-button social issues, and shout hallelujah as they drive off in their Lincoln. Satan smiles and waves as they go by. What America needs is a repentant, spiritual church, not the political arm of a dominionist cult. Want to argue that point? Do it with the God who says, "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."
9
POPSThe Suppressed Fact: Deaths by U.S. Torture The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined. We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.
11
POPSThe End of the World and the Future of the Human Race The universe has a way of balancing itself out. The choice we face is whether we want to accept this inevitability, and do what we can to secure a future for ourselves and our progeny, or simply die with the masses. The first and biggest step in the process of saving oneself is to recognize and accept the reality of our situation. Most will not, and a lot will become angry at the mere suggestion; but everyone has a choice. What is happening is happening because we have abandoned our own human nature and gotten lost in an artificial world. Civilizations have come and gone for millions of years. The ancients have told the tale of global empires which risen and fallen, and this too will pass. As the world burns around us, we stand at the edge of something marvelous. A pretty bleak article. Are we doomed? What awaits us? A marvelous new future.. or a nightmare?
9
POPSAn Open Letter to Closed Minds
A challenge to orthodoxy tends to be ignored at first. But if it gains popular support, the first move is to discredit and silence the challenger. “Belief” is the crux of the matter. No amount of evidence will change the consensus view until a sufficient number “convert” to a belief in the new theory. “It gets worse. As the evidence accumulates, the two camps will not only fail to reach consensus but actually be driven further apart - propelled by their different views ..And worst of all, there is no prospect of such a consensus unless the two sides can agree about the cause of the data.” Such a conclusion bodes ill for any attempt to change the status quo. An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the new ideas from the beginning.” Applicable to both science and religion, I reckon. :)
3
POPSA Changing Worldview This adequate epistemology will be, above all else, humble. It will recognize that science deals with models and metaphors representing certain aspects of experienced reality, and that any model or metaphor may be permissible if it is useful in helping to order knowledge, even though it may seem to conflict with another model which is also useful. (The classic example is the history of wave and particle models in physics.) This includes, specifically, the metaphor of consciousness. The ontological stance of the universe as holarchy appears to have great promise as the basis for an extended science in which consciousness-related phenomena are no longer anomalies, but keys to a deeper understanding; a science that transcends and includes the science we have. The implications of research on consciousness go even further. They suggest interconnection at a level that has yet to be fully recognized by Western science.
20
POPSNo Smiting But God still has some growing up to do. Wright argues that much of the problem isn’t with the religious texts or teachings themselves, but with the social conditions — the “facts on the ground” — that shape the sort of God we choose to create. Change the world, and you change the God. “If history naturally pushes people toward moral improvement, toward moral truth, and their God, as they conceive their God, grows accordingly, becoming morally richer, then maybe this growth is evidence of some higher purpose, and maybe — conceivably — the source of that purpose is worthy of the name divinity.”
20
POPSIt’s Time to Learn From Frogs It should be a wake-up call. There is accumulating evidence that male sperm count is dropping and that genital abnormalities in newborn boys are increasing. There is also some evidence from both humans and monkeys that endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, is linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors. Researchers also suspect that the disruptors can cause early puberty in girls. “This can influence brain development, sperm counts or susceptibility to cancer, even where the animal at birth seems perfectly normal.”
7
POPSDid Toxic Chemical In Iraq Cause GIs' Illnesses? The chemical "is one of the most potent carcinogens know to man" and it can "enter every cell of the body and potentially produce widespread injury to every major organ in the body," said Max Costa, chairman of New York University's Department of Environmental Medicine. KBR, however, says studies show only that industrial workers exposed to the chemical for more than two years have an increased risk of cancer - and in this case, soldiers were at the plant just days or months. KBR denies any wrongdoing.
11
POPSKentucky Pastor Tells Followers to Bring Guns to Church Of the 40 states with right-to-carry laws, 20 allow guns in churches. Watching the debate in Arkansas was John Phillips, pastor of the Central Church of Christ in Little Rock. In 1986, Mr. Phillips was preaching in a different church there when a gunman shot him and a parishioner. Both survived, but Mr. Phillips, 51, still has a bullet lodged in his spine. In a telephone interview, he said he found the idea of “packing in the pew” abhorrent.
9
POPSHow Many Senses Does a Human Being Have? My mother could always sense when I was about to make a mess We have a lot of senses! The sensing of, if something is wet or dry, and lots we aren't even consciously aware of, like baroreceptors, chemoreceptors, etc. Then there's the sense of impending doooom, the sensing of pheromones and the "sixth" sense. And what about common sense? *LOL* No scientific proof for any of these senses, yet, though... :p
13
POPSFree the United States Certainly, this history should make us pause. But therein lies the heart of the matter: if we pause to exercise our rights, we cannot say we are truly free.
10
POPSBBC Caught In Mass Public Deception With Iran Propaganda Whatever your views on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the accuracy of the Iranian election results, the fact that the Anglo-American establishment and its media organs are exploiting and fanning the flames of chaos in Iran to provoke further instability is unquestionable.
8
POPSGod Comes Cheap These Days For eight years, Christian conservatives had "Lord Bush." Now, liberals have "Lord Obama." Seems to me that gods come pretty cheap these days. As a non-American, this is very much the way it seems. Nothing really matters, but beating the other side. Left vs right feuding, instead of right vs wrong. So much time wasted fighting each other, instead of fighting for your supposed values and principles Is this really what America is all about? Think about it.
4
POPSThe Methodical Demise of Natural Earth A remedial operation, strategy, epic-in-proportion, to change the predicted course of what was believed by an International group of Scientists, including Dr. Edward Teller, Livermore National Laboratories, et al, to be the cataclysmic certainty from the results of global-warming.
6
POPSCrop Circles Mystify Russian Farmers Ooooh! I love stuff like this. .:p From a Danish source , this can be added: Before the event, glowing balls were seen in the sky around 1:15 AM and animals had acted strangely. Dogs, cows and frogs all became silent in a 20-30 km radius of the site. Problems starting cars, using cellphones and digital cameras were also reported. Helicopters were filming and combing the area. A few days prior, eight crop circles had appeared near the Dinskij district. An area near the the town of Armanvir was reportedly "glowing". Crop circles have also appeared recently in, among other places, USA, Canada, Spain, Germany and Denmark and reseachers say, they are all connected to each other via parallel lines. Exciting, eh? .:p Clip Song
3
POPSWho's Really Behind the Rising Prices at the Pumps? This bipartisan cabal created a speculative mechanism that's presently sucking money out of your pocket with every gallon of gas you pump. Meanwhile, every dollar that Goldman, Morgan and the rest use to inflate oil prices is a dollar they are not investing in real economic activity that could create middle-class jobs. Of course, Wall Street culprits are trying to keep their involvement hush-hush. When a McClatchy newspaper reporter approached Goldman Sachs about it, the response was terse: "Goldman Sachs declines to comment for your story."
9
POPSAfghan Girl Survives White Phosphorus Burns White phosphorus burns until it’s gone. And with burns over 40 to 45 percent of her body, few thought Razia would survive. But the scars are there for all too see and the hospital staff quietly worries that Razia may never have a normal life in Afghanistan, where women in the countryside are mostly defined by the marriage they enter.
3
POPSDestabilization 2.0 We are being asked to believe that this latest version of the very (very) old program of U.S. corporate imperialism is the real deal. While there is no doubt that the regime of Ahmadenijad is reprehensible and the feelings of many of the young protesters in Iran are genuine, you will forgive me for questioning the motives behind the monolithic media support for the overthrow of Iran's government and the installation of Mir-Houssein "Butcher of Beirut" Mousavi.
4
Clips
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update