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POPSStephen Hawking: "Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution" We have entered a new phase of evolution. "At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information." But what distinguishes us from our cave man ancestors is the knowledge that we have accumulated over the last ten thousand years, and particularly, Hawking points out, over the last three hundred.
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POPSDid an embezzlement scandal force Palin to resign? Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzlement/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” She’s right about one thing, stepping down is in the best interest of Alaska.
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POPSOf Body and Mind, and Deep Meditation " Physiological tests also revealed significant changes. Compared with the relaxation group, IBMT subjects had lower heart rates and skin conductance responses, increased belly breathing amplitude and decreased chest respiration rates, all of which, researchers wrote, "reflected less effort exerted by participants and more relaxation of body and calm state of mind." Finally, researchers noted, IBMT subjects had more high-frequency heart-rate variability than their relaxation counterparts, indicating "successful inhibition of sympathetic tone and activation of parasympathetic tone ." Sympathetic tone becomes more active when stressed."
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POPSUrbanDictionary "Why would so many kids want to give up their jargon? Maybe they’re chasing a “neologasm,” which was the Word of the Day on Jan. 14: “the pleasurable feeling from having coined a new word.” urbandictionary.com
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POPSSarah's Straight Talk "Perhaps there is some new and interesting scandal that Palin has yet to let us in on. (If so, I hope it involves a soul mate.) Otherwise, it would appear that this is all about her desire to start raising money and setting up operations for a presidential run in 2012 So if she’s starting to run, it will be as the same reporter-avoiding, generalization-spouting underachiever that she was last time around. Now we know she not only doesn’t have the concentration to read a policy paper, she can’t focus long enough to finish the job she was hired to do."
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POPS Are Planets 'Living Super-Organisms'? more (at source): He wants to find out if the continents will merge again in 250 million years to form a single super-continent; how meteorites change the chemical composition of the Earth; and what the connection is between the temperature of a planet and its magnetic field, which protects plants and animals from being bombarded with cosmic radiation, which in turn influences the rate of mutations and thus the development of new forms of life.
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POPSFloridians Upset! Not surprisingly, the good Christians in Florida are up in arms about those "militant" atheists. Out of curiosity I wonder what the ratio of religious to atheist billboards is?