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POPSThinking the way animals do
Temple Grandin Ph.D. is an assistant professor of animal behaviour at Colorado State Uni. She suffers from a form of autism, and describes the way she thinks as thinking in pictures. This has helped her understand the way Animals think, with direct association, rather than a logical process. A significant statement which can apply to most people, is the fact that originally as far as she was aware everybody thought the same way. Until she asked people and found this was not the case. She describes a radio station person who said she had no pictures, in her mind, but thought in terms of emotions or words. I'm sure I can understand my dogs. They seem to think in a manner that is simple, and straightforward, it can just be a matter of associating cues with behavior, and remembering Pavlov. I think in Pictures and sounds. There is music I can 'hear' in my mind that not only has the same 'quality' as the original, but there is a remarkable capacity to edit. Perhaps something like Auti
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POPSScientists Apply for First Patent on Synthetic Life Form Without getting into the ethical implications which are fundamental and complex, This is an unprecedented step, a far reaching dangerous idea rapidly reaching its timely fruition, full of both positive potential and peril. Welcome to the 21st century :-) We will really have to tread wisely and courageously here.
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POPSThe Physicist Who Figured Out Ballet "To turn your body you must apply a torque, or twisting force, to it, and once you are in the air you have nothing to apply a torque with. If, on the other hand, you begin twisting from the ground up, clasping your legs together at the apex of your leap while raising your arms above your head, you will do a rapid 180-degree turn, which is the object of the exercise. “ :-)
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POPSWhere Are Our Manners? Sophisticated technology doesn’t mean that good manners have to be a thing of the past. In fact, Post says she defines good manners using three simple, everyday principles: consideration, respect, and honesty. “Apply those to any situation and toward all the people involved—including yourself—and will make sense.”
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POPSSecurity Services Want Your Personal Data, Clippers! The plan will need international cooperation since many of the new CSPs are based abroad, notably in the US. "International cooperation"... as in global? Nice. .:) They say the planned new legislation would apply only to communications data - such addresses and names - but not to the actual contents of the communications. Intercepting the contents would still need ministerial warrants. Warrants? For eavesdropping, spying, invasion of privacy and data collecting? AAAhahaha, good one! That is SO old school. .:lol: Clearly concerned about a public backlash against the plan, officials stress that the government is not building up a single central database containing personal information of everyone in the country. Sure. We believe you. Yessiree! We sure do. We even get to pay for it ourselves! Won't that be fun. .:D
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POPSREALITY CHECK! There is a frightening new global trend of denial... Europeans think that they don't need to limit fishing... Car companies don't think they need to improve fuel economy standards... Bush thinks he can increase spending and cut taxes at the same time... Jingoists think we are winning the war in Iraq... Democrats think Hillary Clinton has enough experience to win an election... Polluters think that Global Warming won't really happen... Evangelicals think Jesus is coming back soon... Fundamentalists think they can win the war against modernity... The truth is: we're stuck with this world. The rules DO apply. No free passes. You have to face the music sometime. We must choose realism over comfortable delusion. Unfortunately, for now, wistful thinking will rule the day until we let it all collapse around us. Then we'll stand there scratching our heads saying: How could this happen?
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POPSWhy hate Gore? Granted, giving Gore the Nobel Prize may well be a political stunt somewhat out of proportion with the relevance of his actions. On the other hand humorless extreme conservatives have even more distorted notion of Gore. Their obsessive hatred of him is even more surreal than the hype. Why do they care so much about him? Why froth at the mouth over just one politician? Klugman provides some interesting answers, but also seems a little to simplistic. I have long been puzzeled on the vhemence with which conservatives react against environmentalism, and I don't think its as simple as pure greed.
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POPSConfidence game - The science of Trustworthiness Researchers have discovered that surprisingly small factors - where we meet someone, whether their posture mimics ours, even the slope of their eyebrows or the thickness of their chin - can matter as much or more than what they say about themselves. We size up someone's trustworthiness within milliseconds of meeting them, and while we can revise our first impression, there are powerful psychological tendencies that often prevent us from doing so - tendencies that apply even more strongly if we've grown close.
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POPSCloned Puppies: Sure, They're Cute, But at What Cost? Yet defenders of the industry say that it's wrong to apply analogies taken from other species' clones: Despite the difficulties, they insist, cloned dogs tend to be healthy, not least because scientists have spent the last decade figuring out how to do it. "Clone enough dogs, and occasionally you have offspring that aren't perfect," said Lou Hawthorne, CEO of both BioArts and the late Genetic Savings and Clone. "But it's comparable to what you have through conventional breeding."
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POPSAbout memes and memetics Or, why people are more interested in celebrity scandals and silly video clips than things that actually affect their lives. I highly recommend you continue researching the concept of memetics...and consider also how it can apply to vote-based sites such as this one (and Digg, and Reddit, and...)
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