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POPSDalai Lama’s 18 rules for living # Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before. # Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other. # Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
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POPSFarming And Chemical Warfare: A Day In The Life Of An Ant The bacteria produce antifungal compounds that stop the microfungal pathogen from attacking the garden. This discovery was the first clearly demonstrated example of an animal, other than humans, that uses bacteria to produce antibiotics to deal with pathogens. "Interestingly, the tight association between ant, bacteria and pathogen will sometimes result in the pathogen winning. This interplay has been described as a chemical 'arms race' between the bacteria and fungus, with one side beating the other as new compounds are evolved," said Professor Currie. "At the moment, we are beginning to understand the chemical warfare at the genetic level, and it is likely that these types of interactions are more prevalent in nature than previously thought." So how exactly does an ant go about forming partnerships with a fungus and a bacterium? No one really knows.
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POPSWill the Internet Evolve into a Lifeform? One route is the evolution of electronic intelligences in situations like the internet-arms race between spammers and shielders. It might sound silly, the idea that new life could be created in an attempt to offer you a great deal on C1@Lis!!, but have you tried registering for a forum recently? Even gaining access to the lowest level of interaction online now requires elementary Turing tests to tell the humans from the robots. Another option is the idea of the net itself becoming sentient, a vast self-modifying array of connections and information storage with limited connections to the outside world (kind of like that glob of grey goo you carry around in your skull). If that happens then Gibson help us all - remember that the net is made of about 90% spam, 9% porn, and quite a lot of whining blogs. If that mixture ever becomes self-aware we're not quite sure what it'll do, but the odds are against it being anything good.
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POPSThe Savagery of a Surge That Failed He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered. The Taliban are as uninterested in social services and human rights as the Karzai government or the international forces, but they know how to turn a world of poverty, insecurity, and death from laser-guided missiles to their advantage. Washington spends about $100 million a day on this war - close to $36 billion a year - but only five cents of every dollar goes towards aid. From this paltry sum, "a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and salaries".
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POPSAmerica: Don't Wait For Pelosi, Seize Our Energy Future Now!
Only today, they have energy as a weapon. One premise of the new Putin Doctrine is that oil prices will stay high and that Russia, with its plentiful reserves, can use oil profits to fund its global ambitions. This is where Congress comes in. Since President Clinton refused to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 1995, Democrats have stood in the way of any rational energy plan. Today, we pump just 25% of our oil; 40 years ago, it was 60%. We send about $900 billion a year overseas to buy oil, money that helps fund Russian and radical Islamic mischief. This is a problem. Now for the good news: The U.S. is the world's largest potential oil supplier — with as much oil, the Institute for Energy Research says, as has been used by the entire world over the last 150 years. Just offshore, we have 86 billion barrels of crude. The U.S. Arctic region, including Alaska, holds 30 billion barrels. In the Far West, we have more than 800 billion barrels of shale oil.
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POPSBiden's Response to 9/11 Even TNR is amused at Biden's foreign policy gravitas... First, Iranians aren’t Arabs. They’re Persians, as both Arabs and Iranians would quickly point out to anyone ignorant of the distinction. They have no relation linguistically or culturally, except that both are predominantly Islamic. One would expect a foreign-policy expert to know at least that much. Team Obama ridiculed John McCain when he inadvertently mixed up Sunnis and Shi’ites, but this is much more fundamental. ...a man who thinks it appropriate to send hundreds of millions of dollars — “no strings attached” — to a terror-sponsoring regime in order to make America a supplicant of radicals is no foreign-policy genius.
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POPSUSA Dirty Tricks against Elected Reps. Nothing new here for those who had any real interest in the so called Hamas coup against the corrupt Fatah. And why? The USA only deals with those corruptible like Fatah, unlike Hamas who deal with finality with any member that doesn't met standards.
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POPSIts worse than we all thought. So here is the plan, give everyone who we like guns... and let them protect Iraq. Some how I told you so doesn't quite fit this one. A friend and I were just discussing how the executive branch in the US likes to keep things secret, thinking they are clever. When they do release their info or plans, it seems like a drunk 12 year old drafted the ideas. I've long had a theory on US withdrawal from Iraq creating a tug of war between the Saudis, Iranians, Syrians, and the Israelites. Iraq wouldn't be able to defend it's self, turning it from occupied territory by the us, to being trampled over by four or five nations, who just don't get along.
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POPSBush Optmistic of Iraq .... What a lie Bush said the United States would "work hard to accommodate their desires," but also said that "we believe that a strategic relationship with Iraq is important" both for the United States and the region.
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POPSChavez...Dangerous? Chavez has been dangerous for quite some time. People are just starting to wake up to that fact.
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POPSShame Russia and China continue to support the world's worst regimes all in the name of money.
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POPS'Iran smuggling arms into Gaza by sea' This is just sickening. When this powder keg finally blows, the US and Europe have no one to blame but themselves for failing to deal with the rampant (and obvious) smuggling of weapons into the area. And they all *know* that these weapons are for ONE purpose and it's not for making "peace in the region".