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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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POPSOh yeah, and don't trust yourself either! The Chinese philosopher Xun Zi said that human nature is not particularly good, but he went on to argue that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make it better. Too many people resign themselves to say "that's just the way things are" because that's easier than challenging their own beliefs. Before we can be an agent for change, our ideas must be relentlessly refined in the furnace of critical introspection. Follow the link to read all these cognitive hazards, and see where you find them in your life!
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POPSEmail Etiquette 101 Sending e-mail is almost like picking up the phone and having a conversation nowadays, but how can you be sure you're using it as you intend and without offending anyone? Not so much about not 'offending anyone' but being more considerate to people we are bothering. The web is mostly shared space and we all need to be less annoying.
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POPSRight Wing Americans are Getting What They Deserve Here's the last bit :) All I can say is that this is what you get for believing even for a moment what the US corporate media wants you to believe. The rest of us Bush haters are Bush haters for one reason and one reason only; we pay attention! So to my new former Bush supporting friends who seem to be suddenly surrounding me and telling me that I have been right all along: you can tell me I was right but after that shut the hell up because it is too late for forgiveness. From now on, just shut up and listen. Think about it! Yeah!! I just had to clip this. I just had to! .:D I'm just gonna have to take the s*** and excuses and apologetics the Bush supporters and neo-con clippers are gonna try to give me on this, but I don't care. It's most definitely worth it. This clip is for all my fellow "Bush-haters" Enjoy! I did!
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POPSFascinating Feline Facts I didn't even make it half way down the list and I learned the answer to a lot of the questions i've always wondered about cats. FYI, there are many many many more at the source. ENJOY!
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POPSUS Teen: We're here. We're sexual. GET USED TO IT. So it's not just their minds that is to be ignorant? The delusion of abstinence to produce dumb breeding machines and army fodder? Do you remember how difficult it is to keep 'bad' thoughts out of your mind? The harder you try the harder it gets. I've an image of the Christian youth on his knees, blessing himself with one hand while wanking with the other. One of the most important intellectual realizations that I had was knowing that a church's god and my sex were incompatible. I've never regretted my decision. I'm just a human. Let others be mini gods.
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POPSAnti-Terrorism Cartoons in the Arab Press "The Arab press recently published more cartoons condemning terrorism. These cartoons presented terrorism as an indiscriminately destructive force striking everything in its path, and mocked the terrorists for blindly pursuing the promise of the virgins of Paradise. "The cartoons also expressed criticism of extremists who entice the youth, indoctrinating them to embrace extremist ideas."
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POPSUnintelligent Design At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in human reasoning, the idea that the human mind would be "perfect in His image" is as outdated (and narcissistic) as the idea that the solar system would revolve around the planet earth. The only theory that can really make sense of these needless imperfections is Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that humans (and all other life forms) evolve through a blind process known as descent-with-modification, in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms -- with no central overseer to guide the process. Such a random process can, over time, lead populations of creatures to become more adapted to their environment, but it is also vulnerable to getting stuck, in the sort of good-enough-but-not-perfect solutions that mathematicians call local maxima.
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POPSI believe "I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." Neil Gaiman
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POPSWhile we're bitching about Kerry, Iraq falls apart You can bitch and moan about Kerry all you want. But he's not the one who got us into this mess. He's also not the one who just got told by Iraq's Prime Minister to lift a blockade despite the fact that it would result in leaving an American soldier behind and enable Sadr to run wild.
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POPSThe Future This is a special report that appeared on Forbes on 10.15.07 and has an impressive list of visionaries talking about the future. highly recommended reading. click the names to read the visions
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POPSMarriage tips for men >Love is blind. Marriage is the eye-opener >Success in marriage is more than finding the right person. It's becoming the right person!