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POPS10 Most Beautiful Bridges in the World >>We’ve come a long way in bridge building since crossing a river on a fallen log. The first bridges were built with wooden planks, ropes and stones. Soon, stronger material were required. Wood and stone bridges gave way to iron, then to steel ones. Bridge building techniques also evolved: beam, cantilevered, cable-stayed, and suspension bridges - each with advantages that made it the right choice for a particular location. Political fortunes and wars have been made or lost by bridges. Throughout history, bridges had been built by engineers and burned by warriors, and crossed by kings and commoners alike. Millions of people owe their livelihood to bridges, as most require them to commute; and yet thousands of people choose to end their lives by jumping off them every year.<<
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POPSCartoons from the Middle East (16 pics) In conjunction with the British Council, the Guardian Foundation presents a showcase of cartoonists from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Here are just a few of the selected cartoons ... Guardian
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POPSWhy Humans Can't Navigate Out of a Paper Bag That these skills are so easily lost could explain why the average westerner struggles to navigate without help. Most people now live in a world that has been made navigable by maps, street signs, transport networks and GPS. There is no need to understand the environment to get around. Losing our relationship with physical space, coupled with the unique human ability to imagine ourselves in another location, may have given us the freedom to create a reality of our own. What other species could comprehend the World Wide Web or contemplate exploring new worlds? And while we may struggle to find our way back to the car after a shopping trip, we can take heart in the knowledge that, as a species, we have managed to find our way to the moon and back, and have sent satellites to just the right orbit so that we no longer need to think about where we are going. Show me a hamster that can do that.
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POPSThe 'satellite navigation' in our brains
n a follow-up study, Dr Spiers and Professor Maguire used the Playstation2 video game "The Getaway" to examine how taxi drivers use their hippocampus and other brain areas when they navigate. Taxi drivers used the virtual reality simulation to navigate the streets of London whilst lying in an fMRI brain scanner. The researchers found that the hippocampus is most active when the drivers first think about their route and plan ahead. By contrast, activity in a diverse network of other brain areas increases as they encounter road blocks, spot expected landmarks, look at the view and worry about the thoughts of their customers and other drivers. "The hippocampus is crucial for navigation and we use it like a 'sat nav'," says Dr Spiers from the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at UCL. "London taxi drivers, who have to know their way around hundreds of thousands of winding streets, have the most refined and powerful innate sat navs, strengthened over years of experience."
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POPSVanishing Barns "Competition for land — to rent or buy — has grown cutthroat and overwhelming, a matter of networking and schmoozing (at church, at the local coffee shop, while selling seed) worthy of the corporate boardroom. (Some here tell of people who call the widows of farmers who have died days or hours earlier, hoping to secure land.)"
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POPSSilent Nuala O'Faolain (1940 – 9 May 2008) was an Irish journalist, TV producer, book reviewer, teacher and author. She became internationally well-known for her two volumes of memoir, Are You Somebody? and Almost There , a novel, My Dream of You , and a history with commentary, The Story of Chicago May . The first three were all featured on the New York Times Best Seller list.
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POPSWhat the heck is going on here? I've noticed this word co-conspirator occurring with much more regularity over the past few years. It sounds ridiculous to me. Does it annoy anyone else? Isn't it redundant? Like saying someone is a co-team-member? Doesn't the conspirator part automatically imply the co part. For example: A and B are conspirators. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
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