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POPSInteractive graphic demonstrations of everything "The Wolfram Demonstrations Project: A free source of interactive visualizations, from elementary education to the frontiers of research." Strong on beautiful interactive science graphics - but see broad list of topics at end of clip - machines, business, life sciences, kids and fun, creative arts
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POPSHistoric Figures That Were Celibate He spent years inventing things he never got credit for, like the light bulb and radio, and even believed he could control the weather. He also felt that sex was a drain on creativity and completely pushed aside any woman that was interested in him. Sarah Bernhardt, a famous actress, tried her hardest to woo him but he considered her to be little more than a distraction from inventing a death ray. When asked about marriage, he replied: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
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POPSWorms Do Calculus To Find Meals In their paper, the researchers documented how two related, closely located chemosensory neurons, acting in tandem, regulate behavior. The left neuron controls an on switch, while the opposing right one an off switch. These sister neurons are situated much like the two nostrils or two eyes of mammals. Together these neurons are known as ASE for antagonistic sensory cues.
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POPSBarack is a survivalist
A few months ago, when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright first came to national attention, Obama was nearly demure when he said: “I can no more disown (Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother.” He may not have disowned his white grandmother, but Obama didn’t exactly paint a sympathetic — or loving — portrait of her either. He essentially threw her under the bus, saying that she had made racist remarks while he was growing up, a statement that served only to highlight Obama’s own remarkable transcendence. After several weeks of balancing his professed love for Wright with the controversial statements of his chosen father figure and spiritual mentor, Obama eventually left his church of 20 years. But why then, after all those years, did Obama finally find the door? What changed was the degree of his self-interest. As long as Wright was helping Obama burnish his bona fides within the African-American community, it didn’t matter that the minister’s rhetorical flights of fancy border
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POPS American and Israeli War Crimes: Same Atrocities, Different Responses
A spokesman for the group, Sarit Michaeli, says that Israeli claims that it is not responsible for such deaths are incorrect, and adds that under international law, “Even if you attack a legitimate military target, the anticipated damage has to be in proportion to the anticipated gain.” How does such a moral calculus apply to American military policy? The most recent example of US military tactics in this regard came yesterday, when American forces, in clear violation of international law regarding national sovereignty, fired a missile into a house in Somalia (a nation that the US is not at war with), reportedly killing an alleged leader of the Al Qaeda organization in Somalia, Aden Hashi Ayro, but also another nine people—all unidentified. Reports suggest that many of those killed and another seven who were wounded, were innocent civilians who happened to be sleeping in the house in question. To date, no American human rights group has protested this action as a criminal violati
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POPSMath + religion = Trouble
Count John Allen Paulos among the non-believers. A mathematician who teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia and who has popularized his subject in bestselling books such as Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Paulos's latest offering is a slim but explosive volume whose title is self-explanatory: Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up (Hill & Wang). This newest addition to the neo-atheist field crowded by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and others emboldened by the recent transformation of non-belief from a 97-pound weakling into a he-man, Paulos thankfully employs little math, preferring to see things, as he tells us, in the stark light of "logic and probability." Deploying "a lightly heretical touch," he dissects a playlist of "golden oldies" that includes the first-cause argument (sometimes tweaked as the cosmological argument, which hinges on the Big Bang), the argument for intelli
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POPSFarcial Democratic Pileup The most formative period in the Clintons' lives were the 1960s -- years of fairy tales, drug use, and empty eloquence. But at the end of their march they find before the final door an incarnation of the dream which they must destroy in order to enter it. The essential egotism of their project from the beginning is exposed for all to see: raw power, not idealistic principle, fueled it, and it is altogether fitting that these icons of a destructive generation choose as their last victim one who embodies its best hopes.
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POPSEmployers Help Smokers Quit I think this is a very positive thing, but is it because employers want healthier, happier, and more productive workers or is it because it affects cost? And if successful, will they share their profits with the workers who helped make them?