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POPSThe Startle Reflex: Key to Your Politics "Researchers shied away from using labels such as conservative and liberal in their study, but they concede that volunteers who registered a heightened sense of threat also tended to subscribe to conservative attitudes. "It's not that conservatives are 'fraidy-cats," says Kevin Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and one of the study's co-authors. "It's that people who support socially protective policies — which, yes, can be interpreted as people taking a conservative position on those policies — are more sensitive to environmental threat."
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POPSLanguage no barrier to counting It never occurred to me that if you didn't have a word for a number, you couldn't count. Sounds like English teachers trying to muscle in on the maths crowd. I thought we used words for numbers so we could tell someone how many there are when we run out of fingers. (and toes). Perhaps some people associate numbers with words, some with pictures, perhaps even with a particular sound. Same numbers, different parts of the brain processing. Sometimes you can tell how many there are by the look on someone's face.
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POPSDo You Love This Face? Evolutionary biology holds that in any given population, extreme characteristics tend to fall away in favor of average ones. Birds with unusually long or short wings die more often "in storms. Human babies who are born larger or smaller than average are less likely to survive. The ability to form an average-mate template would have conveyed a singular survival advantage."
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POPS25%+ of all Pentagon money is unaccounted for Why Bush & Co. love war. Little known fact: George Herbert Walker, grandfather of George Bush Sr. and George Bush Jr, besides being a major financier to the Nazis along with his son-in-law Prescott Bush, was also appointed supervisor of military contracts by Woodrow Wilson. Interestingly enough, it's much easier to find out details of the family's dealings with the Nazis than it is to uncover the simple, biographical fact that the Bush dynasty has been hardwired into the finances of the Pentagon since Day One. Ripping off the nation via the Pentagon is a four generation old business for this crew. No wonder they're so good at it. 9/11 helped then both cover their tracks and take things to a new level. Wow, that's a pretty good scam for some people...I wonder where all that tax money goes? It's bad enough how they rip us off legally, let alone down the rabbit hole to...?
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POPSCaveman Blues: unhappy greed Though our greed for goodies is bad for the world and bad for our happiness, fortunately we are also hardwired to over-ride lower levels of hardwiring. It is called evolution of consciousness.
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POPSHuman Animals: we are hardwired and softwired. About how even the modes by which we think the deepest questions may be limited by 'hardwired' biological givens. Also looks like a great, easy to read site introducing neuropsychology basics at a scientific level, with very clear diagrams.
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POPSMerle Haggard has left the Republican Party - Sorry n2
More: The thing that gets under my skin most about George W. is his intention to install fear in people," he said, after walking me down a hallway lined with gold and platinum records "This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. W is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Haggard sensed reluctance among the Hillarians to embrace his endorsement—in part, I imagine, because he's not shy about saying that one of the biggest things Hillary has going for her is Bill, who ranks up with Reagan in the Haggard pantheon and not only because the former President used to have a pickup truck with Astroturf in the back. "He cared about this country, about our problems," Haggard said, with a twinkle. "And I figure that whatever she doesn't know, he does." When Al Gore wins the Nobel and Merle Haggard leaves the party, it's a bad day for Republicans.
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POPSUSA: Lies In, Truth Out in rush to more WAR
"States do not pursue weapons systems as ends in themselves; and states are hardwired to ensure their own survival. It is to that end that they acquire weapons systems, to protect, enhance or advance their own strategic position and even up the odds against more powerful rivals. As everything from the Cold War to the current deal with North Korea demonstrate, the only way to avoid nuclear conflict is to address the concerns and fears on both sides that might spark such a conflict. Weapons systems are dangerous, but not as dangerous as the conflicts that might result in them being used. And we should also get used to the idea that the globalization of technology on the current strategic landscape makes nuclear weapons likely to become the norm among states — after all, the existing eight nuclear weapons states have no intention of relinquishing theirs, so why would any states that anticipate being in conflict with any of them refrain from pursuing those weapons when the opportun
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POPSWhy do boys and girls fight differently? Cont'd: Kravitz's research doesn't translate smoothly to humans, however, because we don't have a gene corresponding to the one he swapped in flies. Also, scientists generally agree that different levels of testosterone exposure early in life are probably responsible for the aggression-related gender variation in humans. But Kravitz thinks his finding will help neurobiologists understand how complex behaviors like aggression get wired into the nervous system—without anyone getting pummeled in the ring.
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POPSSilicon Brains Among the most intriguing aspects of the brain is its capacity to form memories--something that has fascinated neuroscientists for decades. That capacity appears to be rooted in the hippocampus, damage to which can lead to amnesia.
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POPSThe God gene: Is it in you? What makes some "know" there is God and others refute it as idiocy? It has been said that faith is a gift from God and as it turns out thegift may be hardwired to the genome. The path to God was never meant to be other than an individual pursuit. Om Nama Shivaya.
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