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POPS"Tnnel of Love" -beautiful ! "My desire as an artist is to create compelling images of beauty and power that serve to promote our conscious evolution as human beings".Mark Henson
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POPSTerence McKenna - Seeking the Stone Part 1 The first part of a video of the seminar , in which Terence McKenna present his perspective on the idea of a spiritual path for all and an impending transformation of the human world . In his singularly lucid , prosaic style , McKenna presents profoundly compelling ideas that challenge our beliefs and encourage our participation in the creation of a new social reality. He champions the individual’s freedom of choice in deciding one’s own sexual and spiritual development and techniques. He highlights the role of hallucinogenic plants in shamanic societies and their impact on the evolution of human cultures. See why this cyber-techno-shaman is drawing freethinking crowds wherever he speaks and find out what role you may play in the unfolding of our “post-historical future” as we approach a major “concresence” in human history.
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POPS Why We Can't Imagine Death? "This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start."
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POPSRFK Jr. on Palin's Big Oil infatuation
Now John McCain has chosen as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a diligent student of Big Oil's crib sheets. She's something of a flat-earther who shares the current administration's contempt for science. Palin has expressed skepticism about evolution (which is like not believing in gravity), putting it on par with "creationism," which posits that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago. She used to insist that human activities have nothing to do with climate change. "I'm not one ... who would attribute it to being man-made," she said in August. After she joined the GOP ticket, she magically reversed herself, to a point. "Man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming," she told Charles Gibson two weeks ago. Meanwhile, Alaska is melting before our eyes; entire villages erode as sea ice vanishes, glaciers are disappearing at a frightening clip, and "dancing forests" caused by disappearing permafrost astonish residents and tourists. Palin had to
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POPSJesus Horses and Sarah Palin Sarah "Speaking in Tongues" Palin explains how she believes that dinosaurs and man lived together. This is precisely why the taboo of not discussing one's religion is wrong. This woman's viewpoint needs to be brought out and examined in the light of day. She holds ideas that have consequences in an increasingly technological world. By her own statements, she clearly doesn't have a clue what's going on.
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POPS"Troublemakers" Need Not Apply "You have said students should be allowed to "debate both sides" of evolution. Should creationism be taught alongside evolution in the public schools? Do you believe in evolution? Your opponents claim you and McCain would just extend the Bush administration for another four years. Cite three instances in which you have differed with the president. That's just a start."
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POPS“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot A rapidly evolving sequence from the human genome drives gene activity in the developing thumb, wrist and ankle of mouse embryos, suggesting the sequence may have contributed to key evolutionary changes in the human limbs that allowed us to walk upright and use tools. An indication of their biological importance, many of these non-coding sequences have remained similar, or “conserved,” even across distantly related vertebrate species such as chickens and humans. Recent functional studies suggest some of these “conserved non-coding sequences” control the genes that direct human development.
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POPSA friend or a crow ?-) "After their experiments on campus, Marzluff and his students tested the effect with more realistic masks. Using a half-dozen students as models, they enlisted a professional mask maker, then wore the new masks while trapping crows at several sites in and around Seattle. The researchers then gave a mix of neutral and dangerous masks to volunteer observers who, unaware of the masks' histories, wore them at the trapping sites and recorded the crows' responses. The reaction to one of the dangerous masks was "quite spectacular," said one volunteer, Bill Pochmerski, a retired telephone company manager who lives near Snohomish. "The birds were really raucous, screaming persistently," he said, "and it was clear they weren't upset about something in general. They were upset with me."
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POPSFuture for clean energy lies in 'big bang' of evolution For humans now there is the tantalising possibility of tweaking the photosynthetic reactions of cyanobacteria to produce fuels we want such as hydrogen, alcohols or even hydrocarbons, rather than carbohydrates. Progress at the research level has been rapid, boosting prospects of harnessing photosynthesis not just for energy but also for manufacturing valuable compounds for the chemical and biotechnology industries. Such research is running on two tracks, one aimed at genetically engineering real plants and cyanobacteria to yield the products we want, and the other to mimic their processes in artificial photosynthetic systems built with human-made components. Both approaches hold great promise and will be pursued in parallel, as was discussed at a recent workshop focusing on the photosynthetic reaction centres of cyanobacteria, organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF).
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POPSOn Law and Neuroscience An interesting read describing the influence of evolution theory and neuroscience on basic legal and moral concepts such as responsibility and free will.
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POPSExploding chromosomes fuel research about evolution of genetic storage
Dinoflagellates are stuffed at the core with tightly compacted chromosomes, yet these organisms contain neither histones nor nucleosomes. "What takes care of neutralizing DNA, to allow chromosomes to condense?" Levi-Setti asked. "Most biology books do not tell you." Other scientists had already identified positively charged atoms called cations as neutralizing factors. They found that dinoflagellate chromosomes explode upon the removal of calcium and magnesium cations. Levi-Setti has produced the first images of the distribution of these cations in dinoflagellate chromosomes. These images verify that cations, mainly of calcium and magnesium, neutralize DNA's enormous negative charge, and further suggest a critical role in folding the protein as well. The finding raises questions about the evolution of chromosomes, Rizzo said. "Did dinoflagellates once have histones and then lost them? Or did dinoflagellates never have histones and just 'figured out' a different way to fold lar
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POPSTransformers - The Nature of Alien Life
The driving factor is a pragmatic desire to improve mental capacity. Alien beings may have already reached a point in their evolution where, having exhausted the potential of their biological brains, they have taken the next logical step and opted for robotic brains equipped with artificial intelligence. This brain swap may not be as far off for humans as one might think. In only a few decades, the computer revolution here on Earth has produced supercomputers capable of performing more than a quadrillion calculations per second. According to research by Hans Moravec, an artificial-intelligence expert at Carnegie Mellon University, that rate trumps the human brain’s estimated top speed of 100 trillion calculations per second. Some scientists speculate that in a few decades, an event called the technological singularity will occur, and machines armed with computer brains will become sentient and surpass human intelligence. Civilizations equipped with technology light-years ahead
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POPSThe Moral Instinct "the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
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POPSdo animals feel greif? according to my dog, they do! you should see the way she reacts if I leave her for more then my working day!
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POPSOn looks and attraction... This new research identifies an explanation for the correlation between bodily shape and attractiveness: your body proportions, shape and stature are signals that conspicuously advertise your good development or health and therefore the degree to which you are a desirable reproductive partner. In many species fewer departures from perfect symmetry are associated with good development, health and reproductive success.” We begin to see that there is a program embedded deep in our perception. this is the time to reveal it. :)
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POPSBody Language of Winners and Losers Could be Innate "In the end, it’s all about evolution. The discovery by psychologists suggests that these gestures of pride and shame are hard wired into the human brain, probably because they were universal signs of dominance and submission among our ape relatives and ancestors . So when you see arms raised in victory at the Beijing Olympics, you might really be seeing an symbol of dominance that humans developed long ago."
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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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POPSEscaping extinction It is a sad story, the cancer in this specie is infectious, probably due to parasitic disease. again some say it is related to humans since in population that leaves away the cancer is rarer. yet the biological stress has created a partial fast response that answers the demand partially.
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POPSScientists map Neanderthal maternal DNA 38,000 years wasn't that long ago. They became extinct shortly afterward (as far as we know) after dwindling around Western Europe. It's easy to wonder what may have happened if they were isolated in an area that was free of Homo sapiens sapiens (So smart that we have to repeat it to ourselves to remove any doubt.)