7
POPSEvolutionists Flock to Darwin-Shaped Wall Stain Since witnesses first reported the unexplained marking—which appears to resemble a 19th-century male figure with a high forehead and large beard—this normally quiet town has become a hotbed of biological zealotry. Thousands of pilgrims from as far away as Berkeley's paleoanthropology department have flocked to the site to lay wreaths of flowers, light devotional candles, read aloud from Darwin's works, and otherwise pay homage to the mysterious blue-green stain.
2
POPSMcCain's Gamble On a Woman Create Headache For Obama As governor of Alaska she is about as far removed from Washington as it is possible to be. The McCain campaign intends to contrast that with the inside-Washington double-ticket of Obama and Biden. Perhaps most impressively, in just a year and a half in office in Alaska she has established a reputation as a tough reformer. She is also a staunch advocate of expanding domestic drilling for oil, popular among oil-rich Alaska and among Americans as a whole. At her first appearance on the stump yesterday alongside her running-mate, she seemed assured and steady. But her selection adds a startling new uncertainty into the presidential race, a risky gamble for the Republicans but a complicating headache for the Democrats. THROUGHOUT their long primary campaign this year, Democrats made much of the fact that their progressive party was presenting a historic choice to the nation; the first black man or woman in the Oval Office.
0
POPSBlue to Gray Flames "Businessmen are taking advantage of the national emergency in order to make money. They break the regulations which protect the common welfare of all—for the sake of their own personal gain. They're profiteers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a ruthless, grasping, grabbing, antisocial policy, based on nothing but plain, selfish greed." Rearden sat looking at him, as if studying an object seen for the first time. Somewhere deep in Rearden's mind, as a steady, gentle, inexorable beat, was a man's voice, saying:
14
POPSTypewriter Art This is an amazing story of a man born with spastic cerebral palsy. Though disabled in many ways, he taught himself to create detailed pictures using one finger on a typewriter that resembled pencil or charcoal drawings. Another tribute to the indomitable human spirit.
0
POPSFollow This Dime How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president's former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president's liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.
8
POPSEurope's 'Earth Explorer' to Map Planet "Inside Out" From Space The five hundred million dollar satellite is expected to survive for 20 months - at twenty-five million a month that makes it even higher maintenance than Paris Hilton, but infinitely more useful. Data provided by the satellite will map everything from ocean depths to the magma core of the planet, providing data of unprecedented accuracy for everything from climate physics to geophysics. In an interesting coincidence, GOCE will be launched on the same day the Large Hadron Collider powers up. Project leader Kal-El urges readers not to pay too much attention to this, nor ask why the nose cone seems to be full of diapers and a red cape.
7
POPSIsrael's Front-Line Thugs The security forces are, of course, by no means scared to act when it suits them. Palestinian demonstrations are routinely put down with excessive force: rocks flung by pre-teens are countered with rubber bullets, tear gas, and – often – live and indiscriminate fire. But when it comes to clamping down on violence emanating from the settler community, a different set of rules apply, and the authorities' reeking hypocrisy is exposed as endemic to the way in which they view the different strands of Israeli society. Via Philip Weiss
0
POPSCollateral damage of milk consumption Terminate Your Milk Habit Doctors and nutritionists now recommend that we all stop drinking milk because it’s been linked to heart disease, allergies, some cancers, and even osteoporosis, the bone-weakening disease that we used to think it would prevent. Dairy products contain no fiber or complex carbohydrates and are laden with saturated fat and cholesterol. They are often contaminated with cows’ blood, pus, pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. For more information on kicking the dairy habit, check out www.MilkSucks.com
3
POPSEnding Londonistan Preface by Melanie Phillips Both at home and abroad, Britain has lost any shared understanding of the threats that must be faced and how to do so. Indeed, with its steady loss of the power of self-governance to the European Union, there is no longer any clear idea of where political responsibility lies. In short, the RUSI paper asserts that Britain's security is being put at greater risk from without because British democracy itself is at risk from within . In allowing the progressive fragmentation of British society and the weakening of its military and defense infrastructure, the government has left Britain open to the pincer movement of cultural colonization and terrorist attack. The only solution is for Britain to rediscover its historic identity, restore its power to rule itself, and reassert the mutual obligations between government and people. Gwyn Prins and Robert Salisbury, "Risk, Threat and Security," RUSI Journal, Feb. 2008.