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POPSYellowstone's Plumbing Reveals Plume of Hot and Molten Rock 410 Miles Deep
This thing is still plugged in....DEEP. About 4 miles beneath Yellowstone National Park's beautiful scenery is a forty-mile-wide chamber full of molten rock under incredibly high pressure. This magma is what powers Yellowstone's fantastic geysers and hot springs, It's the crown jewel of the United States national park system. Its mountain vistas, wildlife and geographic features are visited and admired by people from around the world. It erupted approximately 650,000 years ago. The caldera that it left is 53 miles long and 28 miles wide. In the area surrounding Yellowstone, 3000 square miles were subjected to a flow of pyroclastic material composed of 240 cubic miles of hot ash and pumice. Ash was also thrown into the atmosphere and blanketed much of North America. It can still be identified in core samples from as far away as the Gulf of Mexico. Since this occurred more than a half million years ago this is all ancient history, right? Not quite.
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POPSHow To Use An APOSTROPHE REMEMBER: If you're trying to say "it is" or ("it has") use an apostrophe Example: It is (it's) unusual to put crickets in coffee, but I do it anyway. It has (it's) been a fun day. We should go to the velociraptor petting zoo more often!
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POPSGOP uses Amplify to focus the health care debate One of the greatest challenges of our time is trying understand the complex issues being debated in Washington. Whether it's regarding the Swine Flu, global warming or in this case, the proposed health care bill, people need a better way to understand it all. I am incredibly excited that the House Republicans are using Amplify to take transparency to a whole new level in regards to the legislative process. Forgive me for sounding a bit corny, but i think this is truly a great thing for our democracy.
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POPSFormer Gitmo Detainee Killed by Saudi Forces Although declared innocent by liberals in America this one time terrorist was wrongly killed in the line of duty while attempting to blow himself up. Hmm seems to me he was determined to die one way or another. Instead of releasing these terrorists why not just let them bow themselves up?
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POPSThe $150 Edge-of-Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer-Money Budget
via Jules Crittenden Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148. Launch Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to compensate for the prevailing winds, which could have otherwise taken the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wyoming’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site. Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
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POPSInterview with an Iranian demonstrator: "don't leave us alone" One Iranian demonstrator, in a phone interview with CNN American Morning, pleads with the world to intervene on behalf of the protestors. He is very direct and forthright and calls on Obama to treat the current Iranian regime as criminal and "insane." This isn't what I would have expected him to say.
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POPSIntroducing ChangeTracker: Tracking Change in Washington
About Us ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them. Investigative journalism is at risk. Many news organizations have increasingly come to see it as a luxury. Today’s investigative reporters lack resources: Time and budget constraints are curbing the ability of journalists not specifically designated “investigative” to do this kind of reporting in addition to their regular beats. This is therefore a moment when new models are necessary to carry forward some of the great work of journalism in the public interest that is such an integral part of self-government, and thus an important bulwark of our democracy. http://www.propublica.org/about/
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POPSThe Code Even the CIA Can't Crack and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code. Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts—along with some of the agency's own staffers—has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get.
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POPS Let's Play Dumbass-Nation, Shall We?
Then, the realtor has to find the buyers, in this case ‘the needy’. People who ‘need’ a home, but can’t afford to buy one on their own. Never mind how one actually qualifies as ‘needy’, or whether if someone who is simply ‘wanty’ makes the cut. (I never could figure the distinction between ‘needy’ and ‘wanty’. Maybe it should be a question for the Miss U.S.A. Pageant.) Let’s just assume that one has to offer proof that they need a home and are deficiently qualified to get the home that they are completely unqualified to buy. Hmmm…this sounds vaguely familiar. Haven’t we seen this sort of thing just recently? I’m thinking Freddie Mac…Fannie Mae…Chris Dodd…Barney Frank…Pelosi-Reid Disease…. And could any of this plan in Riverside possibly have anything to do with the $25 Billion of taxpayer dollars Diane Feinstein gave to the FDIC…days before she awarded that very lucrative contract to her husband’s firm, C.B. Richard Ellis to dispose of foreclosed homes?
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POPSThe Diverse Nature of China "Our world holds breathtaking beauty and grace, full of life and wonder as mother nature unfolds its charm and elegance within the extremities of the earth. Many are moved and touched by the magnificence of our world and the wonders it brings to mankind. Here are some of the wonders given to us by China"