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POPSBush Seeks Answers for Own Presidency For all the talk of his clueless-ness, it's revealed that Bush, the former apotheosis of privileged irresponsibility, is desperately aware of the fateful legacy he has wrought, seeking vindication in unwritten future histories. Yet, for reasons deeply personal (not political) Bush cannot allow himself to own up to his mistakes, for fear the entire facade of capability will come down. Thus, as he shuts his eyes ever tighter, our leader's personal tragedy becomes our own. "Our members just wish this thing would be over," said a senior House Republican who met with Bush recently. "People are tired of him." Bush's circle remains sealed tight, the lawmaker said. "There's nobody there who can stand up to him and tell him, 'Mr. President, you've got to do this. You're wrong on this.' There's no adult supervision. It's like he's oblivious. Maybe that's a defense mechanism."
12
POPSA Brief History of Economic Time The underlying expectation -- that the present is supposed to be better than the past -- is a new phenomenon in history. No 18th-century politician would have asked "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" because it never would have occurred to anyone that they ought to be better off than they were four years ago. (Also see Living in the Age of Abundance .)
8
POPSIraq’s Curse: A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory A bloodthirsty sectarian war centuries in the making has only just begun. It's going to get much worse before it gets better. Caught in the middle of the civil war are the Americans. To Iraq’s factions, they are the weakest of all the armed groups in one crucial respect: their will is ebbing and their time here is limited. That leaves Iraqis more motivated than ever to cling to their weapons, preparing for what many see as an inevitable plunge into the abyss. “Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game,” an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. “They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you.”
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POPS An Easter Sermon on Viral Marketing By the inimitable Robert Wright. The ultimate in viral marketing was Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Deemed a threat to the social order, he was crucified under Roman auspices. But the Romans forgot one thing: If you face a small but growing movement that threatens the imperial order, you shouldn’t attack the men in ways that help the memes.
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POPSMath Behind Ancient Islamic Tile Patterns Decoded When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. See the full research article as published in Science . It's a wonderful example of original, multidisciplinary academic research bridging history and mathematics that happens to force us to re-think the sophistication of ancient geometrical knowledge. When Lu looked at photographs of Islamic buildings, he found that he could break the patterns on their surfaces up into the same shapes, even though the shapes often weren't immediately visible. "I couldn't sleep for days," he said. "I skipped Christmas break to work on it."
5
POPSAdvanced Bash-Scripting Guide Perhaps the best-written, most readable guide to advanced shell scripting on the web. Copious hyperlinks, examples, and guru-level knowledge sprinkled throughout. This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction . . . all the while sneaking in little snippets of UNIX® wisdom and lore . It serves as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and a reference and source of knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts .
19
POPS How modern evangelicals are ignoring their own history Today's Christian conservatives often note that Jefferson's famous line declaring that the first amendment had created “a wall separating church and state” was not in the Constitution but in a private letter. But in that letter, Jefferson was responding to one sent to him by a group of Baptists in Danbury, Conn. We usually read Jefferson's side of that exchange. It's worth re-reading what the Danbury Baptists had to say because it reminds us that for the 18th-century evangelicals, the separation of church and state was not only required by the practicalities of their minority status, but was also demanded by God. “Religions is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals,” the Baptists wrote, warning that government “dare not assume the prerogatives of Jehova and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ.” Government had no business meddling in the affairs of the soul, where there is only one Ruler.
11
POPSRemember: Saddam Was Our Man NY Times OpEd from March 14, 2003. The United States also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the United States had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon, Western corporations like Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business with Baghdad -- for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq. This history is known to many in the Middle East and Europe, though few Americans are acquainted with it, much less understand it. Yet these interventions help explain why United States policy is viewed with some cynicism abroad. George W. Bush is not the first American president to seek regime change in Iraq. Mr. Bush and his advisers are following a familiar pattern.
5
POPSÉmilie Du Châtelet: The Scientist Whom History Forgot After a life of intellectual prosperity against all the prevailing norms of her time, her life was tragically cut short after finishing her greatest work, the only complete French translation and annotation of Newton's Principia Mathematica to this day. o her dismay, Du Châtelet discovered that she was pregnant. Then aged 43, she was an elderly women by contemporary standards. Although Voltaire was not the father, he helped Du Châtelet deceive her husband into thinking that the baby was legitimate. Plagued by gloomy premonitions, Du Châtelet intensified her work schedule, working 18 hours a day to finish in time. Although she did succeed, she died soon after the baby was born. On her last day she recorded the date on her Newton commentary. Her Principia was published 10 years later, in 1759, to coincide with the return of a comet vindicating Newton's physics.
9
POPSThe Bomb: First Impressions Good article about the American public's response to waking up on August 6, 1945 to discover out-of-the-blue that "they possessed the most powerful weapon in the history of war." In the early days after the attack, only a few scattered voices objected. Most of them were religious. The Vatican and Catholic newspapers promptly denounced nuclear weapons. One minister in New York said, “Our savage generation cannot be trusted” and called the nuclear program “a triumph of research, but also a superb symbol for the Age of Efficient Chaos.”
4
POPSHezbollah's Other War - Michael Young A great insider perspective on the intertangled, democratic and sectarian groups that have used (and abused) Lebanon for cross-purposes throughout its history, laying the groundwork for the current Hezbollah stranglehold on the country. Fans of simplistic, black-and-white views of the world may want to skip this article.
2
POPSMaligned T. rex eyesight the best in animal history? T. rex had a binocular range of 55°, which is wider than that of modern hawks....Moreover, over the millennia, T. rex evolved features that improved its vision: Its snout grew lower and narrower, cheek grooves cleared its sight lines, and its eyeballs enlarged. Evidence the mighty T. rex was more of a predator?
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POPSGENDER-NEUTRAL PRONOUN FAQ "3.4. Which GNPs are in active use on the net? Is there a standard? Depending on how one counts, there are between three and five active groups. The two most popular seem to be "sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself", (especially "hir"), and "zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself". The latter apparently came into being after a German-speaking netizen objected to "sie" and "Sie", which in many contexts means "she" in German. Third and fourth, differing only in the first and maybe last word, are "e or ey, em, eir, eirs, eirself or emself". Fifth, some people use "per", from "person", which i assume has the set "per, per, pers, pers, persself", although i've never seen it developed that far. I've not actually seen this in use on the net, but i've seen people on the net who claimed to use it all the time in their own lives. These will all be discussed in detail later in the FAQ. "
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