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POPSPhoto Tampering Throughout History see rest of photos in original page, linked to my previous post: Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/D516F80D-C71B-4B53-BB9C-77EA80B8C919/
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POPS25 Greatest Science Books of All Time The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin's masterwork is, undeniably, The Origin of Species , in which he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection. Prior to its publication, the prevailing view was that each species had existed in its current form since the moment of divine creation and that humans were a privileged form of life, above and apart from nature. Darwin's theory knocked us from that pedestal. Wary of a religious backlash, he kept his ideas secret for almost two decades while bolstering them with additional observations and experiments. The result is an avalanche of detail—there seems to be no species he did not contemplate—thankfully delivered in accessible, conversational prose. A century and a half later, Darwin's paean to evolution still begs to be heard: "There is grandeur in this view of life," he wrote, that "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
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POPSKnowing me, knowing Moo Cow art by Caroline Shotton. I refer to myself as the "Madcow", and my father calls me "Moocow", so I was delighted to discover this "Mooart". I think it's rather cute.
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POPSDecoding antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read "What do you do when you dig up an ancient inscription, but don't know what it means? New Scientist takes a tour of the world's tantalisingly undeciphered writings." Entire article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227106.000-decoding-antiquity-eight-scripts-that-still-cant-be-read.html?full=true
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POPSSTATUE OF LIBERTY PICTURES: Rare Views, Inside and Out The torch has been off-limits to visitors since the "Black Tom" explosion of July 30, 1916. Debris from the attack on U.S. ammunition supplies on nearby—and long since subsumed by landfill—Black Tom Island, New Jersey, pierced the statue. Another attack—the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001—prompted the full closure of Liberty Island, which was reopened a hundred days later. The Statue of Liberty would reopen in 2004, and the reopening of the crown will complete the process on the Fourth of July, 2009.
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POPSPalestine: The State History Forgot Is it a joke of history that before there was the states of Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Syria, etc there was Palestine? Now they all exist and Palestine doesn't yet. You will read that there never was a Palestine from a certain quarter and how can you miss what you never had. How you know they are lying! They'll say that as they are all Arabs that there's enough room for them all. It's like saying that the Scots Welsh and Irish are all Celts and one state would do them all! Yes, there was a time when such thinking was regarded as valid. If we had the Age of Imperialism back then the Brits might validly have a claim on the USA and most of the rest of the world. In the present imperialism, if the existent holder of the gunboat diplomacy role, the USA, decided to sort out Palestine's present difficulties it could in a breath. Hopefully in a more honourable fashion that the last gunboat holder did.
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POPSSacrificial virgins of the Mississippi
As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat's cautious but mesmerizing new book, "Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi," makes clear, Cahokia -- the greatest Native American city north of Mexico -- definitely belongs to human history. (It is not "historical," in the strict sense, because the Cahokians left no written records.) At its peak in the 12th century, this settlement along the Mississippi River bottomland of western Illinois, a few miles east of modern-day St. Louis, was probably larger than London, and held economic, cultural and religious sway over a vast swath of the American heartland. Featuring a man-made central plaza covering 50 acres and the third-largest pyramid in the New World (the 100-foot-tall "Monks Mound"), Cahokia was home to at least 20,000 people. If that doesn't sound impressive from a 21st-century perspective, consider that the next city on United States territory to attain that size would be Philadelphia, some 600 years later.
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POPSThe Great Obituary "No group of individuals had closer contact with Jesus than those listed above. Their conclusion, even unto death, was that Jesus was God. Multitudes of unnamed Christians of the same and following eras likewise perished faithful to the conviction that Jesus is Lord. " "Tacitus, in his work Annals, tells us of the fate common to Christ's faithful, under Nero, who refused to recant their beliefs: Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired."
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POPS"World's Oldest" A team of academics from the University of Wolverhampton have discovered the world’s most ancient gag. Guess what it’s about? Yep. Farts. “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap,” goes the joke, which apparently dates back to ancient Sumeria circa 1900 BC. World’s Oldest Flute (35,000-year-old) discovered, according to archaeologists, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture. A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany. Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old
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POPSSappho's poetry Her style was sensual and melodic; primarily songs of love, yearning, and reflection. Most commonly the target of her affections was female, often one of the many women sent to her for education in the arts. She nurtured these women, wrote poems of love and adoration to them, and when they eventually left the island to be married, she composed their wedding songs. That Sappho's poetry was not condemned in her time for its homoerotic content (though it was disparaged by scholars in later centuries) suggests that perhaps love between women was not persecuted then as it has been in more recent times. Especially in the last century, Sappho has become so synonymous with woman-love that two of the most popular words to describe female homosexuality--lesbian and sapphic have derived from her. Plato elevated her from the status of great lyric poet to one of the muses.
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POPSHopi American Indians. The Hopi people When a child is born, they receive a perfect ear of corn. On the 20th day, the child is taken to the mesa cliff and held facing the rising sun. When the sun touches the baby, it is given a name. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people.
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POPSDolmen with petroglyphs found near Villupuram more at source: This is the second time that a dolmen with petroglyphs has been found in Tamil Nadu. The earlier discovery in the Nilgiris district was also made by Mr. Gandhirajan. But it was a circular dolmen with a petroglyph on the slab wall. “The three figures belong to different periods. But the two men holding tridents are chronologically close to each other,” Mr. Gandhirajan said. He estimated that while the dolmen itself was 2,500 years old, the petroglyphs might be about 2000 years old. The tridents could have been hunting or fishing weapons. Their depiction showed that the engravings belonged to the Iron Age (circa 1000 B.C. to 300 B.C.). The engraving of a wheel was significant because the men who erected the dolmen had the knowledge of wheels.
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POPS“Joe the Plumber?” Here’s the real story of Dad the Mechanic. By the time my Dad’s cancer was killing him, he decided to spend $10,000 on a (futile and excruciating) chemotherapy regimen. Eight weeks later, he was dead. But before he died, he admitted that the government he had voted for absolutely didn’t care about people like him. “Joe the Plumber” This man supports anti-worker policies and then wonders why he can’t get ahead. He hasn’t undergone the training that is required to be a plumber, but claims that Democratic policies are what’s holding him down. Please, let's not get fooled again!
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POPS'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism. These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."
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