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POPSThe Case for Creativity This is the sort of thing that makes me seriously, seriously consider turning off the TV and computer for the rest of the year and picking up my pen and drawing pad again.
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POPSWe can agree on one thing: WE HATE HOMOSEXUALS It's amazing how groups of people that would otherwise be mortal enemies seem to be able to come together when it comes to declaring their hate for homosexuals. And most of the people that are protesting the loudest are doing so because they're trying to suppress their own secret urges.
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POPSTwenty science fiction novels that may change your life Cryptonomicon (2000), by Neal Stephenson The Mount (2002), by Carol Emschwiller Perdido Street Station (2002), by China Mieville Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003), by Cory Doctorow Pattern Recognition (2003), by William Gibson Newton's Wake (2004), by Ken MacLeod Glasshouse (2006), by Charles Stross
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POPSFirst Colin Powell, Now… Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001.
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POPSOrigin of State Names GEORGIA. Named after King George II of England, who charted the colony in 1732. HAWAII. An English adaptation of the native word owhyhee, which means "homeland." IDAHO. Possibly taken from the Kiowa Apache word for the Comanche Indians. ILLINOIS. The French bastardization of the Algonquin word illini, which means "men." INDIANA. Named by English-speaking settlers because the territory was full of Indians. IOWA. The Sioux word for "beautiful land," or "one who puts to sleep." KANSAS. Taken from the Sioux word for "south wind people," their name for anyone who lived south of Sioux territory. KENTUCKY. Possibly derived from the Indian word kan-tuk-kee, meaning "dark and bloody ground." Or kan-tuc-kec, "land of green reeds", or ken-take, meaning "meadowland." LOUISIANA. Named after French King Louis XIV. MAINE. The Old French word for "province." MARYLAND. Named after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of English King George I.
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POPSRepublicans Take Credit for Stimulus They Voted Against Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) boasted about the educational benefits of the recovery act, while Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) said his office "will do what we can to direct as much money as we can." Neither voted for the bill. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) joins in, praising the stimulus' "generous" incentives for home buyers on his Twitter feed: petehoekstra If you know of someone thinking of buying first home, now may be the time.Stimulus incentive is very generous!Up to 8k!Check it out. After insisting last Friday that the recovery bill "would have exploded our national debt without providing meaningful job growth," Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) toured construction sites in his district yesterday, touting funds that would come from the stimulus bill. "This is a classic example of a "shovel-ready' project," Lance said after the tour.
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POPSDetecting Photographic Forgeries Automatically detecting manipulated photographs is becoming more and more necessary in today's newsroom. "The eyes are a partial mirror into the world in which you're photographed," Farid says. If there are two white dots in each eye, there had to have been two separate light sources. So, if a photo shows two dots in one person's eyes and only one dot in another person's eyes, it must have been spliced together from two different originals.
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POPSClassic Underestimates of Technology All these statements prove only one thing--that accurately predicting future technology is next to impossible. In other words, backward and forward time travel, which is one of my undying fantasies since childhood, is still possible. I just have to stay healthy (very) long enough to see it happen. Now, that may not be possible....
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POPSIntelligent design-vs.-evolution board game From the dynamic duo that brought us "The Way of the Master," here is a board game that "reveal the bankruptcy of molecules-to-man evolution,... proclaim biblical authority, and reach the lost with the precious gospel message." Via: http://snipurl.com/164m6
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POPSThe Coming Superbrain Some more excerpts: not all humans of the industry are optimistic, "The computer designer and venture capitalist William Joy, for example, wrote a pessimistic essay in Wired in 2000 that argued that humans are more likely to destroy themselves with their technology than create a utopia assisted by superintelligent machines." And some worst fear is the Moses Syndrome being just one generation before: "Indeed, despite this high-technology heartland’s deeply held consensus about exponential progress, the worst fate of all for the Valley’s digerati would be to be the generation before the generation that lives to see the singularity; Kurzweil will probably die, along with the rest of us not too long before the ‘great dawn,’ ” said Gary Bradski, a Silicon Valley roboticist. “Life’s not fair.”
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POPSANOTHER SEIU BEATING– State Worker Bloodied Because He Was Going to Expose Corruption HotAirPundit found the video report: http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/playlist/8178 Besides being a state worker, Hamidi says he’s an unpaid reporter for a cable access show and a vocal critic of the SEIU. He calls the state workers’ union corrupt. “This is a union hall that is leased and is being furnished and equipped and everything with our money,” said Hamidi. Hamidi says he came to the hall to expose how he says SEIU union leaders are spending tens of thousands of dollars on a political race, he claims, they have no right to do. After he and a photographer walked in to the meeting, it didn’t take long for Hamidi to be right out the door and on his way to the hospital. The local SEIU says the man was acting like a bully.
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POPSAncient Climate Change May Portend Toasty Future With a continuation of current trends in the use of coal, oil, and gas, natural background atmospheric CO2 concentrations are expected to double around mid-century. The ancient emissions are comparable to the CO2 that can be expected from human activity over the coming few centuries. If human-induced carbon emissions continue unabated, there could be a similar shift in species evolution.
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POPSKentucky Pastor Tells Followers to Bring Guns to Church Of the 40 states with right-to-carry laws, 20 allow guns in churches. Watching the debate in Arkansas was John Phillips, pastor of the Central Church of Christ in Little Rock. In 1986, Mr. Phillips was preaching in a different church there when a gunman shot him and a parishioner. Both survived, but Mr. Phillips, 51, still has a bullet lodged in his spine. In a telephone interview, he said he found the idea of “packing in the pew” abhorrent.
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