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POPS50 Funniest Short Job Descriptions Ever # Tell forty year-old men it’s okay to behave like fourteen year-old school girls: Printing Press Production Coordinator # Provide arcane information on a need-to-know basis: Chief Accountant # Shepherd clients through the process of setting their products on fire: Consumer Products Tester # Manage urban renewal and pest control: B-52 Bomber pilot # Persuade kids that it’s really fun being wet, cold and scared out of their minds: Sailing Instructor # Draw up plans for something that will not be built according to those plans: Civil Engineer, Transportation Design # Teach kids to be evil…or so they say: Video Game Creator # Ensure that stupid people stay in the gene pool: Lifeguard
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POPSMan urinates way out of avalanche. Clever thinking. I would've tried pouring the beer, but that probably wouldn't work well. By the time I'd have to go to the bathroom, it'd probably be to late.
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POPSPhotos: Ansel Adams in Color An elegant book chronicles how the great landscape master — known for his black and white work — explored the possibilities of color. From the book, Ansel Adams in Color, published by Little, Brown
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POPSFemale Fighters: We Won't Stand for Male Dominance Back in 1998, the fighters say, their now-jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan declared the group "a women's party." It was initially difficult to accept, says Karim, a 42-year-old male member of the PKK. Today, the PKK's ideology revolves around a belief that global crises and injustice are a result of millennia of male-dominated rule. Here, the women run their own assaults and have their own command structure. All tasks are shared, both on and off the battlefield. Discipline is paramount to survival, they say, and weapons are always clean and never out of reach.
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POPSNassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom In December he lectured bankers at Société Générale, France’s second biggest bank. He told them they were sitting on a mountain of risks – a menagerie of black swans. They didn’t believe him. Six weeks later the rogue trader and black swan Jérôme Kerviel landed them with $7.2 billion of losses. As a result, Taleb is now the hottest thinker in the world. He has a $4m advance on his next book. He gives about 30 presentations a year to bankers, economists, traders, even to Nasa, the US Fire Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. But he doesn’t tell them what to do – he doesn’t know. He just tells them how the world is. “I’m not a guru. I’m just describing a problem and saying, ‘You deal with it.’” take a moment and read the article
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POPSScience of Search: How to Make Out, or Levitate How-to searches also reveal our aspirations. Comprising 12% of the instructional searches were those questions geared towards self improvement: how to "lose weight," "gain weight," "make money," and, for those truly in search of instant gratification, "make money fast." On the darker side, over 9.5% of the searches were for illicit or illegal activities, with marijuana use figuring high on the list ("how to grow marijuana," "grow pot," "grow weed") but also some very concerning questions: "how to commit suicide," "how to make meth," even "how to make a bomb." We apparently feel comfortable enough with our computers and the Internet to query just about anything. Search continues to grow in importance as we sift through the mountain of information available to us. As the growth of "how to" searches increases, its clear that we are turning to search engines as sources of knowledge and insight into getting things done.
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