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POPSWhen Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated. Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, philosophers who slip into dementia may be lashed to their beds, courts can order surgery or force-feeding. Spain’s Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals. One said such thinking led to abortion, euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.
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POPSThe evolution of drug abuse "All this shows “our ancestors were regularly exposed to plant neurotoxins,” they added, so the view of our brains as unsuspecting victims of the new chemical threat is untenable. " " One possibility, the scientists suggested, is that animals co-opted some plant toxins and used them for their own defenses against parasites. If this is true, then evolution, the process by which species adapt and change to meet environmental demands, might have designed our brains to encourage some drug use. This could involve shaping our brains to associate drug intake with feelings of reward."
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POPSTwo Teens Kill Friend For Fun This is one of the sickest things I've heard. Really should read the whole article. Bitches should get life before they kill someone else for fun...and they will...
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POPSLesbian Book "Disturbed Teens" What an interesting leap, how those young men found the book while "browsing for military academy info." I had no idea both topics were in the same section of the library. Go figure.
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POPSThe story of Sartre and de Beauvoir as never told before If this couple expected their arrangement would spare them the trials and heartache of a conventional marriage, they were wrong.Their multiple affairs went on until World War II when Sartre was called up and their sex games had to be conducted through letters.Left behind in Paris, Simone continued to seduce both men and women, writing titillating descriptions of her activities to Sartre behind the Maginot Line, which reveal her heartlessness and the vulnerability of her conquests.Tragically, the lives of these girls, who were pathologically jealous of each other over their teacher's attentions, were permanently blighted.One took to self-harming, another committed suicide. Most remained pathetically unfulfilled and dependent on the childless Simone, who perversely referred to them as her 'family'. ... Sartre had always said the best way to learn about a country was to sleep with its women.
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POPSLegion Of Terra-Cotta Mouseketeers Found Beneath Disney World more (at source): "Very little is known about the early history of the Disney civilization, so this is quite a significant find," said lead archaeologist Dr. Robert Moore, adding that it may take years to fully explore the labyrinthine system of tunnels and pits that surround the burial chamber. "By analyzing the crude markings above the doorway to the tomb, we've concluded that it was likely constructed during the Pre-Eisnerian period, one of the bloodiest and most chaotic eras in the history of the Magic Kingdom."
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POPSsmart kids vs popular kids
Partly because teenagers are still half children, and many children are just intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds for the same reason they pull the legs off spiders. Before you develop a conscience, torture is amusing.Another reason kids persecute nerds is to make themselves feel better.But I think the main reason is that it's part of the mechanism of popularity. Popularity is only partially about individual attractiveness. It's much more about alliances. To become more popular, you need to be constantly doing things that bring you close to other popular people, and nothing brings people closer than a common enemy. It's important for nerds to realize that school is not life. School is a strange, artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the real thing. It's only temporary, and if you look, you can see beyond it even while you're still in it.<< Interesting read.Written by someone who was considered to be a "nerd" at school.
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich on the criminalization of poverty There are a lot of Kafkaesque stories in this piece, like that of wheelchair-bound 62-year-old homeless veteran Al Szekely, who was imprisoned after a nighttime raid on a homeless shelter. His crime? He had an outstanding court summons for criminal trespassing -- he'd gotten a ticket for sleeping on a sidewalk. In other words, " hey arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless." The truancy discussion strikes me as the most vicious part, though.
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POPSGirls On Our Streets "Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops. “The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets."
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POPSKids "get it!" Bravo teenagers. It seems, unlike so many of your parents, YOU are beginning to understand that homophobia is ugly. You give us hope that your generation will make the big changes necessary for society's acceptance of diversity in life.
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POPSIgnorance-only Sex Education It is strange that there's this whole suite of positions that would seem to be unrelated, but almost always seem to be adopted wholesale. If you know someone is against evolution, you can pretty much predict their positions on abortion, stem cells, the death penalty, education, GW Bush, and homosexuality. I wonder what common force ties all those disparate ideas together? - PZ
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POPSNow They Want Our Feelings, Our Emotions They are breaking us, tearing us down so they can rebuild us the way they want. It's what the military did to the draftees before they sent them to Viet Nam. They've already started to tell us that we're happy. Are we happy?
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