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POPSPride and Progress: How Far America Has Come In The Last 40 Years food for thought from Jonah Lehrer a bit more: "Over time, these conscious limits on language helped re-engineer our unconscious beliefs, allowing people to slowly purge themselves of obsolete stereotypes. (We tend to think of the unconscious as the domineering elephant of the mind, but sometimes the feeble rider manages to steer the beast in the right direction.) Of course, the unconscious remains a murky and biased place, but I think white Americans have shown that it can be amended, that simply altering the ways in which we refer to people can, over time, change what we secretly think of people."
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POPS Mexicans Protest Canadian Mining Company
"Not only does the mine require an estimated 32 million litres of water per day, there are serious concerns that the cyanide will contaminate the aquifers, says hydrologist Mario Martínez. "There are cyanide heap leach pads (large pools) right on top of an aquifer." "Once the ore is removed from the Cerro de San Pedro pit, it is trucked two km to specially prepared outdoor pads, where a solution of water and cyanide is sprayed on the ore to dissolve the gold and silver out of the rock. The water is treated to remove the precious metals and recover some of the cyanide. "spent ore" is removed and piled into hills already more than 20 metres high "Sixteen tonnes of sodium cyanide are being used daily, and there is a great risk it could seep into the aquifer" The mining company assures that the cyanide is managed in a closed circuit and that the surface of the leaching pools are covered by special plastic membranes, injected with air and monitored by leak detectors.
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POPSItipini Community Project & Mthatha Mission I've been following Jesse Zink's blog Mthatha Mission for many months. When I ran across the video today, which incorporates some of his photos, I put the the video and Jesse's excellent blog together to share both with others who may not know of the work being done to help the people who, by accident of birth, live in the Itipini community outside Mthatha, South Africa.
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POPSA Simple Guide To Public Relations * “No comment” translates into “I’m guilty” as a response to a crisis situation. * Dealing with bad news quickly means it will most likely go away quickly. We have very short attention spans. * What you actually did may not be as bad as what you stand accused of, but there’s a huge difference between the court of public opinion, which will next-to-never believe you were set up, and a court of law. *There is no substitute for a heartfelt apology. *Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "Everyone knows this stuff. If you ask people around the water cooler what they would do if such-and-such happened to them, unless they have absolutely no grounding in reality, they can usually give you a plausible, socially acceptable response. The problem comes when something bad actually happens to you, and your natural inclination is to bury your head in the sand, hide under your desk or otherwise avoid dealing with it."
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POPSTravel Alberta To See These Unique Attractions! :roll: When you are making your vacation plans, check out what Alberta has to offer: "Alberta offers a rare treat for the seasoned globetrotter who's craving something new. A seemingly endless expanse of bitumen-laden sands — coupled with the powerful scent of oil from refineries wafting through the hazy air — makes Northern Alberta a truly one-of-a-kind destination. " "some of the unique attractions that await travelers to Alberta: Black sand beaches, toxic lakes and clearcut forests. Until now, this kind of vacation destination was merely the stuff of science fiction; but now, it can be experienced first-hand." Watch the video!
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POPSMissing kids found via Facebook Good news in the struggle to find missing children: Facebook. As of February 2008 Facebook had about 734,000 South African members. As the Missing Children SA group founder noted, the chance of finding more kids will grow as the group grows bigger. I don't know how many other countries are using social networking sites like Facebook to look for missing children, but since this is an effective means of finding them I hope that it is widely adopted.
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POPSOpen Season on Canadian Water "What Canadians need to know is that this year, from March 2008 to March of 2009, eight lakes are going to be subject to being put on Schedule Two, which is just about every mine that is going ahead this year is looking around, looking for the nearest lake to dump its waste into.” Un. Frickin. Believable! :mad: Time for this government to fall! C'mon, Dion, DO SOMETHING!
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POPSClipmarks now available for Firefox 3 Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that we released a new version of clipmarks (version 3.5) that supports the just-released Firefox3. We made some real nice improvements to the orange lines so they should more accurately outline elements on the page to clip. If you don't have the latest version of clipmarks installed, you can get it here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1407. There's a review section on that page, so if you have anything nice to say, don't hesitate :) FYI...we're getting loads of new clippers today, so if you get a chance, check out the newest clips section and welcome some new users with some pops and comments.
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POPSIs Google Making Us Stupid? Does surfing the Internet trigger attention deficit disorder in our brains, so that we have to struggle to focus enough to read in depth or for longer than a couple of minutes at a time? Must we flip through the Internet as quickly as some people flip through TV channels, afraid, or unable, to pause long enough to read more than a few paragraphs--if that much? The author of this article (which you should read in its entirety if you can concentrate that long) relates how difficult he found it to sit down and read a book again, and notes: "In an era in which everyone has a truth and the means to fling it around the world, an era in which knowledge is increasingly broad but seldom deep, maybe that's the ultimate act of sedition: to pick up a single book and read it." I still read books, but not as many as I used to prior to being caught up in the world wide web life. Lately I haven't even read the free e-book that I receive in emailed installments. Blame it on Google-- :?
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POPSOntario Frog Calls Beautiful music from Mother Nature: photos and calls of some of the frogs found in Ontario.
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POPSWhy do displays of compassion differ between East and West? I am trying to understand A bit more: "In many Asian countries, favors invariably create obligations, which is perhaps why people are sometimes disinclined to interfere in the problems of others. You are obliged to take care of your family, your friends, or even your fellow countrymen. But the idea of universal charity is too abstract, and smacks of the kind of unwelcome interference that Western imperialists — and the Christian missionaries who followed them — practiced in the East for too long. The notion of "Asian values," promoted mostly by Singaporean official scribes, was partly a critique of universalist Western claims. Asians, according to this theory, have their own values, which include thrift, deference to authority, the sacrifice of individual to collective interests, and the belief that countries should not stick their noses into others' affairs. Hence, the hesitant response of Southeast Asian governments — and public opinion — to the Burmese disaster." see source
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POPSToddler Fun--An Easy & Non-Toxic Play Dough Recipe I miss the days of making homemade play dough with my children. Sigh. But if you are still fortunate enough to have little ones to entertain don't pass up the opportunity to mix up a batch of play dough with them. :) This blog is one of my favorites, full of delicious recipes and interesting stories of life in Tanzania. Check it out!
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POPSCanadian grocers not pulling tomatoes "Some Canadian producers, meanwhile, say they are seeing an increase in demand from U.S. buyers as U.S. health officials work to trace the source of the multi-state salmonella food poisoning outbreak. “We've been getting lots of calls from U.S. buyers looking to purchase our tomatoes,” said Maureen Sheehan, the marketing director for B.C. Hot House Foods Inc. “They know our product is safe.” Canadian retailers are also buying Canadian as they continue to stock tomatoes for their customers."
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POPSHow Rock Band saved my marriage Funny stuff from Rachel Shukert! a bit more: "noise-canceling headphones. You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn't come up with anything more misogynist. I storm back to my desk and type the phrases "my husband" "addicted" "video games" "HELP" into the search engine. Hundreds of links appear. I click on the first one, a Christian counseling Web site, where a desperate woman named Tiffany, whose husband plays video games nine to 11 hours a day, is reminded by the nonaccredited Christian counselor that man is master of her dominion and tells her to pray to Jesus to restore her husband's love. I have already prayed to the Jewish God for guidance, and the Jewish God, as he has done for millions of Jewish wives since time immemorial, advised me to rip my husband's headphones off his head and scream at him for never putting his leftovers back in the fridge."
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POPSThe Nerd Girls: Smart, Techie and Feminine "These girl geeks aren't social misfits; their identities don't hinge on outsider status. They may love all things sci-tech, but first and foremost they are girls—and they've made that part of their appeal...However they choose to geek out, they consciously tweak the two chief archetypes of geeks: that they're unattractive outcasts, and that they're male. " "Forty years ago women made up just 3 percent of science and engineering jobs; now they make up about 20 percent. That sounds promising, until you consider that women earn 56 percent of the degrees in those fields. A recent Center for Work-Life Policy study found that 52 percent of women leave those jobs, with 63 percent saying they experienced workplace harassment and more than half believing they needed to "act like a man" in order to succeed. In the past, women dealt with that reality in two ways: some buried their femininity, while others simply gave up their techie interests to appear more feminine." Go, girls!
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POPSJune 8: Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the WWW, was born on this date Mark your calendars! Send him a card! Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, will be 53 on Sunday, June 8th, 2008. More about the history of the web here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web. Berners-Lee is a real person, accessible through his website at: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
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POPSJane Goodall: We Need A New Mindset "We should admit that the infliction of suffering on beings who are capable of feeling is ethically problematic and that the amazing human brain should set to work to find new ways of testing and experimenting that will not involve the use of live, sentient beings." "Her call comes as the European Commission prepares to publish draft legislation to update the EU’s animal experiments directive (Directive 86/609 EEC). The existing law is out of date (over 20 years old), with hundreds of thousands of animals currently receiving no protection at all." "Dr Goodall was joined by biomedical researchers, MEPs and animal protectionists at a Replace Animal Experiments in Europe event in Brussels. Event organisers, the Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research and the Humane Society International (HSI), are spearheading a campaign to accelerate European efforts to replace animal experiments with more ethical and reliable methods."
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POPSCelebrities and their Muppet lookalikes :D The resemblances are remarkable! Too funny! The last two sets of lookalikes are Adrien Brody & Gonzo and Hippy guitarist Janice & Donatella Versace. Go to the source to see the pairs side by side.
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POPSCanada exports asbestos...WTH? "Canada is the only developed nation still producing asbestos, called a deadly threat by the International Labour Organization, the World Health Organization, the International Association for Cancer Research and many more health agencies."
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