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POPSWhy George Orwell wrote 1984 Orwell served in Burma as a member of The Indian Imperial police, saw poverty and failure, but the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Hitler, and the NAZIs, gave him a political direction, and his work after 1936, was to warn against the establishment of a totalitarian state. There is more at the site, with more background. Orwell died Seven months after 1984 was published, due to the effects of tuberculosis, and an allergic reaction to a new medication. While he was in Hospital, writing 1984 they took away his typewriter, but he continued to write longhand with a ballpoint pen, despite his failing health
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POPSMajor biological discovery…inside the Chernobyl reactor "That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible. Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their energy from radiation? This also implies there could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is plentiful."
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POPS"Invisible" people She got the idea for her unusual art from the increasing use of "Big Brother" surveillance. She said: "I'd like people to consider what it means to let the government control our daily lives. "When we are controlled we hand over our individual responsibilities to the state. I wanted to make a suit for the non-criminal citizen whose house is being watched 24 hours by street surveillance cameras. I'm also responding to a wish to disappear."
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POPSThe Sound of Sight Both groups judged auditory patterns accurately about 85 percent of the time, the researchers report in the August 5 issue of Current Biology. On the visual trials, nonsynesthetes’ judgments fell to nearly chance levels, a result that corroborates other research showing that most people are better at judging auditory patterns than assessing visual patterns. In contrast, synesthetes—who reported hearing sounds such as beeps or taps in time with the visual signals—distinguished matching from nonmatching rhythms 75 percent of the time.
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POPSWikipedia and the Meaning of Truth
These policies have become the social contract for Wikipedia's army of apparently insomniac volunteers. Thanks to them, incorrect information generally disappears quite quickly. So how do the Wikipedians decide what's true and what's not? On what is their epistemology based? Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observability. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards--standards that aren't especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should concern those of us who are interested in traditional notions of truth and accuracy. On Wikipedia, objective truth isn't all that important, actually. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication--ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. "The threshold for inclusion in Wiki
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POPSWater-- the background of life "We previously thought proteins would affect only those water molecules directly stuck to them," Gruebele said. "Now we know proteins will affect a volume of water comparable to their own. That's pretty amazing." i find this description of water sexy :0
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POPSWrong Woman; Wrong Message Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
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POPSStunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun With our sun behind it, Saturn carves out a majestic silhouette against the vastness of space. And the tiny speck peeking through the rings? That's us! Click on images for full-size. (Transmitted by the Cassini probe looking back at the Earth from a billion-mile-out vantage point. Background behind the image's creation.)
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POPS3-D Viewing without Goofy Glasses As with earlier techniques, the illusion requires specially-created content to start with. In this case, a digital movie file effectively has two frames for each ordinary movie frame. The first is an ordinary color image, identical to what would be seen on a two-dimensional screen. A second frame, rather than showing a second offset view, encodes information about how viewers should perceive depth in the first frame. It appears as a grayscale version of the first, with white indicating foreground objects, black denoting deep background, and shades of gray indicating points in between.
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POPSTime Travel in the Brain Perhaps areas that are lit up are where new pathways are being formed, and dark areas are where old pathways are 'studied' or remembered. Where, while the brain may not literally be able to 'see' the future, our choices are being refined, by the projection of possible outcomes of choices, based on past experience.
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POPSA Test of the Copernican Principle Disproving the Copernican Principle would amount to a a Copernican revolution on its own account :-) Also, certain aspects of general relativity would need a profound review. Fortunately it seems Copernicus was right after all. Or was he?
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POPSBefore the beginning of the universe Alan Guth of MIT, who first proposed the inflation theory nearly three decades ago, says he suspects “the reported lopsidedness will more likely turn out to be a fluke.” However, he adds, “the concept of inflation is really only the framework of a theory, and so far experiment has given us very little guidance in trying to fill in the details.
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POPSEricW gets promoted!!! W did such an incredible job bringing reason to our decision making, that we decided (in a unanimous vote) to promote him to President. Director just didn't give him proper credit for his uncanny ability to bring reason to this place. Thank you W...and congratulations!!!
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