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POPSInside the palace of Augustus - pics
Lived in by Augustus before he became Rome's first emperor in 27BC, the house is situated above the grotto where Romans may have worshipped Romulus, the city's founder, and was also handy for watching horse racing in the Circus Maximus at the foot of the hill. "Augustus wanted to be near the grotto, but could also see the races from up here," said Italy's culture minister, Francesco Rutelli. The restoration, begun after the house was found in the 1970s, has reconstructed shattered frescoes in deep reds, yellows and blues featuring theatrical masks and mythical animals. "The extremely high quality of the frescoes befits the owner, although these were the fashions of the time and don't offer much insight into Augustus's individual taste," said Angelo Bottini, Rome's archaeological chief. Tourists - who will be allowed in five at a time - may be surprised to see how modest the study, bedroom, entrance hall and dining room were. Augustus, Julius Caesar's great nephew, avoided excess
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POPSA predetermined morality Surprisingly, our emotions do not appear to have much effect on our judgments about right and wrong in these moral dilemmas. A study of individuals with damage to an area of the brain that links decision-making and emotion found that when faced with a series of moral dilemmas, these patients generally made the same moral judgments as most people. This suggests that emotions are not necessary for such judgments. These studies suggest that nature handed us a moral grammar that fuels our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. Emotions play their strongest role in influencing our actions—reinforcing acts of virtue and punishing acts of vice.
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POPSSexuality Bias Seen "Banks said she believed the rumors were started by other attorneys in the Grand Rapids office who eventually landed jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. She declined to identify them. Monday's report also said that Goodling used an Internet search that included the words "gay" and "homosexual" to screen candidates and their backgrounds." Well now! We used to play a game in school called "Gossip". We'd line up several people and start a sentence and everyone changed it a little while whispering into each other's ear. Of course it was unrecognizable at the end and we would all laugh. The point of the game was to show the social implications of pettiness. So why would anyone care about sexual orientation at the Justice Department in the first place? Ah, back to that wicked game of gossip and backstabbing to get ahead eh? No better way than to call them lesbians.
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POPSSame Old Divisions online? In reality, however, it appears that online actions and interactions should not be viewed as independent of one’s offline identity." I wonder if this is also true for CM?
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POPSWhite supremacism lies at the root of the 'respectable' nativist right
Last October, as America was being roiled by the subprime mortgage meltdown that led to the current financial crisis, the executive director of one of the most influential immigration think tanks in the nation was in a joking mood. Shortly after the failure of Washington Mutual Bank, Mark Krikorian found a press release issued months earlier by the bank that celebrated its inclusion on a list of “Business Diversity Elites” compiled by Hispanic Business magazine. Krikorian posted the release at the conservative National Review Online, where he writes from time to time, along with his own sneering headline: “Cause and Effect?” Krikorian no doubt thought of his posting as a simple joke. But to many, the attempt by the leader of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) to suggest a link between Washington Mutual’s commitment to opening its ranks to Latinos and its demise spoke volumes about the nature of CIS and its prolific research. Although the think tank bi
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POPSGoodbye to Abusive Uncle Sam!!! Back then, young men signed up for university to defer the draft; now many young men from poor backgrounds join the military simply for the funds to go to college. Back then, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau threw open the border, declaring that his country would be “a refuge from militarism” from which no deserter would be returned. Now, the only way for a deserter to seek refuge is to claim asylum and wait to see if Canada decides to accept them or deport them back home.
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POPSCreationist Science Teachers Would administrators sanction teaching alchemy in place of chemistry? How about palmistry in lieu of statistics. How about replacing basic meteorology with the Thor hypothesis? These people have no business in a science class teaching science. Either move them so they do no harm or fire them.
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POPSClipping Comments: Living in the USA - The Psychosocial Implications of Hair more @ clip source Where to begin in helping them understand that they are, in fact, reinforcing negative and damaging stereotypes about “good” and “bad” hair? That they are encouraging discourses of self-hatred in their young students, rather than self-pride? That instead of being flattered to be called a princess, they should be fighting the stereotypes that beauty is about approximating Whiteness?
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POPS But Enough About Me . . . to say nothing of tens of millions who have sworn oaths to it when serving in the military and other public and civic roles? And isn't the point of the Declaration and the Constitution--and of the various oaths we swear, the pledges of allegiance we make--that our individual backgrounds should recede as we assume the duties of public office or when we exercise our rights as citizens? Perhaps not in the eyes of Barack Obama. Even by the standard of political types, he seems strikingly self-preoccupied and self-referential. Doesn't Obama's self-regard sometimes seem greater than his regard for the position he occupies? Does he understand that the office of the presidency is bigger--much bigger--than he is? Or does Obama think of the presidency primarily as a vessel through which to exercise his political gifts and pursue his personal achievements? Obama told the Newsweek reporter he wants to hold a "Muslim summit."
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POPSWho We Are We are clippers. :) Clippers with varied political and religious backgrounds grew tired of the tyrants who wished to rule them and banded together to promote liberty and independence. They produced an amazing variety of clips to promote these ideas and to turn public opinion to their way of thinking. The ingenuity, optimism and apparently inexhaustible enthusiasm made the revolution's success possible. Clip Song
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POPS"The Next Tip Is To Be Absolutely Ruthless,"Says Director of Camp Obama "Listening, listening, listening. Listening is the No. 1 tool," she says. They hold a mock Iowa caucus in which campers learn to try to lure other candidates' supporters to Obama during re-alignment periods. Building alliances Just about all the candidates' campaigns do some version of this volunteer training but others don't have the candidates' own backgrounds to draw on in mapping out the training regimen. Alinsky had been dead for a decade when Obama came to organize in Chicago in the '80s, but his disciples were here ready to train him as Woodards is ready to train the volunteers.
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POPSBest GIMP Tutorials and Resources The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is a free piece of software available for Windows, Mac and Linux Operating systems for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. If you don’t want to pay for Photoshop, it is a viable alternative.
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POPSThe Human Journey Are we all related? This project is fantastic, and could very well break down barriers of race and nationalities that exist and hopefully bring us all closer. We are all human, after all!