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POPSTen cognitive distortions that mess you up David Burns is a pioneer in popularizing the cognitive-behavioral approach to mood therapy developed by Aaron Beck. As someone who has struggled on and off with crippling depression my whole life, I have found this list of "cognitive distortions" pretty useful in reframing certain elements of my thinking.
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POPSBeautiful and immortal advice. A MUST read! Like the guy on the webpage this is linked to, I also found this letter among my dad's printed emails to me while I was away in university in another country. My dad has long departed since then, but every time I read these words Lincoln wrote to his son's teacher, they bring a tear to my eyes. Beautiful and sincere advice for anyone to follow.
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POPSVagina Clip This clip is in honor of the ridiculous decision by a school in New York to suspend a few students for using the word vagina during a reading of The Vagina Monologues.
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POPSOne World, Many Minds: Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom In recent decades scientists have cast aside a linear, sequential view of brain evolution in which the human brain incorporates components resembling the brains of modern fishes, amphibians, reptiles and birds and have adopted a new view of divergently branching brain and mind evolution. Substantial cognitive abilities have evolved multiple times, based on differing neural substrates—including the mental agility that enables us humans to decipher brain evolution and its meaning
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POPSOur Rights Taken Away By Corporations
"He went on to specify how this could happen: direct seed movement by birds, by wind, especially on the prairies, by floods, and through cross-pollination by bees). It doesn’t actually matter how the genetically modified organisms get into an organic farmer’s field or into the fields of a conventional farmer like myself: once there, those seeds and plants become Monsanto’s property.” It was a very startling decision. The judge also ruled that we were not allowed to use our seeds or plants again and that all the seeds and plants that we had developed over 50 years became the property of Monsanto. The judge also ruled that all the profit from my 1998 canola crop was payable to Monsanto. The judge further ruled that even from the land that had no contamination, all profit would be payable to Monsanto because there was a probability that our seed contained some of Monsanto’s GMOs. The really worrying thing is how we can lose our rights and freedoms. The contract from Monsanto, take
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POPSThe Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Also Know As The Trash Vortex 
Sad Picture: No one to blame for this but ourselves. Four fifths of the plastic detritus floating over 2.5 million square miles of ocean surface arrives there from land-based run off: from stormwater, in other words: litter. Sadly - many people take the "out of sight, out of mind" approach. Plastic contamination in the world's oceans is worse than previously imagined and no amount of technology can clean it up. We are damned to a future of pollution by plastic. All succeeding generations will only see an ocean filled with trash. Net a piece of plastic, and you’ll find barnacles and small crabs clinging to it. Not a good thing for fish, birds, and mammals that mistake it for its natural food, such as eggs, jellyfish, or other sea creatures. Most of the plastic will eventually photo-degrade into small, dust-like particles to the point that it will be non-detectable to the human eye, but ingestible by sea mammals, birds, and fish—many of which we then consume ourselves.
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POPSAnimal senses humans don't have You might think you're smart, but none of your senses rival the keenest abilities in the animal world. Animals see in the dark, sniff prey miles away, and detect electrical output from muscle twitches in hidden meals. Read on, so you don't become one of those meals.<<
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POPSWhy you never see a baby pigeon It seems that the babies don't leave the nest until they look very similar to adult pigeons. We probably do see babies, but we can't recognize them.
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POPSWant to be President? Kill some birds. Who cares!?!? We're electing someone to be President of the United States. Someone who will be empowered with massive authority who will make decisions that impact the lives of everyone. The fact that they can shoot birds is just entirely irrelevant to me. Scratch that...the fact that they enjoy shooting birds makes me think they definitely should not be president. And i really despise Huckabee referring to killing birds as "knowing the culture of being outdoors." For me, being outdoors consists of activities such as having a catch, lying on the beach, skiing, walking in the park and a lot of other things that don't result in the death of any living being.
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POPSA kiss will never miss ~ How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said. ~ Victor Hugo ~It will be the kiss by which all others in your life will be judged...and found wanting.~ Hearts in Atlantis
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POPSA Most Private Evolution Trying to understand counterintuitive sexual parts and habits follows in the best of scientific traditions. As Charles Darwin worked on evolution, he pondered male phenomena that looked useless, or even harmful, for surviving. Outsized horns on male beetles puzzled him, as did male birds with gorgeous plumage. Out of this consternation came his insight into a process he called sexual selection, which he distinguished from natural selection. There may be survival of the fittest, but there’s also survival of the sexiest. “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” Darwin wrote in a letter to the botanist Asa Gray, albeit in a whimsical paragraph. Nauseated or not, Darwin was willing to step beyond survival of the fittest.