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POPSHeartbreaking Nature Story We know that whales are intelligent. Whether they are self aware is another matter. Yet, there is something very poignant about this story.
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POPSSwearing at Work Good for You Perhaps not earth shattering news, but a reminder that much of our talk is not to convey information but to maintain group solidarity, identity etc. and answer our most basic psychological needs.
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POPSThe Duplicates Paradox Personal identity is perceived as continuous through time. Yet this perception cannot be instantaneous, and must be based on memory. Given the fact that memories can be forgotten, altered or even fabricated, the question arises as to whether memories are essential for personal identity. Certainly no specific memory seems necessary for identity, but a perception of a continuity of the memory process is often believed to be. Subjective experience involves not just memory, but thoughts, desires, feelings and personality. Even when subjectivity is focused on the "outside world", this focus necessarily has a point of view. Any attempt to describe personal identity impersonally will lose an essential element. A self has both sensation and will.
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POPSJihadist Video Shows 12 Year Old Boy Beheading Man 12! 12! 12! What the F@#$. The Boy was 12 and doing this crap. Now you tell me, Where will the outrage be say, from the CAIR organization, denouncing such a horrible act. The BOY was 12 for God sake. He did not need to be part of a beheading. If Islam and Muslims do not speak out then there is no hope for Islam.
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POPSWho's Minding the Mind? New studies have found that people tidy up more thoroughly when there’s a faint tang of cleaning liquid in the air; they become more competitive if there’s a briefcase in sight, or more cooperative if they glimpse words like “dependable” and “support” — all without being aware of the change, or what prompted it. In describing my own research or cognitive science in general to people, the most difficult obstacle I would eventually encounter was the stubborn human belief that there was a independent entity — a free will — in charge of everything important that goes on in their brain. While science has been steadily dismantling this understandable misconception for decades, recent studies on subconscious social priming like these would have helped me demonstrate my point. To be fair, it's more than a little disconcerting to realize what a messy mix of competing, semi-independent, multi-layered neural modules are responsible for producing our daily behavior.
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POPSWhat is "Ask-Philosophers"? "This site puts the talents and knowledge of philosophers at the service of the general public. Send in a question that you think might be related to philosophy and we will do our best to respond to it. To date, there have been 2362 questions posted and 3069 responses"
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POPS9/11 of its Day. Today: King David Atrocity. From criminal, to terrorist, to killer, to Prime Minister, to Nobel Peace Prize winner, yes it had to be a Zionist. Menachem Begin was commander of the Irgun terrorist gang then more infamous and feared than today's al Qaeda . Begin wrote in his memoirs, The Revolt: " History and experience taught us that if we are able to destroy the prestige of the British in Palestine, the regime will break. Since we found the enslaving government's weak point, we did not let go of it. " Words that could be about the USA instead of the Brits by al Qaeda and not the Prime Minister of Israel. Any Arab terrorists have a long long way to go in the terrorist league to catch the Zionists.
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POPSWhy you aren’t nearly as unique as you think? "Since 1994, photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek have been trekking the globe together, recording Exactitudes — “exact attitudes” captu(red) in people’s peculiar dress code as an attempt to differentiate themselves from others or identify with a group."
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POPS"I'm a kafir (unbeliever) and my blood is halal (allowed to be spilled)" "Both women, who refused to give their real names, go online daily to debate religion with fellow atheists -- and the few believers hardy enough to brave their barbs -- from safely behind their computer screens. they also say; "It's easier to say that you're gay than an atheist." Asked what she would be without the Internet, Didi laughed: "I would be a full-closet atheist."
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POPScon tem po rary art seems like an interesting site 4 photography & art. last photo: "Guys & Dolls: Seeing Stars", is a two-person exhibition of photographs by Rose Hartman and Holger Keifel that juxtaposes revealing moments of boxing personalities with those of social celebrities. Dating from the 1970's through today, Rose Hartman and Holger Keifel's photographs include world known figures, such as Jackie O, Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell, Oscar de la Hoya,
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POPSSave the languages, save the world Linguistic integrity is as important to our survival as a species as environmentalism. Check out the source to see why. Many resources and information at www.terralingua.org.
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POPSThe Immaculate Designer Prosthesis Human morphology is not only matter of biology it is also a matter of fashion. Atztecs had a practice of reshaping their skulls. Chinese were reshaping females' feet. This is only the next step
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POPSUSS Liberty Conspiracy Unravelling, at last!
"The documents also suggest that the US government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the US., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation. "In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief US electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available athttp://www.nsa.gov/liberty . "An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman called the attack a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those
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POPSStereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure) As it turns out, research shows that such performance failures cannot always be attributed simply to inherent lack of ability or incompetence. Although some have jumped to the highly controversial conclusion that differences in attainment reflect natural differences between groups, the roots of many handicaps actually lie in the stereotypes, or preconceptions, that others hold about the groups to which we belong. For instance, a woman who knows that women as a group are believed to do worse than men in math will, indeed, tend to perform less well on math tests as a result.
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POPSSense of identity What researchers are finding is that there is no single “identity spot” in the brain. Instead, the brain uses several different neural regions, working closely together, to sustain and update the identities of self and others. Learning what makes identity, researchers say, will help doctors understand how some people preserve their identities in the face of creeping dementia, and how others are sometimes able to reconstitute one.
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POPSAn Infinite Loop in the Brain - Experiencing everything over and over again
"McGaugh and his colleagues concluded that Price's episodic memory, her recollection of personal experiences and the emotions associated with them, is virtually perfect. A case like this has never been described in the history of memory research, according to McGaugh. He explains that Price differs substantially from other people with special powers of recall, such as autistic savants, because she uses no strategies to help her remember and even does a surprisingly poor job on some memory tests. It's difficult for her to memorize poems or series of numbers -- which helps explain why she never stood out in school. Her semantic memory, the ability to remember facts not directly related to everyday life, is only average. Two years ago, the scientists published their first conclusions in a professional journal without revealing the identity of their subject. Since then, more than 200 people have contacted McGaugh, all claiming to have an equally perfect episodic memory. Most of them
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POPSTowards a neuropsychology of religion: 'Doctrinal' rituals help create semantic memories of key concepts and emotional response through associative learning, while 'imagistic' rituals help create episodic memories of specific situations that may involve altered states of consciousness and the experience of other realities.
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POPSDark, Perhaps Forever - Clueless about the universe Whatever proposal is eventually selected, the dark energy satellite will return a tidal wave of data about the universe and its weird denizens, both visible and invisible. This data is likely to transform astronomy in unpredictable ways, but there is no guarantee that it will nail the mystery of dark energy. “We really need new theory, and we have none,” Dr. Krauss said.
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POPS"The Masada MYTH" by Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Israeli sociologist "In 73 AD, legend has it, 960 Jewish rebels under siege in the ancient desert fortress of Masada committed suicide (in conflict with Judaism’s teachings) rather than surrender to a Roman legion. Recorded in only one historical source, the story of Masada was obscure for centuries. Ben-Yehuda tracks the process by which Masada became an ideological symbol for the State of Israel, the dramatic subject of movies and miniseries, a shrine venerated by generations of Zionists and Israeli soldiers, and the most profitable tourist attraction in modern Israel. "Placing the story in a larger historical, sociological, and psychological context, Ben-Yehuda draws upon theories of collective memory and mythmaking to analyze Masada’s crucial role in the nation-building process of modern Israel and the formation of a new Jewish identity. An expert on deviance and social control, he looks in particular at how a military failure was fabricated as a heroic tale."
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POPSBisexuality Not A Transitional Phase Among Women. "The findings demonstrate considerable fluidity in bisexual, unlabelled and lesbian women's attractions, behaviours and identities and contribute to researchers' understanding of the complexity of sexual-minority development over the life span." Diamond used interview data collected five times over a decade from 79 women who identified as lesbian, bisexual or unlabelled. The subjects initially ranged in age from 18 to 25 years old.
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POPSGender identity isn't as simple as it seems As the case of athlete Caster Semenva (the world-class runner from South Africa) demonstrates, making a final determination on gender is not always possible, even from chromosomes. Think of the complexity this suggests about sexual preference, and the "not natural" argument some employ against homosexuality.
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