28
POPSThe Creative Personality " Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the result of creativity. What makes us different from apes—our language, values, artistic expression, scientific understanding, and technology—is the result of individual ingenuity that was recognized, rewarded, and transmitted through learning."
27
POPS"Wireless" Electricity Next step: wireless calories, wireless memory inputs directly into our brains who knows... maybe that Demolition Man fantasy will someday come true and we'll have "wireless" sex
27
POPSNew hyperspace engine could roundtrip Mars in 5 hours The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics awards prizes for the best papers presented each year. Last year’s winner went to a paper authored by physicist Jochem Hauser, calling for experimental tests of Heim’s theory. “This hyperdrive motor,” Hauser said, “would propel a craft through another dimension at enormous speeds. It could reach a star eleven light years away in just eighty days.”
23
POPSDéjà vu: Where fact meets fantasy "Déjà vu can happen to anyone, and anyone who has had it will recognise the description immediately. It is more than just a sense that you have seen or done something before; it is a startling, inappropriate and often disturbing sense that history is repeating, and impossibly so. You can't place where the earlier encounter happened, and it can feel like a premonition or a dream. Subjective, strange and fleeting, not to mention tainted by paranormal explanations, the phenomenon has been a difficult and unpopular one to study. Now that is changing...."
21
POPSChildhood "ending sooner", survey finds A survey finds that today's children stop believing in imaginary creatures much earlier than their parents did, and that many children are pressured by parents to perform well in school and extracurricular activities (this is new?).
21
POPSNew games powered by brain waves In a report this week USA Today newspaper said game maker Uncle Milton plans to release a similar game this year. Called "Force Trainer" it is named after "The Force" powers of Yoda and Luke Skywalker in the popular Star Wars films. The game calls for players to lift a ball inside a transparent tube using their powers of concentration. "It's been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force," the daily quoted Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, as saying. "Force Trainer" also uses electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure electrical activity in the brain recorded on a headset containing sensors.
21
POPSAre we about to eliminate AIDS? Yet the idea of eliminating HIV is so appealing, and the benefit to humanity so huge, that scientists and policy-makers are seriously considering the concept, albeit on regional scales. In the next few months the World Health Organization (WHO) will meet to discuss how the idea could be tried in developing countries, and something approaching elimination might be attempted in the UK within the next decade. "You could eliminate transmission overnight," says Marcus Conant, an HIV specialist in San Francisco. Read on the interesting article.
21
POPSRepublicans: Crazy, Or Nuts?
Who in their right mind would argue with the observations in this article? More: "The Republican Party has become an aggregation of people who prefer to live in a world of fantasy -- and their first fantasy, the Ur-myth on which the entire conceit rests, is (classically) "we are the realists." "It degrades, into farce and Newspeak, from there. The perpetrators and defenders of the outing of a CIA agent are "patriots." Tom DeLay is a "leader" and Newt Gingrich is a "visionary." The President plays guitar while New Orleans drowns, causes a hundred thousand Americans and Iraqis to be killed or injured, and outsources torture, and it's the Democrats who, per the repellent Ramesh Ponnuru, are the "party of death." "It has gotten so that you have to muster all the compassion and understanding of which you are capable just to think of the Republicans as a party of greedy corporatists manipulating the credulous, the provincial, and the bigoted. That's the nice way of putting it.”
20
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.
19
POPS 25 Various Styles of The Wizard of Oz Illustrations The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical-fantasy film mainly directed by Victor Fleming and based on the 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. In the film, Dorothy, a schoolgirl living in Kansas, is struck unconscious during a tornado. She dreams about how she and her dog Toto, with the help of a Scarecrow, a Tin man and a Cowardly Lion, find their way home from the magical world of Oz.
17
POPSPosthuman Stories Are Creation Myths Turned Upside Down An interesting perspective to ponder about: Are the posthuman & transhumanist movements the new belief-systems for scientific-mindsetted non-believers? Where lies that fine line between religion, belief, speculation & reality, naive optimism & depressive realism? How does our cultural heritage influence this reversal from past to future? And also a link to the free scifi ebook on this topic.
17
POPSThis is no fantasy or trick of the light - Upside down rainbow Upside down rainbow - The circumzenithal arc or cicumzenith arc (CZA), also called the Bravais' arc, is an optical phenomenon similar in appearance to a rainbow and arising from refraction of sunlight through non-terminated, horizontally-oriented ice crystals in certain clouds. It takes the shape of one-quarter of a circle centered at the zenith and parallel to the horizon, on the same side as the sun. Its colors run from blue near the zenith to red towards the horizon; it is one of the brightest and most colorful halos" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumzenithal_arc
Most Pops
see Most Pops
81
Clips
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update