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POPSYour brain lies to you This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.
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POPSHow Hatred Transforms Your Brain "What is surprising is the degree to which hatred is associated with logic and planning. The researchers write in their paper: What seems not to be in doubt is that this cortical zone involves the premotor cortex, a zone that has been implicated in the preparation of motor planning and its execution. We hypothesize that the sight of a hated person mobilizes the motor system for the possibility of attack or defense. In addition, the involvement of the frontal pole consider to be critical in predicting the action of others, arguably an important feature when confronted by a hated person . . . it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgment in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise extract revenge."
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POPS50 Funniest Short Job Descriptions Ever # Tell forty year-old men it’s okay to behave like fourteen year-old school girls: Printing Press Production Coordinator # Provide arcane information on a need-to-know basis: Chief Accountant # Shepherd clients through the process of setting their products on fire: Consumer Products Tester # Manage urban renewal and pest control: B-52 Bomber pilot # Persuade kids that it’s really fun being wet, cold and scared out of their minds: Sailing Instructor # Draw up plans for something that will not be built according to those plans: Civil Engineer, Transportation Design # Teach kids to be evil…or so they say: Video Game Creator # Ensure that stupid people stay in the gene pool: Lifeguard
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POPSStudy: 93% Of People Talked About Once They Leave Room "As well as their breath, body odor, speech patterns, and the way they walked, not to mention general discussion based on the perception that the participant who had left the room was most likely a world-class prick." According to the data, 89 percent of volunteers appeared to listen attentively to the subject's receding footsteps, 47 percent raised their eyebrows and smirked as the subject left, and 23 percent mouthed the words "what the fuck" to others in the room as the door was closing, which usually triggered bouts of stifled giggling Perhaps most exciting was the 9 percent of volunteers who silently flipped the subject off as they left the room, Phillips said the lower-order cognitive functions responsible for knee-jerk gossiping may have played an ancient role in survival by encouraging those in proximity to band together.
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POPSPolitical Junkies: Why it Feels Good to Be an Extremist In The Political Brain , psychologist Drew Western summarizes fMRI experiments exploring the neuro-psychology of systematic bias and rationalization in the brains of political extremists. Finding ways to dismiss contradictory evidence triggers pleasant emotional releases in partisans' brains, eventually becoming a pleasurable, learned behavior. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased "reasoning." These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their "fix," giving new meaning to the term political junkie.
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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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POPSMusic Reduced to Beautiful Math "You can use these geometrical spaces to provide ways of visualizing musical pieces," Tymoczko told LiveScience. "These spaces give us a much better and comprehensive picture of the space of all possible chords."
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POPSbeautiful simplicity He doesn’t find the need to try and make things look cool. “Whenever I try to make something “cool” it tends to just look like crap.” He lets the beauty take care of itself.<<
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POPSVery Sobering Images of the World Today Do not look at these if you are upset real easily, because they are awful, but they are real of what's going on round the world today. Still absolutely shocking though, it should't be going on anymore! Their is enough money in the world to stop this!
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POPS Free of acid - Blotter art - magnificent! "Albert Hofmann (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008 ) was a Swiss scientist best known for having been the first to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)".
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POPSTop 10 New World-Changing Innovations of the Year 2008 Breakthrough Awards /// The Innovators The early 20th century produced a breathtaking succession of innovations—the Wright Flyer, the Model T, the Panama Canal. It was a golden age of engineering. A century hence, observers may well look back at our era in much the same way: Cars are being reimagined from the wheels up. Advances in solar energy show the way past fossil fuels. And space probes explore planets that could become our future homes. These pages salute the innovators who are inventing the future. Welcome to the new golden age.
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POPSIt's Okay To Be Afraid Don't let such fear rule your life. If I did, I would never ever be able to get on an aeroplane. To say I feel fear every single time I travel by air, would be an understatement. I hope the desensitizing bit kicks in soon, because it never seems to get any easier, "flooding" or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mX9-2xuyP8
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POPSThe Wonders of Blood Blood is the one tissue that comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, and it is through blood that our disparate parts communicate, through blood that our organs cooperate. Without a circulatory system, there would be no internal civilization, no means of ensuring orderly devotion to the common cause that is us. “It’s an enormous communications network,” Dr. Schafer said — the original cellphone system, if you will, 100 trillion users strong. Blood can also be thought of as a private ocean, a recapitulation of what life was like for all the years we spent drifting as microscopic, single-celled organisms, “taking up nutrients from sea water and then eliminating waste products back into sea water,” Dr. Schafer said. Not only is blood mostly water, but the watery portion of blood, the plasma, has a concentration of salt and other ions that is remarkably similar to sea water. Keep reading.
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