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POPSMoa Tse Tung & Obama Mt Rushmore Christmas Ornaments At White House ~ WTF! Oh, once again the Obama’s were unaware. Do these people pay attention to anything other than their own ego? Why let a holiday season come between the White House and making some political statements? The White House pegged controversial designer Simon Doonan to oversee the Christmas decorations for the White House. Mr. Doonan, who is creative director of Barney’s New York has often caused a stir with his design choices. Like his naughty yuletide window display of Margaret Thatcher as a dowdy dominatrix and Dan Quayle as a ventriloquist’s dummy. For this year’s White House, he didn’t disappoint. YouTube - Mao Ornament on Obama's Christmas Tree YouTube VIDEO (0:35) http://bit.ly/5vzBw7
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POPS“A Christmas Story” If you haven’t seen “A Christmas Story,” you’re in luck, as TBS runs a 24-hour marathon of the film every year, starting at 8 p.m. tonight and concluding 6 p.m. Christmas Day. It’s the perfect opportunity for your initiation to what will quickly become a must-watch film on your Christmas movie list. A Christmas Story IMDb user comments http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/usercomments
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POPSPlaying A Character Palin and those conservative women who aspire to be like her love living in ignorance. They have been eating, sleeping, and working in pollution so long that they not only believe that is just the way the air is, but they advocate the air is not polluted and actually good for you. They buy into that twisted kind of logic because their survival and identity depends upon it. The stress of having to pretend to be innately superior at all times and buy into this belief system is more than the human organism can tolerate so they become angry, hateful, intolerant wanna be bullies who aspire to have a Sarah Palin book under their Christmas tree. To challenge them or doubt them is akin to heresy. Too bad they are buying into the myth that states there is only one reality because it limits the search in seeking any understanding for other human beings. Sad and pathetic.
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POPS How We Know They Know They Are Lying
with the expectations of the sponsors. Like the royal favourites of mediaeval times, they soar in the air on a zephyr of preferment, only to get too close to the sun and plunge to earth. Which brings us to: Secrecy In the security of powerful patronage some of the new brigade began to think that they were above not only the procedures of science, but of all other academic disciplines as well. In the case of the notorious Hockey Stick, for example, they claimed that knowledge from history, art, literature, archaeology etc. was all wrong and that their computer manipulation of such tenuous data as tree rings established that the Little Ice Age and the Mediaeval Warm Period never happened. The most powerful patrons of all, the UN, seized on the results and made them the main feature of one of their apocalyptic IPCC reports on the coming climate disaster. One of the first tests of any scientific work is to pose the question “Can the results be reproduced?”
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POPSTiger Woods Fart Caused Car Crash I opened up the car door and immediately knew what had happened. There was a rancid odour permeating from the vehicle, and it could only have been one of Tiger's choicest air biscuits." Mr Woods (Tiger) has today announced that he will not be able to appear at his very own tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, because he has an arsehole strain.
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POPS100 Things blamed on Global Warming 26. Snowfall in Baghdad 27. Western tree deaths 28. Diminishing desert resources 29. Pine beetles 30. Swedish beetles 31. Severe acne 32. Global conflict 33. Crash of Air France 447 34. Black Hawk Down incident 35. Amphibians breeding earlier 36. Flesh-eating disease 37. Global cooling 38. Bird strikes on US Airways 1549 39. Beer tastes different 40. Cougar attacks in Alberta 41. Suicide of farmers in Australia 42. Squirrels reproduce earlier 43. Monkeys moving to Great Rift Valley in Kenya 44. Confusion of migrating birds 45. Bigger tuna fish 46. Water shortages in Las Vegas 47. Worldwide hunger 48. Longer days 49. Earth spinning faster 50. Gender balance of crocodiles
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POPSCalifornia's old-growth redwoods: Tree therapy amid ancient coastal giants More: The national spotlight is being cast on the park again this month with the Redwood Empire featured in National Geographic magazine. The centerpiece is a fold-out photograph of one of the park's giants, the Iluvatar Tree, the world's third-largest coast redwood at 20 1/2 feet in diameter and 320 feet tall… Of the trails that provide access to old-growth in California, the James Irvine Loop is one of the best. This loop is a 7.5-mile round trip that provides a route past a succession of giants. It's easy enough that most anybody can simply walk a half mile and back to get a feel for an ancient forest. It's long enough that the entire loop delivers a sense of discovery and awe with each grove, and the good, clean feeling that comes with hiking a few hours in a pristine landscape. This trip can change how you feel about things for a long time. Big trees can do that.
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POPSLA Official Blames Environmentalists for Raging Wildfires Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species. "Our air quality, for a variety of factors, doesn't need to be further reduced by these controlled burns," she said. /tree-hugging eco-whacko
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POPSFood of the week: Olives Tips for Preparing Olives: To pit olives, press them with the flat side of a broad bladed knife. This will help break the flesh so that you can easily remove the pit with your fingers or the knife. The brine in which olives are packed can be used as a replacement for salted water in recipes. Toss pasta with chopped olives, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and fresh herbs of your choice. Marinate olives in olive oil, lemon zest, coriander seeds and cumin seeds.
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POPSThe children who survive plane crashes "The most miraculous story occurred in 1972 when Vesna Vulovi´c, a 22-year-old flight attendant on a Yugoslav Airlines flight, survived a fall from 33,000ft, a record. The DC-10 she was flying in was blown up mid-air by a bomb planted in a suitcase by Croatian separatists. Vulovi´c was serving food at the time, and the next thing she knew she was waking up on a snow-covered mountain. Of the 28 people on board, she was the only one to survive. Not only had she escaped incineration in the explosion but also crushing from the depressurization inside the plane, asphyxiation caused by the speed of her fall – 200mph – and death on impact when hitting the ground. The snow had cushioned her fall. "
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POPS 10 Wacky Tree Facts 6. Palm trees in the snow Although most of us associate palm trees with tropical beaches, some species of palms are actually very hardy in cold weather. 7. It is a very popular ornamental plant in East Asia, associated with good fortune and wealth, and often found in offices. Easy to care for, money trees are often used as beginner bonsai plants. 8. Tea from a tree The essential oil of the tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) is naturally antifungal and antibiotic, and can safely be used topically to treat minor cuts, burns, acne, athlete's foot, mild fungal nail infections and more, according to WebMD. 9. Sweet tree Sugar maple trees, native to the hardwood forests of North America. 10. Yes, they're related Apple trees are actually part of the rose family (Rosaceae), which includes 3,000 to 4,000 species such as roses, blackberries, raspberries, pears, almonds and many others.
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POPS'Eureka machine' works (it is not April 1st) The Cornell machine uses a computer program that can search through huge amounts of data and look for underlying patterns. For example, a falling apple will abide by Newton's second law, which is often stated as F=ma, where F is the force acting on an object, m is its mass, and a is its acceleration. When fed information on the mass of the apple and its velocity as it falls, the machine would be able to work out the equation. Lipson tested the machine by giving it information from basic lab experiments, such as swinging pendulums and tiny cars that moved up and down tracks on a cushion of air. After crunching through the data, the machine pinged and displayed several laws of motion and conservation of momentum. The system runs its own checks to decide whether the laws it has found are likely to be interesting.
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POPSThe Origin of the Hero Tree The Air Force awarded Herod a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross. Captain Herod’s actions were in entire disregard of his person, and in the finest traditions of the Texas Air National Guard and the United States Air Force he so gallantly represented.
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POPS12 Ways to Build with a Smaller Carbon Footprint Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated & they create 48% of our greenhouse gases. Main Points: * Every brick in building required the burning of fossil fuel in its manufacture, every piece of lumber was cut and transported using energy * Aim for a complete ban of formaldehyde use in building products * Building demolitions account for 48% of the waste stream (65 million tons a year), renovations account for 44% and renovations account for 8% * A solar water heater can save $ 450 a year and keep a ton of CO2 emissions out of the air; multiply that by 80 million houses in the USA * While smaller is better almost every city has minimum floor area requirements * The losses are higher in AC than in DC because it grounds so easily * The average 1950’s house was 983 sq feet; by 1970 it was 1500 SF; last year it was 2350 SF * We can no longer afford to lose agricultural land close to our cities and towns
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POPS"How The Nazis Stole Christmas" continues (full text at source): We tend to think of the relationship between organised religion and totalitarian regimes – as in the Soviet Union – as one in which freedom of religious belief and expression are ruthlessly suppressed in the name of the unity of the state. But if that is the case, what exactly is taking place in our notional Christmas scene – one which could be taking place in any German town from 1933 to 1943? Does the substitution of the swastika for the cross reveal the Nazis’ transformation of a key Christian festival into a pagan rite, an appropriation of a popular tradition for political ends or an uneasy coexistence between the German people’s old-fashioned Christmas pleasures and the imperatives of their new masters?
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