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POPSSleep Amnesia: Why Do We Forget Our Dreams? The Mind in Sleep: Psychology and Psychophysiology mentions dream kinesthesia as a potential suspect. It happens when we lose the physical movements in our sleep as soon as we physically move after waking up (such as when we reach for the alarm clock). Another possibility is that our memories are formed through repetition and finding connections to other parts of our lives. So when dreams are especially unique (read: crazy) or too undefined to be relatable, it’s harder to tie them to real-life events and remember them. Christof Koch, points out the incongruity between our brains’ being so active during REM sleep (the deep-sleep stage in our sleep cycles) and only vaguely recalling dream details when we awaken. brain waves that roll through during deep sleep may impede information processing. This is a more scientific approach to the brain-recall conundrum.
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POPSPelosi Health Care Bill Blows a Kiss to Trial Lawyers
While there is debate over the details, it is clear that medical malpractive lawsuits have some impact on driving health care costs higher. There are likely a number of procedures that are done simply as a defense against future possible litigation. Recall this from the Washington Post: “Lawmakers could save as much as $54 billion over the next decade by imposing an array of new limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, congressional budget analysts said today " a substantial sum that could help cover the cost of President Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health system. New research shows that legal reforms would not only lower malpractice insurance premiums for medical providers, but would also spur providers to save money by ordering fewer tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, wrote in a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).”
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POPS GOP Set to Propose Its Own Health Bill Republicans have talked about a variety of alternatives to Democratic efforts on health care, but decided to put out their own bill after seeing details of the legislation unveiled by Democrats last Thursday. GOP leaders hope to offer the measure as an alternative during debate on the Democratic bill, and a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Republicans would be allowed to do so. In the Senate, where Democratic leaders are pushing a proposal to create a new government-run insurance plan, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, made clear again Sunday that he opposed the idea. The senator said he wouldn't try to block debate on the bill, but signaled he would support any Republican efforts to block a vote on it. by Greg Hitt at wsj.com
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POPSThe First 500 Pages of Obamacare • Page 91: Government mandates linguistic infrastructure for services; translation: illegal aliens • Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan. • Page 102: Those eligible for Medicaid will be automatically enrolled: you have no choice in the matter. • Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed. • Page 127: The AMA sold doctors out: the government will set wages. • Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. • Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families. • Page 149: Any employer with a payroll of $400K or more, who does not offer the public option, pays an 8% tax on payroll • Page 150: Any employer with a payroll of $250K-400K or more, who does not offer the public option,
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POPSEnd the Use of Live Pigs for Training at Baystate Medical Center The study Dying to Learn: Exposing the Supply of Dogs and Cats to Higher Education also found that both medical and veterinary students can learn just as well through alternative teaching methods that can include hands on training at shelters for vet students and simulators for medical students. Dying to Learn site: http://www.dyingtolearn.org/cruella.html
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POPSDeath of a DSLR? Phooey!
Author predicts the death of the DSLR based on historical events with cameras. In my opinion, many SLR users did not give up the SLR for a pocket 110. I hardly see a DSLR user giving in totally to a rangefinder or (point and shoot) camera regardless of its upgraded features. I will say however, that the article sheds a new light for me on a question that I've had. As a SLR and DSLR user, I've been wondering why Nikon (specifically) has chosen to upgrade their 10 and 12 mp cameras (and with video) rather than come out with a new camera with say... 15mp. There are point and shoots out now that are capable of 12mp at a price in the same neighborhood as a DSLR with 10mp. It's an uneasy feeling waiting for that 15mp DSLR and watching everything around it 'upgraded' for image quality. Is Nikon trying to appease the masses and draw in crowds of people to DSLR by offering their old flagships as new flagships with video capabilities? Thereby keeping the DSLR alive? If so, than w
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POPS Meat creates half of all greenhouse gases People are cutting down rain forests to make grazing land for cattle, or to grow soya beans for cattle to eat. Now the numbers of methane emitting livestock are orders of magnitude greater than they were only 50 years ago.
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POPS Obama’s Media Control Strategy It looks like various progressive groups are lining up at the public trough for their share of the loot. They have in mind what the George Soros-funded Free Press calls "an alternative media infrastructure." These days we have conservative talk radio, Fox News, and alternatives to the "mainstream" media on the Internet. It is obvious that the Obama Administration and its progressive backers don't appreciate this new state of affairs. Ornstein contrasted what can be, under federal direction, to what we are witnessing "now on health reform," when so many dissenting voices are being heard. He added, "It becomes much more difficult when you have a cacophonous system with fragmented areas of communication." And that "cacophony and fragmentation" is most apparent on the Internet, he said. In other words, those naughty conservatives are standing in the way of Obama's health care reform plan. A new national broadband plan, combined with the just-announced FCC plan for . . .
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POPSCommonly overused words "When you write, use the most precise word for your meaning, not the word that comes to mind first. Consult this thesaurus to find alternatives for some commonly overused words. Consult a full-length thesaurus to find alternatives to words that do not appear here. Keep in mind that the choices offered in a thesaurus do not all mean exactly the same thing. Review all the options, and choose the one that best expresses your meaning."
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POPSWhy Socialists Pursue Socialism to the Ends of the Earth . . . and offers the only internally consistent explanation for their historic obsession with divisive policy. From their early support of Hitler to their central role in the current financial crisis, the Left’s contribution to domestic and foreign policy at federal, state and local levels can only be described as wantonly destructive. Their takeover of schools and popular culture has been equally toxic. Their environmental radicalism has spawned the energy crisis, while offering no viable alternatives. It defies logic. But there is logic, a deadly logic, and in the '60’s, two radicals gave it a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. As explained in the prior article in this series, the goal was to create a groundswell of demands for public services to overwhelm government, create crisis and usher in a widespread call for fundamental economic reform at the federal level, with socialism the ultimate goal. Cloward and Piven focused on welfare, voting,
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POPS500,000 Troops Will Be Required Over Five Years in Afghanistan Congress should immediately convene hearings to discuss alternatives to General McChrystal's proposal for such a massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan. It is time for the administration and Congress to demilitarize U.S. policy in Afghanistan and strike out in a new, sustainable, direction.
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POPSIs America Hooked on War?
When it comes to war (and peace), we live in a world of American Newspeak in which alternatives to a state of war are not only ever more unacceptable, but ever harder to imagine. War is now our permanent situation. It lacks, for instance, "victory." But achieving victory no longer seems to matter. War American-style is now conceptually unending, as are preparations for it. In a sense, the ongoing war system can't absorb victory. Any such endpoint might indeed prove to be a kind of defeat. Similarly drained of its traditional meaning has been the word "security". If we ever decided we were either secure enough, or more willing to live without the unreachable idea of total security, the American way of war and the national security state would lose much of their meaning. In other words, in our world, security is insecurity. And peace itself? Simply put, there's no money in it. America's true religion and addiction, is force. Americans are --always--marching as to war.
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POPS Chrome for Clunkers In a little more than a year, Google Chrome, the search company's speedy and innovative Web browser, has managed to win over about 3 percent of Internet surfers. Is that good or bad? It's certainly not a blockbuster, but consider the hurdles Google faces. Unlike Internet Explorer or Safari, Chrome doesn't come pre-installed on any computers. True, Mozilla Firefox faces the same problem"but Firefox, which now has about 23 percent of the market, has been around since 2004. You might also argue that Firefox captured an easy market"people who were sick of IE and wanted something better. Chrome can't do the same; everyone who wanted to leave IE has done so already, and the only folks left to convert are those who don't know any better. How do you persuade people to upgrade their browser when they don't even know what a browser is? You hide the upgrade. That seems to be the ingenious theory behind Chrome Frame, a plug-in for Internet Explorer that Google unveiled this week.
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POPS The Biden Plan Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics. The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan. Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again . . .
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POPS President Interdum Fidelis Let's include the stated reason for the review: Obama is shocked - shocked! - to learn that there is corruption in Karzai's government: But the Afghan presidential elections, widely marred by allegations of fraud, undermined the administration’s confidence that it had a reliable partner in President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden already had raised doubts about Mr. Karzai, which were only exacerbated by the fear that even if he emerges from a runoff election, he will have little credibility with his own people. “A counterinsurgency strategy can only work if you have a credible and legitimate Afghan partner. That’s in doubt now,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s strategy review of Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year. “Part of the reason you are seeing a hesitancy to jump deeper into the pool is that they are looking to see if they can make lemonade out of the lemons we got from the Afghan election.”
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POPSOur Missile-Defense Race Against Iran "Our security depends in large measure on beating Iran to the punch. If the U.S. succeeds in deploying missile defenses capable of intercepting Iranian long-range missiles before they are developed, it will help protect itself, its allies and its troops from the menace posed by a nuclear Iran. But if missile defenses become operational after Iran's long-range missile capability does, both America and its allies will find themselves vulnerable to nuclear blackmail, or worse, from the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism." I know no one wants to read this stuff and have this debate. It comes down to trust. Do you trust Russia? Iran? it's satellite minions? This President? The power of the UN? The EU? I abhor looking to other countries...hoping...that they will protect our overseas military or even our homeland.
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POPSReading List: The Healing of America; World's Health Care Systems When Mr. Reid presents his shoulder to his own orthopedist in Colorado, the doctor is quick to recommend a shoulder replacement. It will cost his insurer tens of thousands of dollars (assuming it agrees to pay), with unknown co-payments for him. In Japan, the foremost orthopedist in the country (waiting time for an appointment, less than a day) offers a range of possible treatments, from steroid injections to surgery, all covered by insurance. (“Think about it, and call me.”) In an Ayurvedic hospital in India, a regimen of meditation, rice, lentils and massage paid for entirely out of pocket, $42.85 per night, led to “obvious improvement in my frozen joint,” Mr. Reid writes, adding, “To this day, I don’t know why it happened.”
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POPSProposed Power Corridor Raises Eminent Domain Concerns in Six States In addition to concerns expressed by farmers, local businesses relying on eco-tourism are opposed to the lines, which they fear would permanently blight places of significance like Harriet Tubman's birthplace and the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Landowners, environmentalists and businesses that oppose the power line are urging representatives to consider alternatives, such as wind power or burying the lines. If the project is rejected at the State level, PHI could invoke federal eminent domain powers, under the Energy Policy Act of 2005: In the event that the Mid-Atlantic Power Pathway is not approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission, PHI would be able use the power of eminent domain under Federal authority. Section 1221 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides authority for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review and override state siting decisions as well as other federal and state laws and policy and . . . .
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