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POPSHistory of tipping in the U.S. My wife has always told me I tip too much. Genearally 15-20% depending on the service. I am considering no longer tipping at all. Any thoughts?
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POPSLee Sandlin: Losing the War Quite long – click through for the full essay. More: I figured people had to know the basics -- World War II isn't exactly easy to miss. It was the largest war ever fought, the largest single event in history. Other than the black death of the Middle Ages, it's the worst thing we know of that has ever happened to the human race. Its aftereffects surround us in countless intertwining ways… So what did the people I asked know about the war? Nobody could tell me the first thing about it. Once they got past who won they almost drew a blank. All they knew were those big totemic names -- Pearl Harbor, D day, Auschwitz, Hiroshima -- whose unfathomable reaches of experience had been boiled down to an abstract atrocity. The rest was gone… I think what my little survey really demonstrates is how vast the gap is between the experience of war and the experience of peace.
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POPSStone Age Humans Crossed Sahara in the Rain Wet spells While about 40 per cent of hydrocarbons in today's dust come from water-dependent plants, this rose to 60 per cent, first between 120,000 and 110,000 ago and again from 50,000 to 45,000 years ago. So the region seemed to be in the grip of unusually wet spells at the time. That may have been enough to allow sub-Saharan Stone Age Homo sapiens to migrate north: the first fossils of modern humans outside Africa date from 93,000 year ago in Israel. And both genetic analysis and archaeology show that humans didn't spread extensively beyond Africa until 50,000 years ago, suggesting a second migration at the time of the second wet spell. Fossil record Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York is impressed by the findings. "They tie in approximately with the information we have from the fossil record."
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POPSIt's Never Easy {{iamonetoo}} told me once that she didn't understand why it had to be so hard to be herself. She could have taken the easy way. But she didn't and I admire her. Social change is hard, long and difficult work. It will often spawn hatred by other's who are just ignorant of human differences. That's ok; the struggle of civil rights for everyone is always worth it :)
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POPSReviewReviewReviewReview The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in PRAISE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR. "Throughout our history' the impetus to using force sometimes has seemed as inevitable as water circling an open drain, but war is not always the best way to defend our security interests. Eugene Jarecki examines the evolution of America's views about war,up through the invasion of Iraq.He knows how to ask the important questions, and he keeps asking until he gets the answers. This is the kind of insightful dialogue that can help ensure that when we act, we act not of fear, but are grounded in confidence in our ideals" - Senator Patric Leahy -
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POPSHistory-Making Edits, Before Photoshop While some people enjoy adding individuals to their images, others prefer to edit them out – as in the cases of these photographs of Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini respectively. In each of the first three photos there was a political compatriot who, after falling from favor, was removed entirely from the scene and thus erased from a part of history. In the final image, a horse handler was edited out to convey a greater sense of grandeur. Perhaps it is simply selective and subjective, but it seems strangely fitting in some way that most of the edits of of American heroes are additive while those of other infamous world leaders are subtractive – but who knows what other manipulations we have yet to catch.
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POPSWHAT IF HE IS RIGHT?????????????????? David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C. , Albany , New York , and Dakar , Senegal .. He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College. He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.
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POPS Hunt For 9.11 Killers Finds Trail In Pakistan
where his trail was just picked up by the Pakistan forces clearing out the hornet’s nest that is South Waziristan Agency: The suspected 9/11 plotter whose German passport was found in a mud hut in western Pakistan this week has not been in touch with his family for two years, his mother, Anneliese Bahaji, said in an telephone interview Friday. The Pakistani military said it found his German passport five days ago in a mud hut in the village of Sherwangai in South Waziristan, during a search operation. To me this is a good sign that Pakistan, US, NATO, Afghan forces are circling the last remnants of the al Qaeda brain trust and that we may finally get our hands on some long sought targets. Since being pushed out of Afghanistan, it has been my contention al Qaeda has been holed up in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This evidence, however, is a clear indication we may be marching to the big nest of bad guys. The violent responses in Pakistan to the military actions indicate we
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POPS Speech of Joseph McCarthy, Wheeling, West Virginia, February 9, 1950 Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself. The one encouraging thing is that the “mad moment” has not yet arrived for the firing of the gun or the exploding of the bomb which will set civilization about the final task of destroying itself. There is still a hope for peace if we finally decide that no longer can we safely blind our eyes and close our ears to those facts which are shaping up more and more clearly . . . and that is that we are now engaged in a show-down fight . . . not the usual war between nations for land areas or other material gains, but a war between two diametrically opposed ideologies.
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POPSStopTheWitchHunt.org Target Conservative Commentators' "Hate-Speech" The website is designed to give voice to the millions of Americans who believe it is time for talk-show hosts and elected officials to stop stoking the racial anxieties of the fringes of America. Beck and his fellow band of hooligans have been telling scary stories about President Obama whom Limbaugh has disrespectfully referred to as "the little black man child." Beck recently accused the biracial President of having "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." And he has attacked a number of key Administration officials accusing them of being socialist and anti-American. Limbaugh, who has a history of making racially charged remarks about Obama, has called the mixed-race president "a halfrican American." Days before the President's inauguration in January, Limbaugh said, "I hope he fails" - the verbal equivalent of putting a razor blade in a candy apple. StoptheWitchHunt.org is just the beginning of a multi-media campaign to support a new resistance to these .
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POPS“Apocalypse: The Second World War” ~ Veterans Day November 11, 2009 remember the guys who have been fighting them in the sand, fighting them in the dust, fighting them in the mountains, and now fight on in the hospital wards. The Valour IT push is on, to give laptops to wounded servicemen. At the invitation of Cassandra at Villainous Company, whose Marine husband is forward deployed in Afghanistan, we’re with Team Marines this year. Pushing the Marines ahead is just the fun part of the drive. It all goes to everyone in all branches. Give as you can. Donate via Team Marines Apropos of all of the above, VC offers up a good quick read: "Marines though the Lens of History".
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POPSOne of The Biggest Bait-And-Switch Acts in History I'm thinking it's time to pronounce Obama and his agenda precisely what they are - socialist and looking to bring down the last great remaining free capitalist system in the world so as to bring it in line with too much else of a statist world. What else can one call it with any degree of honesty? Certainly liberal no longer serves. The Left abandoned classic liberalism a decade ago. And the New Left has only gotten worse. It's time to draw the battle lines more clearly, start speaking of what freedom, capitalism, individualism and self-determinism actually are and explain to people how they won't be much of anything in some new Obama-designed state. It's time to forget about compromise and begin rejecting Obama and his grand plans completely as he and they deserve for being un-American in the most important meanings of the word. Obama sold his healthcare proposal as a way to reduce costs and help the economy. But, Pawlenty says,
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POPSDanger--America Becoming Statist: First Bush, Now Obama Note: First the Security or Police State then the Nanny State. This is a must-read article, and hopefully an eye-opener to those still stuck in the "left" or "right" paradigm of thinking of partisan politics, both of which pick and chose which parts of the Constitution they want to dismantle for desired ends. Put the Bush and Obama policies together, sprinkle in a couple more terrorist attacks, and one or two more state-caused financial calamities, and you have a recipe for . . . * The destruction of American liberty * The blossoming of a Leviathan State
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POPSWalmart Caskets: Buy Your Final Resting Place Online If you are going to buy one of these things it would be a good idea to find out who makes it (is it American made or did it come from China). You wouldn’t want it to fall apart on you. Not that you would know. Which invites shoddy workmanship, because after all it only needs to hold together until it’s in the ground. Alternative burial: http://www.thechicecologist.com/2009/01/green-funerals-and-eco-burials-a-renewal-to-the-earth/ And http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eco-afterlife-green-buria
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POPSChild Witches
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo nearly 50,000 children live on the streets of Kinshasa, the capital, because they were accused of witchcraft and rejected by their families. In Nigeria, the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network reports that nearly 25,000 children have been abandoned or persecuted on the belief they were witches or wizards. Organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund, Africa Unite Against Child Abuse, and Save the Children have stepped in where they could to stop the witch-hunt. But the phenomenon of “witch children” is so widespread throughout Africa these organizations have set up “witch camps” as shelters for children who cannot be safely placed with a relative. Throughout history, people described as witches have been tortured, persecuted, and even murdered. And it is usually society’s most vulnerable who are targeted. With the HIV/AIDS epidemic leaving many children orphaned, and rampant poverty ensuing from crop failure and decade-
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POPSThe dangers of Obama's dithering Having this weak president is actually increasing our dangers. But perhaps he is projecting weakness for this very purpose.... only a Trojan Horse would be so cunning.
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POPSThe Legend of the Bell Witch Andrew Jackson even had a run-in. The Bell Witch is the subject of the movie, "An American Haunting", starring: Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek. The Bell Witch is often referred to as the most documented haunting in American history.
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POPSExposing the Colour of Prejudice John Howard Griffin was a remarkable man. As a Texan teenager who found himself in France at the outbreak of World War II, he helped to smuggle Jewish children to safety and freedom. He then served with distinction in the US Air Force in the Pacific. And then, after the war - when illness struck him blind for 10 years while he was still relatively young - he became a prolific writer. It was after his sight returned that he hit upon the idea of Black Like Me, the work which is his most important legacy. The whole business of racial impersonation might make us feel vaguely uncomfortable now, but in 1959 a black writer simply could not have found an audience for such a graphic portrayal of African-American grievance. Griffin's grim adventures as a black man in a white man's world are worth reading. They remain a set text for many American high school children.
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POPSPope Benedict opens new front in battle for the soul of two churches The pope's offer to Church of England members to switch to the Vatican was ill thought-out and could signal a struggle for the soul of both churches Over the centuries, the great church councils of Christian history have normally been held in magnificent echoing basilicas and stately palaces – but the church moves with the times. In 2003 a luxury hotel in Dallas, self-proclaimed as the largest in Texas (now that's big), hosted a gathering of very angry conservative American Anglicans, determined to do something about the consecration of a gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop of the US Episcopal church, sister church to the Church of England.
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POPSSecret Obamacare Negotiations Behind Closed Doors Democracy does not begin and end on Election Day for the American people. Whether you are for or against Obamacare, we the people deserve an opportunity to read, digest and understand the most important health care legislation to be debated in the United States Senate in our lifetime. The American people relied upon the promise of the Obama Administration and the leadership in Congress to be open and transparent, therefore it is time to stop the closed door negotiations and allow the American people to participate in the democratic process. Author: Brian Darling http://blog.heritage.org/2009/10/19/secret-obamacare-negotiations-enter-day-6/
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POPSThe Warning Watch the Warning in its' entirety here: http://blog.puppetgov.com/2009/10/22/frontline-the-warning/
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POPSClimate 'Debt' Transfers Billions To Developing Countries But as much as anything else, the Copenhagen treaty calls for the payment by rich countries of what can probably best be described as climate reparations. It would be "impossible to craft and draft" a detailed plan to effectively combat climate change in time for December. "That is not possible. But it is also not necessary," Mr. De Boer said. "I think what Copenhagen has to achieve is a basic political understanding." "By 2020," the treaty insists "the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be at least US$67-billion in the range of US$70-to US$140-billion" every year. If Ottawa signs on to Copenhagen, the size of our resource-based export economy means Canada may pay more dearly for the UN's latest climate-change arrangement than almost any other country on the planet. And in the end, because it may only shift carbon-intensive production from cleaner countries to less-efficient ones, the entire exercise may do very little . . .
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POPSRemebering the roots of a REAL Civil War
More: After decades of mistrust and recrimination over the conflict between slavery and free labor, many in the North and South now found themselves even more fundamentally at odds. As Northerners increasingly hailed Brown as a hero, panicky Southerners execrated him as the devil himself. The tempest over John Brown appeared to shatter any hope of regional reconciliation. As one South Carolina editor put it, "The day of compromise is passed there is no peace for the South in the Union." It would be too much to claim that John Brown's raid made the Civil War inevitable. But it is fair to say that it helped to create an unbridgeable gap between the free states and the slave power that could only be, as Brown himself put it, "purged away with blood." There are many lessons that can be drawn from John Brown's raid, but the experience of the Civil War ought to stand as a permanent rebuke to the irresponsible incitement of contemporary political figures who trade so easily
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POPSRights and Obligations of Liberty Fortunately, in the words of Samuel Adams, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." But, what of those like my well-educated colleague, who is among America's "best and brightest", who are, however, uninformed about their obligations as citizens of the greatest experiment in human history? What of those who, as one consequence of enjoying the highest standard of living on the planet, tend to take our legacy of liberty for granted and have become complacent about its attendant responsibilities? George Washington noted at the conclusion of the American Revolution, "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity."
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POPSOlbermanic Stuck In The Jaws of Coulter The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing "criminals" passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white. -- Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers. And yet in Keith Olbermann's discussion of Bush's allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton. in fairness to Keith, he's never been a "content guy." He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that's all he does because, again, he was a communications major.
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POPSA Maoist in the White House FTA: "Mao Tse-Tung...engineered the mass murder of anywhere from 50 to over 100 million people. Estimates vary so widely because murder on that wholesale scale is difficult to tabulate, especially in a country as backwards as China was under Mao’s long reign. But there is little doubt that Mao has the grisly distinction of being the greatest mass murderer in history." Very frightening people populate the halls of our government now. To announce to *high school* students that this is your model for how to get things done speaks of lunacy.
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POPS 'On "The Wealth of Nations"' P. J. O'Rourke Economic progress depends upon a trinity of individual prerogatives: pursuit of self-interest, division of labor, and freedom of trade. There is nothing inherently wrong with the pursuit of self-interest. That was Smith's best insight. To a twenty-first-century reader this hardly sounds like news. Or, rather, it sounds like everything that's in the news. These days, altruism itself is proclaimed at the top of the altruist's lungs. Certainly it's of interest to the self to be a celebrity. Bob Geldof has found a way to remain one. But for most of history, wisdom, beliefs, and mores demanded subjugation of ego, bridling of aspiration, and sacrifice of self (and, per Abraham with Isaac, of family members, if you could catch them). This meekness, like Adam Smith's production, had an end and purpose. Most people enjoyed no control over their material circumstances or even-if they were slaves or serfs-their material persons. In the doghouse of . . .
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POPSThe Dumbing of America "Deliberately dumbing down the message works well with the Republican base because, compared to average Americans, the GOP rank-and-file tend to be poorly educated and dogmatically Christian, living in a culture that is hierarchical and rules based."
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