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POPSWhen Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated. Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, philosophers who slip into dementia may be lashed to their beds, courts can order surgery or force-feeding. Spain’s Catholic bishops attacked the vote as undermining a divine will that placed humans above animals. One said such thinking led to abortion, euthanasia and ethnic cleansing.
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POPSDoes Pointing hold the Secret of Language? Thank you Clipmarks, for letting me point to this. It should promote a mutual contemplation. Looky there: M. Tomasello: Why Don't Apes Point?" Pollick & De Waal: Ape gestures and language evolution
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POPSAn End to Paralysis with Artificial Brain-to-Muscle Connectors Say the researchers: Until now, brain-computer interfaces were designed to decode the activity of neurons known to be associated with movement of specific body parts. Here, the researchers discovered that any motor cortex cell, regardless of whether it had been previously associated with wrist movement, was capable of stimulating muscle activity. This finding greatly expands the potential number of neurons that could control signals for brain-computer interfaces and also illustrates the flexibility of the motor cortex. Human implementations for the technology are at least a decade away, but this discovery could be a game-changer for dealing with paralysis. One possibility would be to connect the motor cortex with an area of the spine below an injury. Signals would be re-routed around the damaged spinal cord, and could allow the brain to regain control of the paralyzed body parts affected by the injury.
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POPSCommon Misconceptions This articlecovers a broad field of misconceptions, such as geography, health, even food. Evolution is, to me, the most interesting.
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POPSSo you think humans are unique? "Take gesture, arguably the starting point for language. Until recently it was considered uniquely human - but not any more. Mike Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others have compiled a list of gestures observed in monkeys, gibbons, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, which reveals that gesticulation plays a large role in their communication. Ape gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape's attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them or touch the recipient."
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POPSYes, there really are gay animals From Salon magazine, 1999. Research into "alternative sexual behavior" among animals. Apparently, it's much more prevalent than you might think. So much for homosexuality being "unnatural."
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POPS Orangutan ruse misleads predators more: Co-author Madeleine Hardus, from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, told BBC News: "This study clearly indicates that the abilities of great ape communication have been traditionally undervalued and that there may be traces of language precursors in our closest relatives, the great apes." She added that the findings suggest that primate calling behaviour is not purely based on instinct, but instead is socially learned.
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POPSShould Chimpanzees Be Given Human Rights? This case promises to be very interesting! If a chimpanzee can be declared a person, then there's nothing in the way of a person becoming an ape--and I'm not just talking about a retroactive status applied to ex-husbands. In fact, I predict a surge in trans-specied people, who will eagerly go over to the side of the chimps. This bit is just BEGGING for me to make a GWB joke...but I won't. .:D
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POPSBody Language of Winners and Losers Could be Innate "In the end, it’s all about evolution. The discovery by psychologists suggests that these gestures of pride and shame are hard wired into the human brain, probably because they were universal signs of dominance and submission among our ape relatives and ancestors . So when you see arms raised in victory at the Beijing Olympics, you might really be seeing an symbol of dominance that humans developed long ago."
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POPSSEX: Misadventures in American logical reasoning.
Does the USA get it right, ever? Not while hypocrisy rules or the 'moral' majority. Eunuchs rule. "Pay peanuts and get monkeys." Ape eunuchs as your leaders and you get Bush! Shits afraid to fart. So no omelets on the American horizon. Yes, he was the mother of all hypocrites but where hypocrisy is the norm. The damage accruing from this will discourage any red blooded male worth his salt putting himself forward for election. So unless there's a lot more half decent female politicians out there and that's more than I've see, then America is fuc@ed for a fuc@. Grow up America and taste the 21st century! Sex between consent adults is a right. Money is the American way! ...righthand "Presidents who break the law by spying on Americans with no warrants, who torture people in violation of multiple treaties and statutes, who start hideously destructive wars based on false pretenses, who repeatedly proclaim the power to ignore laws, and who imprison people -- including Americans -- wit
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POPSWhy we love the sweet life Once people figured out how to extract sugar from beets and corn that grew in more temperate climates, there was no turning back. Today, according to Sugar Knowledge International, an independent sugar technology organization, we eat 120 million tons of sugar a year, and it's an expanding market.
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