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POPSPhoto Tampering Throughout History see rest of photos in original page, linked to my previous post: Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/D516F80D-C71B-4B53-BB9C-77EA80B8C919/
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POPSTools Are Body Parts to Brain In a report in the journal Current Biology, researchers claim that the brain interprets a tool, such as a hammer, as a temporary extension of your physical body
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POPSUnintelligent Design At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in human reasoning, the idea that the human mind would be "perfect in His image" is as outdated (and narcissistic) as the idea that the solar system would revolve around the planet earth. The only theory that can really make sense of these needless imperfections is Darwin's theory of natural selection, which holds that humans (and all other life forms) evolve through a blind process known as descent-with-modification, in which new life forms represent random modifications of earlier life forms -- with no central overseer to guide the process. Such a random process can, over time, lead populations of creatures to become more adapted to their environment, but it is also vulnerable to getting stuck, in the sort of good-enough-but-not-perfect solutions that mathematicians call local maxima.
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POPS"paintings are talking you, beyond word" ...Buddhist art... "The Buddha did not initiate the creation of sacred images. Once he said to a disciple, who wanted to see him before dying: «Oh, Vakkhali, why do you want to see this body, composed of unclear substances? He who perceives Dharma, Vakkhali, perceives me. He who perceives me perceives Dharma». Thus, as far as we know, there was no worship of the Buddha’s image in the early Buddhist community after his Parinirvāṇa.
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POPSEarliest Dinos May Have Been Fuzzy What makes the discovery weird are three patches of what look like filaments or protofeathers along the animal's body and tail. In 2002, scientists working in the same Chinese province described a theropod dinosaur, related to Tyrannosaurus rex, with similar spiky protofeathers
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POPSDistorted Body Images: A Quick and Easy Way to Reduce Pain
For the study, Lorimer Moseley of Oxford University and his colleagues recruited 10 participants, all of whom suffer from chronic pain in their right arm. The participants were asked to perform a set of movements with their right arm, under different conditions. In one condition, they observed their limb through a pair of binoculars, which magnified their hand to twice its normal size; in another, the binoculars were inverted so that their hands appeared smaller than they actually were. As they performed the arm movements, the participants were asked to rate the amount of pain they experienced. Each one reported that the pain they felt became markedly worse when they moved their limb. Surprisingly though, every participant also reported that the extent to which their pain increased depended on how their vision had been manipulated. They reported the greatest increase in pain when they saw a magnified view of their hand, and the smallest increase when their hands were minified.
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POPSMother of teen is mad-as-hell about the Sarkozy, Obama photo Her mom added, "She is really skinny and only ever wears pants. Mayara is timid and ashamed of her body. This was the first time in her life that she wore a dress, and it was borrowed from a friend in the shantytown because she doesn't own one." The high school sophomore, who hails from one of Rio de Janeiro's slums known as favelas, had been picked by UNICEF to join the counterpart Junior 8 forum of teenagers because she stood out as a community volunteer. She shares a single room with her parents and two younger brothers and can't afford the bus fare to attend a good high school. "Why are they looking at her like that? This is a girl who is articulate and intelligent and just wants to do the right thing," the father said. "Instead, they are forcing her into a negative light."
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POPSStone babies (disturbing image) When the fetus cannot be expelled, the woman's body protects itself by forming a thick layer of calcium around the fetus, effectively preserving the fetus.
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POPSInside Art - Doctors and researchers regularly rely on CT scanners to create images of body parts like brains, chests and knees. But an artist-turned-medical-student in Manhattan is using one such machine to peer into the meat and guts of cultural icons like the Big Mac, the Barbie and the iPhone, creating whimsical and occasionally creepy images.
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POPSArt: Maria Lassnig - Nudes A new exhibition of Maria Lassnig's paintings is opening on April 25 at the Serpentine, London. Her work deals with the awareness we have of our own bodies, and rejects the strictures of traditional portraiture. Have a look at some of her work Truth and dare At nearly 90, the painter Maria Lassnig is producing the most confrontational work of her life. She talks to Adrian Searle The painter greets us, naked. She holds a gun to her own head, and aims another at her spectators. Maria Lassnig, approaching 90, might be trying to tell us something. You or Me is the title of this self-portrait, painted in 2005 and the first thing you see in her exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London. As well as an introduction, the painting is a test: bolt and run, or stay and face the consequences. I plunged right in. Visual art Truth and dare At nearly 90, the painter Maria Lassnig is producing the most confrontational work of her life. She talks to Adrian Searle In pictur
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POPSHow people can think themselves sick warning to RWW clippers that are working themselves into the same frenzy that us BHL clippers did when GW was pres. Of course the world will be a better place if the RDH's worry themselves to death. RWW=RightWingWackos BHL=BleedingHeartLiberals RDH=???
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POPSJapan child robot mimicks infant learning
We are entering a new age of robotics. there is no doubt about that, at least in Japan. Robots integrated into everyday life is not only a technological feat but also a conceptual and social adaptation. In Japanese world view it is much easier to relate to robots as endowed with souls. This is fascinating, since it seems that we create our future technological world to reflect our beliefs and expectations. "Robots have hearts," said Kokoro planning department manager Yuko Yokota. "They don't look human unless we put souls in them. "When manufacturing a robot, there comes a moment when light flickers in its eyes. That's when we know our work is done." Public opinion in Japan may be more open to robots than in the West, where dark science fiction visions from movies such as "Bladerunner" and "Terminator" have conjured images of robo-soldiers taking over the world. Thanks to such benign cartoon characters as Astro Boy, "Japanese people have a friendly image towards robots