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POPSThe last untouchable in Europe More: On occasions, the bigotry was brutally enforced: in the early 18th century a prosperous Cagot in the Landes was caught using the font reserved for non-Cagots – his hand was chopped off and nailed to the church door. Another Cagot who dared to farm his fields (strictly verboten) had his feet pierced with hot iron spikes.… Even in death, the discrimination persisted – the Cagots were buried in their own humble cemeteries; there is still one in Bentayou-Sérée, a tiny village north of Pau.… I ask Marie-Pierre if she will let me use a picture of Sylvia – and the rest of her children. She shakes her head. "I'm sorry but no. It is OK for me to admit where I come from. But if people knew about my children's background, it might be difficult for them." She gazes out of the window, at the distant green Pyrenees. "In some places, the hatred lingers. Even now. The Cagots may be silent but I can still hear it."
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POPSAncient burial site discovered in northern Greece cont: She said they arguably belonged to a Macedonian royal and were buried at the end of the 4th century B.C. But it is too early to speculate on the dead person's identity, pending tests to determine the bones' sex and age, said Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, a professor of classical archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She said one of the silver vessels is "very, very similar" to another found decades ago at a nearby royal tumulus, where one grave has been identified as belonging to Philip II. Alexander was one of the most successful generals of all times. In a series of battles against the Persian Empire, he conquered much of the known world, reaching as far as India. After his death in 323 B.C., at the age of 32, Alexander's empire broke up in a series of wars by his successors that saw the murder of his mother, half brother, wife and both sons.
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POPSDecomposting the Dead :eek: Walrus Magazine: Decomposting Bodies: What's the Greenest Way to Dispose of Human Remains? (Photo by hubb-a-dubbs via Flickr/Creative Commons)http://www.nhpr.org/node/25846
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POPSWhat's trashed at Arlington National Cemetery
Left out in the rain to rot were crayon drawings by children who had lost a parent, photographs of soldiers with their babies, painted portraits and thank-you notes from grade-school kids to fallen soldiers they had never known. Colors of artworks ran together. Photos were blurred and wilted. Poems and letters were illegible wads of wet paper. A worker in a brown uniform wandered among the graves, blasting the headstones with a power washer without regard to what was left of the mementos -- or the obviously uncomfortable mourners looking on. Some items got further soaked. The worker blasted others across the grass. Many of them would end up in a black trash bin in the cemetery's service area. Arlington's poor treatment of the mementos and gifts -- testaments to the personal cost of the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East -- appeared to stand in contrast to practices at other cemeteries. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs 130 cemeteries across the country, asks people
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POPSThe Green Brief #16 @Iran_Translator(July 02) 4. Samareh Hashemi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign manager, told PressTV today that the SMS outage and cell phone service restrictions were put in place to "ensure security" 5. More international pressure is being mounted on Iran's Government. There will be an EU meeting next week where it is reported that member nations will consider pulling their ambassadors from Iran. 6. Al-Arabiya's website has stated that an Egyptian lawyer belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, Mamdouh Ismail has filed a complaint in Egypt's Prosecutor General's Office. He has asked them to ban Ahmadinejad from entering Egypt next month to attend a diplomatic meeting. He has accused Ahmadinejad of winning the election erroneously and for insulting two of Prophet Mohammed's companions. 7. Seven people were arrested in Qazvin today in connection with the protests. The head of Participation Front in Hormozgan Province, Mr. Ramezanpour, was also arrested.
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POPS Remember Me wrote this for today: Decoration Day We woke up well before the dawn Each last Monday in May And went to all the soldiers graves On decoration day Then in full dress of blue and gold With sash and badge and pin We'd clean and trim and place a flag For all our fallen kin Day greater then than Four July We tallied freedoms bill And cooked upon an open fire Till all were fully filled Then more to point the morrows morn Each generation train That those with decorated grave Have not fallen in vain Memorial Day 2009: Giving thanks for those who made the ultimate sacrifice http://michellemalkin.com/2009/05/25/memorial-day-2009-giving-thanks-for-those-who-made-the-ultimate-sacrifice/
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POPS Time For A History Lesson What better day to teach the foreign exchange student in the White House a lesson about American exceptionalism, heroism, and greatness? It is virtually unthinkable that Obama could give a speech in Dresden and not allude to the bombing of the city. Most of the city’s historical monuments — which Obama’s advance team were apparently inspecting — were severely damaged or destroyed in the bombing and had to be rebuilt. Moreover, for Obama to visit both Dresden and Buchenwald would suggest precisely the sort of outrageous parallels that have become commonplace in Germany at least since the publication of Friedrich’s The Fire.
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POPSRoya Hakakian Prescient When She Wrote 'Then They Came for the Bahai' In Iran 
Roya Hakakian said, "The current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has taken a page from Khomeini’s book. He rails against Israel. He denies the Holocaust. Through these means he focuses all attention on Jews, and while the world remains perfectly oblivious his men assault the Bahá'ís. "Since Ahmadinejad’s election to presidency, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Bahá'í literature in government-sponsored journals, which has, in turn, led to a rise in gang attacks against the community. "That the Bahá'ís shy away, per religious mandate, from advocacy on their own behalf surrounds their predicament with even greater silence. "But for those in the West — especially for Jews, who know the lessons of World War II — the plight of the Iranian Bahá'ís is most urgent: It is an act of destruction, not simply promised, but already under way." Although some self-professed Muslims violate their own faith and insult in the filthiest and most-vile of ways the Prophet Muhammad
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POPS12 Hilarious Tombstones
Another list from Oddee.com. The people who put this site together have a definite eye for the strange and unusual... Obviously, there should be some Rules about Dying: 1. If you know you are dying and have a name that will cause people to laugh and have their pics taken with your stone, change your name! 2. If you have a Wife AND a Mistress, make sure there is no way they will ever be able to pay you back. 3. Leaving A Funny Epitaph is good, leaving a tombstone that will label you DUMBASS is not so good. 4. If you want to leave a in a hilarious, yet tragic death: go for the hilarious. You will be remembered longer and liked more. 5. If you really want to stand out as a memorable person in the memorial sort of way, hire a poet to write a fitting epitaph and then die in the way specified.. 6. Most of all, remember this: Paybacks are a B*TCH, So treat your heirs or at least the person who will arrange for your final monument well, if not YOU too, can have a marker like the
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POPSWhat Are You Afraid Of? An interesting list and I picked out those I found THE most interesting to me... Funny that there are 4 or 5 words that designate Fear of Cats but only one for Fear of Snakes! Several definitions are like that with the "One Offs" being the more interesting to me... We all fear something. No one is 100% fearless. I, myself, fear someone hurting others and even up til a certain age, I feared clowns... My biggest fear is Demophobia, fear of crowds. I do not adjust well in front of strangers and at times I have to go inside myself deep to layer a certain sense of removal from strangers and crowds.. It is lumped under Social Anxiety by the Psychiatrists and it is... Yet, once I get to know you, good luck getting me to shut up! Enjoy. Though it does not say, I do not believe this list is all-inclusive.
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POPSHistory Website: Roman antiquity, American history, History of Armenia and more
a site for teaching yourself to read Latin inscriptions; complete Latin texts of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Quintus Curtius' Histories of Alexander the Great, the Saturnalia of Macrobius, and Censorinus' de Die Natali; Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, the Historia Augusta, Claudian, Frontinus, Vitruvius, Celsus, and Cato's de Re Rustica in both Latin and English; complete English translations: Polybius, Cassius Dio, Dio Chrysostom, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Appian's Civil Wars and Quintilian; Rodolfo Lanciani's book Pagan and Christian Rome, Christian Hülsen's book on the Roman Forum, Bury's 2‑vol. History of the Later Roman Empire, Bevan's House of Ptolemy, 4 books on Roman Britain, George Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria; Platner and Ashby's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (nearly complete) and most of Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities; a fair amount of Plutarch and Ptolemy's Geography; some maps of the Roman Empire and more
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POPSA monument to intolerance? No peace for the dead, either! This project, started in 2004, was frozen due to public outcry, most especially from Muslim religious authorities and the Israeli Islamic movement, as well as Orthodox Jews, about disturbing family graves, and the graves of venerated figures from Arab history and religion going back to Saladin and Muhammad. The site, near Independence Park in the centre of Jerusalem, is on disputed land, taken over by Israel's Land Administration in 1948 as absentee property, whose ownership is claimed by the Islamic authorities as waqf land, with their very present dead. It has been described as "disused", but local Muslims disagree and point out that it is still visited by relatives of the dead.
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POPSNovember 1/2: All Saints Day / All Souls Day / Day of the Dead A very interesting time in many countries. A biggie in Poland. If you check out the links on this site, you'll see that this is a time of remembering and a time of partying. I can't find the reference, but I remember hearing that there are more drunken driving deaths and arrests during this time of the year than any other in Poland
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