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POPSThe U.S. Needs to Open Up to the World It's better for everybody to have a stake in society than to have a resentful underclass bent on wrecking things. To many Americans, this sounds like socialism, big government, the nanny state. But so what? The result is: Europe has less gun crime and homicide, less poverty and arguably a higher quality of life than the U.S., which makes a lot of us wonder why America doesn't want some of what we've got. America as a gated community won't work, because not even the world's sole superpower can build walls high enough to shield itself from the intertwined realities of the 21st century. There's a better form of security: reconnect with the rest of the world, don't shut it out; stop making enemies and start making friends. Perhaps it's asking a lot to expect America to act differently from all the other empires in history, but wasn't that the original idea?
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POPSStill Second Class Citizens “There’s a perception in Washington that you can throw little bits of partial equality to gay people and that gay people will be satisfied with that. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places."
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POPSBudapest Spring Festival This magnificent festival include: Classicla music, jazz, theatre, films, videos, out-door shows, dance, folklore music, DJ and many more things. So you have a lot of things to choose from
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POPSMuseum Island in Berlin All the enterteiments in a little island close to Berlin. So you do not have to walk far to see everything you like
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POPSDisneyfied Vaginas Questioned by Cranky British Researchers It's distracting to have imperfections while naked with a man, ... Being a human being with idiosyncratic features can feel weird after taking in the cultural obsession with cookie-cutter beauty, and if you're cursed with a partner willing to vocalize his disappointment with your human body, it can be even worse. But it's a shame that most of us absorb this nonsense. ... if you can clear your head of all this perfectionist, conformist pressure, appreciating people's little differences can be more fun and certainly more sexy ... In fact, I often look at the sea of airbrushing and plastic surgery and Brazilian waxing, and I see a profound prudery at the bottom of it, a fear of truly embracing sexuality. The airbrushed plastic perfection promoted by Playboy and Maxim magazine are to sex as EPCOT Center is to world travel: experience simulation for those too cowardly to truly dive in, but too egotistical to admit their cowardice.
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POPSThe amazing F1 Yas Marina Circuit, in Abu Dhabi “A perfect union and harmonious interplay between elegance and spectacle. The search here was inspired by what one could call the 'art' and poetics of motor racing, specifically Formula 1, coupled with the making of a place that celebrates Abu Dhabi as a cultural and technological tour de force.” Hani Rashid
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POPSBefore Dreams," There Was Roots The fraud that was "Roots". How Haley's work was derived from " The African" by Courlander and a subsequent genealogy research confirmed the falseness of the book.
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POPSImagine Peace The electricity for the light is generated entirely naturally - geothermally from hot water - at the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant and is one of the reasons for situating the artwork in Iceland. The Imagine Peace Tower is closely connected to Ono's interactive artwork Wish Tree from 1981. The Wish Tree has been integral to many of Yoko's exhibitions around the world in museums and cultural centers where people have been invited to write their personal wishes for peace and tie them to a tree branch. Now amounting to over 700,000 wishes. They are to be housed at the Imagine Peace Tower. EarthCam visitors are invited to send wishes to the Imagine Peace Tower archives by email to wish@imaginepeace.com or by mail to: IMAGINE PEACE TOWER PO Box 1009 121 Reykjavik, Iceland. You can send as many wishes as you like, as often as you like. The site also has many live cams up all over the world, wicked cool stuff!
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POPSI See London... So far I have been to Aruba, Hawaii, London, New York, Italy, Rio de Janeiro, Greece, a zoo, a few nature trails, and Iceland all in one day! Whew! I should be tired, lol. Really cool viewing of Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square here, although it is dark there now, so check back tomorrow at an earlier time, it's nearly 10 p.m. atm. Use the 3 different camera views under the feed to choose which place you want to see.
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POPSTravel: 36 hours in Sacramento Too long to clip – click through for the rest, including shopping, dining, wine tasting, at least one bar that serves absinthe, farmers' markets, and bicycling.
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POPSFree Lectures and Courses... This was clipped some time ago by someone to whom I add thanks. Newer clippers may find it interesting. I've detailed the astronomy items as that is what I was searching for.
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POPSParisians ashamed of being from Paris The whole affair came to light when the French authorities decided to introduce new license plates that displayed the symbol of the country's departments, and not only the number of the department as previously. Moreover, the French can now choose any department they like- it does not have to be their actual place of residence. It soon turned out that the residents of Paris preferred to choose plates other than Parisian ones. As a result, the number of Parisian plates has declined by 60% since April 2009. The decline in license plates has also been reported in Hauts-de-Seine department near Paris. It is a place where the richest people in the country live. Also many residents of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the poorest departments near Paris, have decided to hide their place of residence, as "bad address" often makes it difficult to get a good job.
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POPSWhy Do Men Catcall? Another interesting article. When I was roaming Canada, I noticed that "catcalling" was a much more rare phenomenon than it is in the U.S.. This leads me to conclude that catcalling might be a cultural thing. What do you think?
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POPSThe Mircale Of Perm Russia's up and coming cultural capital. Russia overcoming its soviet past? Or Russia coming to terms with its soviet past? Either way, a place i'd love to visit and experience for myself!
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POPSThe death of language? "What we lose is essentially an enormous cultural heritage, the way of expressing the relationship with nature, with the world, between themselves in the framework of their families, their kin people," says Mr Hagege. "Its also the way they express their humour, their love, their life. It is a testimony of human communities which is extremely precious, because it expresses what other communities than ours in the modern industrialized world are able to express." For linguists like Claude Hagege, languages are not simply a collection of words. They are a living, breathing organisms holding the connections and associations that define a culture. When a language becomes extinct, the culture in which it lived is lost too. ____ According to Ethnologue, a US organisation that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered. ____ "Most people are not at all interested in the death of languages," Claude Hagege says.
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POPSMedia Ignoring Conservatives' Return to Dominance of Political Book Market
In September of that year, the Boston Globe proclaimed liberals "triumphant" against "conservatives' decade long hold on popular culture." Yes, it seemed such wonderful liberal values were finally en vogue. Barnes and Noble, reacting to the outpouring of Bush-bashing literature in August of 2003 announced that it would set up ‘political science/cultural affairs' tables at its stores to feature the newest partisan works. But conservatives have reclaimed their hold on the Times's bestseller page. The closest any of the top 15 hard-cover non-fiction books gets to a defense of liberalism or the Obama Administration is In Fed We Trust by David Wessel "The books from the left strike me as an obvious reaction to Bush," conservative commentator Tucker Carlson told the Associated Press in 2003. "And for people who buy them, it's a way of voting against him in an off-election year." With Bush gone, liberals no longer have a blatant target at whom to direct a coordinated
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POPSMexican Power Union Power Struggle
Calderón has attacked one of Mexico's most powerful unions. In Mexico, unions are powerful because of the power they enjoy to disrupt daily life for ordinary people, who just want to get to work and home again and be safe. Governments have been too pusillanimous to intervene to stop their illegal blockage of public spaces. See the six-month sit-in in 2006 that paralyzed Mexico City and took billions of pesos from people as work dried up for the poorest who lost their "job" washing and parking cars in Mexico City's chaotic downtown. Etc Etc. Calderón effectively lost a battle with the mega teacher's union"the largest in Latin America. The "teachers" blocked highways and city centers throughout the nation and Calderón's "reforms" were immasculated (not that they would have done any good anyway). Now he's taken on the electricians' union and with it the cultural icon of the government power company. Mexicans are taught to believe that their nationalized power company is a "right
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POPSCapitalizing on Rural Creativity David Brock doesn’t pooh-pooh the challenges facing rural communities, but argues that rural places have the real assets which they can harness to successfully navigate and prosper in the Creative Age
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