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POPSHow Homophobia Hurts Us All It hurts me that my own Mother wouldn't love me if she knew I was bisexual, but it also helps me to know that through it all some people can love me for who I am. My husband, my youngest daughter, my very best friends, and the support at CM.
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POPSThe Chain Gang Do societal expectations of gender roles hurt men and women? Please feel free to share opinions regarding the positive or negative roles imposed upon us by society, however refrain from attacking a clipper's opinions or experiences as those comments will be deleted.
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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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POPSParallels to Obamamania in ABC's "V" Sci-Fi Mini-Series An excerpt from Garvin's Sunday, November 1 Miami Herald review (“'V': The saucer-shaped bandwagon”), which the Chicago Tribune headlined “'V' aims at Obamamania.” Imagine this. At a time of political turmoil, a charismatic, telegenic new leader arrives virtually out of nowhere. He offers a message of hope and reconciliation based on compromise and promises to marshal technology for a better future that will include universal health care. The news media swoons in admiration -- one simpering anchorman even shouts at a reporter who asks a tough question: “Why don't you show some respect?!!” The public is likewise smitten, except for a few nut cases who circulate batty rumors on the Internet about the leader's origins and intentions. The leader, undismayed, offers assurances that are soothing, if also just a tiny bit condescending: “Embracing change is never easy.”
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POPSDoes Economics Violate the Laws of Physics? Excellent article on how, among other things, economists treat energy as a commodity and ignore that it takes energy to produce the other commodities. This is what happens when our educational system gets taken over by people who devalue the subject of Science...not to mention common sense.
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POPSClub of Rome "The real enemy then, is humanity itself." According to its website, the Club of Rome is composed of "scientists, economists, businessmen, international high civil servants, heads of state and former heads of state from all five continents who are convinced that the future of humankind is not determined once and for all and that each human being can contribute to the improvement of our societies." "Searching for a new enemy to unite us..." See also "Comittee of 300" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crYO5Or-86M "The threat of pollution, global warming, water shortages, and famine can be used to fulfill humanity's need for a common adversary"
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POPSU.N. Rights Official Backs Gaza Report We can't allow Zionism to equal genocide. Right now over one and a half million people are being slowly starved to death in the Gaza Strip. Encourage our politicians to stop that. All else is meaningless words. Stop the Blockade.
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POPSYoung Afghan struggles to adapt after Guantanamo
He says he was grabbed by police who beat him and threatened to kill his family unless he put his thumbprint to paper and admitted he'd tried to kill two U.S. soldiers. The Pashto speaker, largely illiterate, didn't understand their Persian and had little idea what he'd agreed to, he says. A U.S. judge would later agree. That day, a grenade had been thrown at a U.S. Army vehicle, injuring the two soldiers and an interpreter. Jawad was charged with attempted murder based on the confession, held at Kabul's Bagram air base, then moved to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in early February 2003. But it spills out. He talks about having his hands bound behind his back and being forced to eat like a dog, being kicked, beaten and pepper-sprayed and subjected to excessive heat, loud noise, solitary confinement. After a year, Guantanamo records show, Jawad tried to commit suicide by banging his head against his cell wall repeatedly. "I was tortured and faced many problems
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POPSYour Babies Are Killing Our Planet!
Monday, October 26, 2009 Moonbattery in the U.K: "The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children" From the U.K. Guardian: Fewer British babies would mean a fairer planet. The worst thing that you or I can do for the planet is to have children. If they behave as the average person in the rich world does now, they will emit some 11 tonnes of CO every year of their lives. In their turn, they are likely to have more carbon-emitting children who will make an even bigger mess. If Britain is to meet the government's target of an 80% reduction in our emissions by 2050, we need to start reversing our rising rate of population growth immediately. And if that makes sense, why not start cutting population everywhere? Are condoms not the greenest technology of all? Actually, if you ask a true ghoul, it would be abortion, not condoms. In fact, scratch abortion, just cull all humans without discriminating based on anything other than productivity
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POPSMan searches for his 4th-grade teacher to thank her More: Though never clinically diagnosed with dyslexia, he's convinced he has a mild form of it. After the fourth grade, he returned to the same teacher for a half-year in the fifth and sixth grades. She became, essentially, his tutor. "I thrived there," he said of their extended classroom relationship. "She took a personal interest in me. She felt I was bright because of some things I excelled at, and so she found different ways to teach me. She didn't require me to read in class. And I was able to write in block letters because I had trouble with cursive and small-case letters. It really built a foundation for me."… Perhaps somebody out there might have a lead, if it's not too late, for Bugbee to express his gratitude face-to-face. That way, when he does purchase that home from Habitat for Humanity — he's on the board of directors — and before he dedicates it to his favorite teacher, he can spell her name correctly.
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POPSEven When No One Is Around "Humanity's most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the non-conformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress, indeed."
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POPSBombing the Moon Gives A New Meaning to Lunatics So how much does a metaphor weigh? A lot more than NASA thinks. The first man on the moon wasn't an American or a Russian, it was The Man in the Moon we all saw when we were kids, and somebody older showed him to us. That's the first man on the moon, her permanent resident, and now he's got a NASA rocket at his backside... They used to call the mentally ill lunatics. But now I wonder who the real lunatics are. And if there is water on the moon, what are we going to do with it? Grow moon-corn for ethanol until we kill the Earth? Such a great article it touched something, it really touched something more beautiful than finding water on the moon.