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POPSWe Must Be On Guard For Extremism "When dealing with soldiers far from their homes and families and subject to the greatest imaginable stress, the Army needs to be on the watch for the predatory inroads of any form of political or religious extremism -- whether it be the jihadism to which Hasan was drawn or the Christian identity nonsense that inspired Timothy McVeigh."
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POPS101 Ways To Be Annoying More: 14. Name your dog "Dog." 15. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up." 16. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what YOU think." 17. Claim that you must always wear a bicycle helmet as part of your "astronaut training." 18. Declare your apartment an independent nation, and sue your neighbors upstairs for "violating your airspace". 19. Forget the punchline to a long joke, but assure the listener it was a "real hoot." 20. Follow a few paces behind someone, spraying everything they touch with Lysol. 21. Practice making fax and modem noises. 22. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc:" them to your boss. 23. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up. 24. Invent nonsense computer jargon in conversations, and see if people play along to avoid the appearance of ignorance. 25. Erect an elaborate network of ropes in your backyard, and tell the neighbors
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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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POPSNational Writing Day Now there's the computer and the internet. In the digital age, anyone with a laptop, a wi-fi card, and a place to sit at Starbucks can put material into cyberspace. The digital revolution means everyone's an author, every day is National Writing Day. And this sudden democratizing of the writing process generates its own set of complaints: * it's wrong to give so many people access to authorship -- after all, most people won't be very good at, and some people are going to write things that we don't agree with * computers make writing too easy -- something so important should only come with effort -- no pain, no gain -- maybe we should increase the entrance fees? * we need to control, license, censor what's on the 'net: after all, the web is full of lies, misinformation, nonsense, pornography, fraud, Nigerian money scams, and hate, not to mention all those pictures of little cats But despite the complaints, writers everywhere are grabbing their keyboards...
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POPS Let Them Eat Dirt from the report. But the mainstream media did not report these conflicts and instead piled on the "global warming" and "carbon offset" bandwagons. The carbon offset market quickly exploded. In fact, $92 billion worth of offsets were estimated to change hands in 2008. But wanton profiteering appears to be the sole rationale for "carbon trading". Put simply, a wide range of respected scientists, environmentalists, researchers, agriculturalists, and activists believe that carbon offsets are a "scam", "fantasy", "fiction", "nonsense", "fraudulent" and worse. And they've been saying so since 2000, though to read the newspaper you wouldn't know it. The World Rainforest Movement, for example, investigated these bizarre financial ties and concluded that the IPCC report must "...be shelved due to their clear conflict of interest and a new report instigated which will be free of the taint of intellectual corruption."
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POPSRush Got Punked Let's hope someone kept their sense of humor in all this. Still, for a humble post to go from humor blog to major media outlet sure seems impressive. Someone ought to write their thesis on it. For real.
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POPSMeet Ron Bloom, Manufacturing Czar, Maoist (In his own words and flesh) "generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system...We know this is largely about power, that it is an adults only, no limit game ( huh?). WE AGREE WITH MAO THAT POLITICAL POWER COMES LARGELY FROM THE BARREL OF A GUN, and we get it, that if you want a friend, you should get a dog. "
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POPS "dumb" Well, they’re falling down on that score in Afghanistan. Hang on, Gates gets it. USA Today: ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY JET (AP) " The Obama administration needs to decide on a war strategy for Afghanistan without waiting for a government there to be widely accepted as legitimate, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday. Gates’ comments put him at odds with top White House and NATO officials who are balking at ordering more troops and other resources to Afghanistan until the disputed election crisis there is resolved. The Pentagon chief called the Afghan elections " and the larger issues of curbing corruption in its government " “an evolving process.” “We’re not just going to sit on our hands, waiting for the outcome of this election and for the emergence of a government in Kabul,” he told reporters en route to Tokyo. That part of the O admin doesn’t sound as dumb as the other part.
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POPSHeaven forbid people Stop and Think The mediaspace is so polluted with opinions based on drivel and nonsense, that solid facts and rational consideration are swept away by a tidal wave propaganda and fantasy.
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POPSEach Small Candle Halfdan Rasmussen was born in Copenhagen, Denmark January 29, 1915. He was a resistance fighter during the German occupation of Denmark in W.W.II and became a well known poet often writing about social issues and human rights. Halfdan Rasmussen was also loved for his nonsense verses written for children. Halfdan Rasmussen almost became a national-poet of Denmark. He died in 87 years old on 2nd March 2002. In 1979 Amnesty International (Denmark) published a small book with poems about Human Rights (ISBN: 87-980852-2-0). Among the best were a small poem from Halfdan Rasmussen titled "Ikke Bødlen". The English Translation of Ikke Bødlen: Not the torturer will scare me Nor the hate and the torture Nor the barrels of death's rifles nor the shadows on the wall Nor the nights When the last star of pain is falling to the ground But the blind indifference of the merciless world
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POPSBombing the Moon? I say this is another level of undemocratic military nonsense thinly disguised as scientific research which The Great Mother finds dangerously foolish, wholely disrespectful of LIFE and in need of deep forgiveness by the Cosmic Being.
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POPS13 tips on avoiding being robbed Marc "Animal" MacYoung is a former street tough himself and expert on self-defense. He appraisals and advice regarding criminals and violence comes from having lived in their world for quite some time. The entirety of the No Nonsense Self Defense site is chock-full of solid advice, and I highly recommend it. See also Macyoung's advice re: the realities of knife violence vs. the fantasy.
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POPSMark "Animal" MacYoung on real-world knife violence [VIDEO] Mark MacYoung is a veteran of the LA streets and has survived more than a few violent street encounters. Forget the fancy dance moves. Forget the West Side Story/2 guys squaring off in a duel shit. Knife attacks don't happen that way on the streets of America. The knife is the assassin's weapon, and knife attacks on the street are assassinations. Practicing for a duel will not teach you how to handle an ambush. See also: - Mark "Animal" MacYoung: No Nonsense Self-Defense
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POPSStephen Fry: Twitter studies are pointless babble
A selection of sane comments: "Hear, hear!" "This is the best answer on the study on Twitter that I read so far!" "I heard that 40% of short-term studies are pointless babble…" "i would question how anyone could possibly create ‘meaningful commercial or political content’ in less than 140 characters!" "Nonsense is highly underrated, being the essence of all language." "Surely pointless babble is the best kind of babble, while the rest is nothing more than attemps to sell a product or a belief." "Without “Babble” our interactions would sound like the shipping forecast, and let’s face it, it’s not as though people really inwardly digest most of what is spoken at them." "but let’s get one thing clear, who the hell decides what is babble and what is not, what is worthy, what is not? " "I like to Twitter the same way that I like to chat " sometimes seriously, occasionally informatively, generally idly." "You wouldn’t condemn a party for being d
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POPSNewsweek: US Intelligence Finds no Evidence of Iranian N-Weapons Program 
The other news is about so-called suppressed documents in the files at the International Atomic Energy Agency, which are alleged to show a nuclear weapons research program. Gareth Porter argues convincingly that the reason that the IAEA never took the documents seriously is that there is every reason to think they are forgeries, perhaps by the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) political cult, which wants to have the US overthrow the clerical regime in Tehran so that MEK can take over the country. As for the Western press leaks that Iran now has enough nuclear material to make a bomb or now has the technical ability to make a bomb, both are nonsense. You need to enrich uranium to 90% to make a bomb. Iran claims to be able to enrich to 4% and a lot of observers think that is an exaggeration. So ipso facto Iran cannot possibly have produced enough fissile material for a bomb. Moreover, you need to have a weapons program trying to enrich to 90% to produce a bomb, which Iran does not have, from ev
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POPSNever Take A Poll At Face Value
Polls are tools if you understand them correctly they can give a wealth of insight into an issue. But never take them at face value alone, now what the margin of error means, what the actual questions and answer choices That were used for the poll. For example, I was once asked to participate in an over the phone poll. I was asked how I thought a certain local politician was doing his job. But rather than being able to say I didn't think he was doing a good job at all, I was only given a choice between a) a good job , or B) a fair job. There was no C) for just plain bad. Poll questions can also be worded so that they are certain to get the response that the poll taker wants. Why do they do this? So they can wave a poll in front of you hoping to sway your opinion. Any one in advertising , marketing, and politics knows this, and use it. Some are legit, some are bias, some are just poorly made. You need to know the difference and what they are really telling you.
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POPSWhy Do People Buy Right-Wing Nonsense on Health Reform? In a follow-up piece, Begley considers the thinking behind this bizarre trend. She spoke to sociologist Steven Hoffman who explained, "Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe." For the most part, he added, "people completely ignore contrary information" and are able to "develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information."
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