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POPSBye Bye Birdie: Famed Fossil Loses Avian Perch just one of several species of feathered dinosaurs preceding modern birds. It may not even be a direct ancestor. Such revisions make paleontology a science of second thoughts. Reconstructing the history of life, researchers thrash out theories of ancestry, behavior and biomechanics guided by hints from ancient bones. Archaeopteryx -- combining the feathers, wishbone and wings of a bird with the reptilian tail, teeth and claws of a dinosaur -- had already become a question mark. Newly discovered fossils have prompted scientists to revamp their assumptions about archaeopteryx's distinguishing features over the last decade. A cornucopia of fossil finds in China demonstrated that feathers coated many dinosaur species, not just birds. The newest finding, though, demonstrates that our understanding of even well-studied fossils like archaeopteryx -- scrutinized, measured, modeled for 150 years -- can still be upended.
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POPSFood of the week: Cauliflower Cauliflower traces its ancestry to the wild cabbage, a plant thought to have originated in ancient Asia Minor, which resembled kale or collards more than the vegetable that we now know it to be. The cauliflower went through many transformations and reappeared in the Mediterranean region, where it has been an important vegetable in Turkey and Italy since at least 600 B.C. It gained popularity in France in the mid-16th century and was subsequently cultivated in Northern Europe and the British Isles. The United States, France, Italy, India and China are countries that produce significant amounts of cauliflower.
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POPSRape and Black Roots What this means is that, in defiance of the law and social convention, an enormous amount of “race-mixing” has long been occurring in the United States, about which we, as a society, have for just as long been in deep denial. I have never given an admixture DNA test of a black person who turned out to be 100 percent African, no matter how dark or “African” they appear to be. Some of this inter-racial sexuality was voluntary, we now know, but far more was coerced, a reflection or a result of a profound imbalance of power. Because of a confluence of factors — the illegality of miscegenation, the prevalence of sexual abuse and rape as the source of these relationships, infidelity, guilt, shame, and disgrace — both black people and white people had a certain interest in keeping these relationships in the dark, as it were.
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POPS..and One Rumour Obama Cannot Dispel "Fact: Obama is eighth cousin to Cheney, according to research by the vice-president's wife Lynne. The two men share a common ancestor in a 17th-century French immigrant." Crikey, I think I would shoot myself if I shared common ancestry with war monger Cheney.
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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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POPSEuropeans Descended From Hunters, Not Farmers, Study Says The team investigated mitochondrial DNA"a permanent genetic marker passed from mothers to their offspring"recovered from the teeth and bones of 24 skeletons from 16 central European sites. These ancient humans all belonged to cultures that can be linked to the introduction of farming practices that began in present-day Israel, Jordan, and Syria around 12,000 years ago. The researchers identified which cultures the subjects belonged to by the decorations found on their pottery.
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POPSList of Co.'s Who've Bent to White House Pressure Let them know (email, phone) that it is their dropping of Beck/FOX ads that is the reason for no longer patronizing them. Remember, one side's boycott doesn't have to "outrank" the other side's in terms of lost sales revenue, it is the combined total that resulted from the company's ever responding to the political controversy in the first place. Including the rest of this list (G-Z0 this is an awful lot of co.'s. If it's easier just boycott everything General Electric. Then that includes a lot of co.'s as well.
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POPSChuck Norris Facts - Read by Chuck Norris Chuck Norris Facts Read by the man himself. and some more i found lol. Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian. There is no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard. There is only another fist. In fine print on the last page of the Guinness Book of World Records it notes that all world records are held by Chuck Norris, and those listed in the book are simply the closest anyone else has ever gotten. The chief export of Chuck Norris is pain. Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs. The Great Wall of China was originally created to keep Chuck Norris out. It failed misserably. Crop circles are Chuck Norris' way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down. Chuck Norris once commented, "There are few problems in this world that cannot be solved by a swift roundhouse kick to the face. In fact, there are none."
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POPSEmma Watson’s 16th century Ancestor was accused of Witchcraft Emma Watson, who rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series has a woman in her family tree who is convicted of witchcraft in the 16th century. According to Ancestry.com, genealogists have learned that 19 year-old Emma is a distant relative of Joan Playle. Playle, a 16th-century woman of Essex County, England was convicted of witchcraft in 1592. She was excommunicated from the Church of England.
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POPSEmma Watson, star of Harry Potter films, is related to 16th century witch Anastasia Tyler, a genealogist from Ancestry.co.uk, who researched Watson's heritage, said: "It is not every day we are able to trace the branches of a family tree back to the 16th century witch trials. "It shows researching your family's past can have just as many twists and turns as a film blockbuster. "As we researched Emma's family, we learned that her great great great grandmother was named Frances Playle - a very uncommon surname. "The Playles have been in a small area of Essex since the early 1500s." Watson grew up in Oxfordshire, roughly 100 miles from the area. The actress, who achieved straight A grades at A level in English literature, geography and art at Headington School in Oxford, is reportedly set to attend Ivy League Brown University, in Rhode Island, USA, in September.
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POPSIndian to Indian Racism "In the spirit of keeping it real, I can’t understand for the life of me why anyone who is of Native American/First Nations descent would use a document like the Dawes Rolls? which was drafted using the United States definitions of race to determine ancestry.? I? hope that they would understand how the US governments treaties and documents have never been used in a way that uplifts Native peoples, which is why relying on those documents should be obviously wrong. People who have been so decimated by racism should really know better than to engage in this racist behavior."
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POPSWhy This White Guy Was Not Arrested While Trying to Break Into a House Not His Own All was well ... My hope is that lots of white folks will finally get what our African-American brothers and sisters have been trying to get through our thick skulls for about half a century now. It's different being black. No matter whether we think we are racists. And anyway, no person of color believes any white person who says, "I'm not a racist." When we hunt for housing, real estate agents regard us more favorably. We don't get followed by store security. We get better deals from car salesmen, more generous treatment from juries, and -- despite myths of rampant affirmative action -- our kids rarely compete with equally qualified African-American kids because so many urban schools, where most black kids are educated, are flat-out disasters.
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POPSDear Jon Stewart - Please Change Your Name Back to Leibowitz This is a great opinion piece! If you read the whole article, you'll even get a nod to Michael Jackson and the author's affirmation of the importance of making our external image line up with our internal self-identity. Our bigotry as a society will subside only when those of us who don't subscribe in one way or another to the majority have the courage to be ourselves. This is fundamental to queer theory, diversity, and multi-culturalism...but the costs of facing social ostracization are steep. Be brave everyone! The world needs to be a place where individuals can be themselves at every level!
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POPSVirgin Islands researchers unveil slavery records In the photos: The Three Queens - leaders of the riot that helped end slavery in the Virgin Islands. The Three Queens of the Virgin Islands memorial commemorates three former slaves who led an 1878 revolt for improved working conditions. (Slavery had been abolished in the Danish West Indes in 1848.)
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POPSIt Can't Happen Here Without the assent of her people, America is being converted from a Christian country, nine in 10 of whose people traced their roots to Europe as late as the time of JFK, into a multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural Tower of Babel not seen since the late Roman Empire. The city farthest along the path is Los Angeles, famous worldwide for the number, variety, and size of its ethnic and racial street gangs. Not to worry. It can't happen here.
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POPSBahrain Closed Newspaper After Ahmadinejad ’Insult’ The insult? Someone alleged he was of Jewish ancestry. Only in the Arab world would some imbecile consider that an insult. I mean, anyone with half a brain recognizes the contributions that the Jews have made to the modern world (Advances in medicine, science, etc…).
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POPSBlack Activists Call Senate Slavery Apology "Useless" Washington, D.C. - The U.S. Senate resolution apologizing for slavery and segregation will be used as a lobbying tool to acquire reparations payments, say members of the black leadership network Project 21. The group urges the Senate to "move on." It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s..
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POPSEmerging Young Visual Artist Sohan Jakhar an Emerging Artist – Has contemporary style of painting. His art work includes modern canvas art paintings, acrylic paintings on canvas and abstract artwork
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