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POPSCreative Photography by Ryan Robinson Absolutely stunning examples of creative photography by Ryan Robinson, superb talented photographer, who was born and raised in a small farmtown with an enormous extended family.Ryan loves to make people laugh, the smell of spring, the silence of a winter snowfall, witty people, hard work and the dogs who smile.
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POPSHubris like this is hard to swallow. Given the enormous pain people have experienced over the past few years as a result of the mortgage crisis, and the fact that these banks wouldn't be on their feet if they didn't get a bailout from American taxpayers, it's really hard to fathom the CEO of Goldman Sachs could believe this, let alone say it publicly.
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POPSBookstores On Line The internet has added a wonderful new dimension to the world of bookstores on line with people now able to comfortably shop for their favorite books online.
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POPSSocialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India
What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither. by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar Swaminathan Aiyar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity
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POPSNHL Drives Buzz with Tweetups
This is a pretty cool casy study on how the National Hockey League (who haven't always been the best marketers) stimulated buzz and interest around the playoffs last year by holding tweet-ups in NHL cities. They did this in both playoff and non-playoff cities - so it was really targeted toward the hard-core fan who just enjoys the sport. When I was with Flying Dog Brewery, we had good success creating tweetups to build stronger awareness and relationships with our consumers. But the cool thing is that loyal consumer who would come to the event would almost always bring someone who was less familiar with the brand, so we got to talk to a partially new audience. The great thing about tweetups is that you can really build the event around any theme because the objective is to come and meet like-minded people. Whether it's the love of hockey, beer or charity event if you get the word out to the right people and throw out an interesting offer for their attendance, people will come
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POPSCorrupted doctors When you lied once at least, who will trust you further? :cool: Striking example of our totally corrupted medicine and health care. Corrupted by whom? Who corrupt society and its institutions? How we calling those who perform the corruption and their accomplices? If these organized individuals do corrupt our society, how can we expect any benefits for our health and well being from them, their actions? Lie cannot last forever and in the end the truth will find its way out. Who will resist to make it happen?
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POPSNonviolence As Their Weapon "It was 2001. Khatib watched in horror as Israeli soldiers shot an unarmed friend at a checkpoint. Two weeks later, the militant Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade made a revenge attack on the checkpoint, killing seven soldiers. "My first reaction was 'Good for Al Aqsa!' " Khatib said. Then he realized the dead soldiers belonged to a different unit, not the one on duty when his friend was shot. "It made me wonder: This cycle of death, of violent action and reaction, how we can break it?"
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POPSAndrews Airforce Base This site presents the Andrews Airforce Base community, it facilities, mission, and history; as well as its cousins: Anderson Air Force Base, Altus Air Force Base, and an Auxiliary Air Force Base.
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POPSSperm Whale Classified Carbon Neutral Prior analysis of whale carbon dioxide emissions attributes 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions total to the animals in the Southern Ocean region. Subsequent computation lowers the whales’ carbon dioxide emissions estimate to 0.3 percent, which is equivalent to 17 million tons of carbon a year. Lavery and team explain that there are low levels of iron in the Southern Ocean, and the sperm whales each contribute about 10 grams of iron to the surface. Since the iron comes from the whales’ waste material, it takes the form of liquid plumes, effectively acting as a fertilizer and encouraging growth of plankton. Depending on the exact values and environmental conditions, sperm whales can then be classified “either a net carbon sink or as carbon-neutral,” Discovery writes.
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POPSInvested In War n 2004, the first full year after the current Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers-both hawks and doves invested between $74.9 million and 161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. No wonder the Democratic congress kept approving the enormous spending bills on the war, since a significant portion of it happens to end up in their deep pockets. Interestingly, the report also mentioned that members of the senate foreign relations and armed services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts. The burning questions for many people are the following: Are there any ethics left in politics? Could the universe ever exist without wars? The answer is no, because wars have been a major part of our social make up, in addition they force geostrategic changes, make profits for the elite, and reduce population.
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POPSGood Intentions with Disastrous Effects
But fraud and corruption are only part of the failed system that is Medicare – the other is basic accounting. In this morning’s Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson compares the troubles with Medicare to the “public option,” which he calls a “mirage,” that is gaining strength in Congress. While Medicare is a monopoly, the proposed government-run health insurance plan seeks to attract investment capital to subsidize the enormous costs that it will incur (such as marketing campaigns). If this fails, which it undoubtedly would, Congress would step in to bail it out. When asked why it has taken Medicare so long to figure out they were being scammed, Attorney General Eric Holder told CBS’s Steve Kroft, "I think lack of resources probably. And then I think people I don't think necessarily thought that something as well intentioned as Medicare and Medicaid would necessarily attract fraudsters. But I think we have to understand that it certainly has." Good Intentions maybe but...
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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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POPSUS Marines facing reality
They ought to read this blog, they and their inept and idiotic political masters. I had a US former Marine Sgt work for me in Namibia. He could not understand that his two year enlistment did nowhere equate to that of a 15 year regular soldier. Very few of the lessons in soldiering can be gained from the library of military literature. They are gained in the field, from those who have experienced all that service has to offer. The British made an enormous mistake when, after the Falklands, the major slice of experienced senior nco's were forcibly retired. That single instrument allowed second class senior officers to kowtow to their political masters, with disastrous procurement of everything essential from personal weapons to food, through footwear to transport. When General Jackson and his cronies were feathering their pension pots, the skills and loyalty of the squaddie were evaporating on a maelstrom of political correctness and Health & Safety. I heard not a beep out of th
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POPSNew Seven Layer Whopper! Can You Handle it? This Windows 7 Whopper might be estimated at five times larger than a typical quarter pounder. Thus, if you do the math, this 7-layered Whopper could be using 7,000 gallons of water to produce (give or take, depending on the size of the patties). In a world running out of fresh water supplies (fossil water), that's a huge quantity to plow through in one meal.
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POPSto beaver or not to beaver hmmmm- sometimes a plan just isn't in the thought....but more in the thought of "really" thinking the thing through..............maybe they should call this to bear or not to bear..............
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POPS Microsoft Windows 7 The biggest knock against Microsoft is making the installation of Windows 7 seem more complicated than it really is. There are five editions of Windows 7: Starter, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. To tell you which version of Windows 7 you should choose, Microsoft lays out an atrocious mess of a chart to illustrate upgrade paths.
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POPSBeing vs Doing We're afraid of losing control. If we really slowed down to a more balanced pace and took time to enjoy life, what might happen? Would anything get done? Would we survive? Frightened of loosening our grip and free-falling into an imagined abyss,we struggle to impose our agenda on life while contracting away from the natural, ever-changing, and unpredictable flow of being. Like Arjuna on the battlefield when Lord Krishna reveals his splendor in the Bhagavad Gita, the mind is innately terrified of being because it represents mysterious, unexplored terrain. In fact, the mind's job is to resist the unknown and create a false ground of security, constructed of beliefs and identities designed to protect us from the groundlessness of impermanence and change. As the great spiritual traditions teach, however, our essential nature is far vaster than the mind can encompass. A constant challenge - the great balancing act.