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POPSTamim Ansary on the future of the Iranian regime Ansary believes that what he calls the "Khomeinist" regime has made such serious tactical mistakes in trying to control dissent that it is probably doomed at this point. Khamenei, in failing even to maintain the appearance of fairness and impartiality, has insulted the intelligence of the people and sacrificed his own legitimacy. Interestingly, Ansary remarks that only intervention from the West -- on behalf of the protesters, that is -- is likely to save the old guard at this point, by restoring their moral authority as the guardians of Iranian nationalism.
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POPSInterview with an Iranian demonstrator: "don't leave us alone" One Iranian demonstrator, in a phone interview with CNN American Morning, pleads with the world to intervene on behalf of the protestors. He is very direct and forthright and calls on Obama to treat the current Iranian regime as criminal and "insane." This isn't what I would have expected him to say.
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POPSHamid Dabashi on Iran: this isn't class or sectarian conflict -- it's something new Hamid Dabashi is a Columbia University professor. He views the current situation in Iran as something fundamentally non-ideological. He compares it to the U.S. civil rights movement and predicts that a nonviolent resistance will continue for some time. I like the final line: "We need to sit back, hope for the best and let this inspirational movement of a whole new generation of hope teach us courage and humility."
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POPSA green power incentive program for municipalities A national green energy corporation, Smart Power, launched a marketing campaign several years ago called "Clean Energy Communities." Municipalities which sign up for the program, demonstrate a commitment to continued development of clean energy options, and succeed in reaching certain benchmark levels of household and business participation in clean energy initiatives, can receive incentives such as a free 1kW solar installation or communitywide energy audit. It's been fairly successful in Connecticutt and has expanded into Pennsylvania and North Carolina. I don't know if this is legitimate, or just another corporate greenwashing ploy, but it sounds good.
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POPSYour self-understanding is probably even worse than you think A new psychology experiment uses techniques from popular magic to demonstrate that people misunderstand and misrepresent the reasons behind their own choices. Participants were asked to choose which of two alternatives they preferred, and subsequently to justify their choice. However, experimenters surreptitiously swapped the alternatives immediately after the participant had announced a choice, and most never noticed, in most cases even giving "reasons" for why they had "chosen" the option they were presented with (even though they had, in fact, picked the other option).
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POPS"Jesus Didn't Tap Out": stepping into the octagon at SOSChurch.tv A new kind of Easter observance -- "Jesus as Ultimate Fighter." The point is "relevance" and bringing young men back into the fold. Check out the awesome video at the source (complete with youthful pastor sporting shaved head and soul patch and his hottie wife, Darla). The church website is SOSChurch.tv.
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POPSMatt Tabibi on the real meaning of the bailout According to Rolling Stone, the government measures surrounding the bailout amount not to a kind of creeping socialism, as critics on the right seem to claim, but more like a sweeping takeover of the government by so-called "financial bureaucrats" -- an in-group made up of the richest of the rich, who by now control all the money, the regulatory agencies, the Treasury and the Fed. Anyhow, it's definitely bad news.
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POPSEver wondered why they dim the cabin lights for take-off and landing? It's a safety precaution. This way, interior lighting should closely match exterior light conditions, and in case there's an emergency, passengers and crew will be able to see. For similar reasons, people have to leave their window-shades open. This also helps the crew to determine which emergency door or doors to open if necessary -- for example, if there are obstructions like debris or fire on one side of the plane but not the other.
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POPSFeedscrub -- filter your feeds A "trainable" filter for your RSS feeds. Free account does not allow import of OPML files, so its usefulness is a little limited. FeedHub does something similar.
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POPSUN Undersec'y for Humanitarian Affairs on Gaza, Jan. 8, 2009 An extremely disturbing picture of the situation on the ground for Gazan civilians. One-third of the dead are children. Aid convoys and Red Cross teams have been prevented from carrying out humanitarian missions and have periodically been fired upon. Much of the civilian population of Gaza is without food, water, medical care, or power.
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POPSNot driving like a Christian? Watch yourself A whack-job pickup driver in San Antonio rear-ends a woman in a sedan because he believes God told him to "punish the car" for not "driving like a Christian." He was moving at a hundred miles per hour. No one was seriously hurt.
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POPSIndicting the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin's private email - Harpers.org The DOJ has mounted an extraordinary case against the hacker who revealed Sarah Palin's apparent systematic violation of the Open Records Act (by using a private email address to conduct government business). Given that the DOJ normally doesn't care much about cyber-crime, one has to wonder how the decision to allocate those resources was made.
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POPSFannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the McCain campaign After publicly accusing Obama of being in the pocket of the mortgage industry (based largely on the claim that Raines was an Obama adviser, which has since proven to have no basis in fact), it turns out that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, headed an astroturfing organization financed entirely by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. You know what they say about glass houses.
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