Just like it says, Popcorn Shorts is about the kind of things we think are really interesting, but don’t really need a large article to explain them.  From the sublime to the ridiculous, check in here for crunchy bits of info you’ll love to munch.  By the way, much (but not all) of our delicious Popcorn comes from articles we’ve posted on our Facebook page.  If you’re on Facebook, please stop by and “Like” us and we’ll keep a fairly-constant-but-not-frequent-enough-to-be-annoying stream of these coming to your virtual door!

The racism you don’t know you have

One of the most uncomfortable aspects arising from the police-use-of-force debate is racism.  There are arguments about the role it plays in today’s problems, but people seem to fall into two camps… those who wallow in their bigotry, and those who insist they have none at all.  But are any of us really color blind?  Implicit Association Tests (IATs) aren’t silly Facebook quizzes, they’re professional psychological tools designed to expose subconscious attitudes.  This IAT from Harvard is designed to expose your own deep-seated racial attitudes.  Take a few minutes to try it… you may find yourself as surprised and as uncomfortable as we were.

Pictures worth many thousand words

Photography can tell a complex story instantly.  One of the sites we frequently check is Quora.com, a site primarily for tech geeks that has forums on every possible subject you can imagine.  A recent poster asked “What images will change the way a person sees the world after viewing them?”  The responses were breathtaking.  From children living in bullet-riddled apartments in Gaza, to glimpses of the most tender side of humanity, to the selfie taken by the Curiousity rover on Mars, this is an assemblage of pictures that will truly move you.  The picture showing before-and-after Hiroshima from the air is worth the time by itself.

The Vice-President takes on the Fascists

Once upon a time our political leaders occasionally took principled, well-thought-out positions, sometimes even at odds with rich people!  Henry Wallace, VP under FDR during the war years, was asked “What is a fascist?  How many are there?  How dangerous are they?”  Wallace understood the Fascist threat, knew what Fascists were, knew exactly where to find them in America, and laid the whole thing out in a New York Times editorial.  Even in the midst of WWII he wasn’t as concerned about the Nazis as he was about the threats at home, but if he was right in his analysis, the threat has gotten much worse today.

If you don’t have the words, these folks do

Do you know the word for “the witty riposte you think of only when it is too late?” It’s the Yiddish word “trepverter”, literally “staircase words”. Did you know the Italian verb “Commuovere” means “a story that moved you to tears?”  English may have the most words, but languages around the world have words for things English never even thought of.  Do you know that “Tsundoku” is a Japanese word for a greivous sin that you yourself have probably committed?  You’ll just have to click this link to find out what that sin is, and learn about many more words without English equivalents.