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!
Stop Pretending… Learn about Net Neutrality
Comcast, Verizon, the FCC, and other players are fighting to determine the fundamental future architecture of the Internet. It sure sounds important, but we at Your Car Matters have a confession to make… we haven’t written much about it because we really don’t understand it. However, we ran across this little video that actually made it (reasonably) clear, and it also has a string of links to let you go even deeper. Now, we feel better that we don’t have to pretend anymore but we feel worse about the future of the Net. Is that a win?
Try the Earth quiz. We failed.
It’s said that we know more about outer space than we know about our own planet. That certainly proved true for us when we tried this quiz! We’re usually pretty proud when we do these little quizzes, but not this time. We tried it on two of our official Your Car Matters Guinea Pigs, but they each only got 5 questions right out of 15 possible. Subjects cover plants, animals, geography, and geology. It’s a great, if humbling, way to brush up on a little Earth science. Hope you do better than we did!
Vermont takes the lead against Corporate Personhood
In this month’s article on Thom Hartmann we told you about the movement for a 28th Constitutional Amendment declaring that “Corporations are not people, and money is not speech.” On May 2, Bernie Sanders’ Vermont became the first state to officially call for such an Amendment. It takes 34 states to propose a Constitutional Amendment and 38 states to ratify, so it’s a long road ahead. But as the saying goes, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Congratulations to Vermont, and there are links in our Hartmann story about how you can get involved.
The Universe fits in a box now
The scientific method is to theorize, hypothesize, experiment, test, and then refine the theory. The more accurately your hypothesis reflects reality, the more likely your hypothesis is to be right. But how do scientists test theories about the Universe? They do simulations and then compare the results to the observable Universe. The latest simulation models a cube of the Universe 350 million light years across, starting 12 million after the Big Bang and continuing to today. And it matches what scientists see. A stunning look at the very cutting edge of science!
