Mississippi lawmaker admits his education bill is to protect creationism

“I just don’t want my teachers punished… for bringing creationism into the debate.”

Mississippi is the latest state to see a bill introduced that would protect teachers who injected bogus information into science classes. In that regard, there's nothing new; South Dakota beat it to the punch this year. The text of the bill is also unremarkable, fitting right in to the family tree of similar legislation that's been introduced over the years (see sidebar).

What is unusual in this case is that the lawmaker behind the bill is being very upfront about his purposes. “I just don’t want my teachers punished in any form or fashion for bringing creationism into the debate," Representative Mark Formby told The Clarion-Ledger. "Lots of us believe in creationism.” The bill he introduced would protect teachers from any disciplinary actions triggered by their discussion of it into the classroom.

In most cases, the people behind these bills avoid publicly admitting their intentions. In that way, they can pretend that the language of the bill (which ostensibly protects scientific information) has a purely secular purpose. By giving the game away—the language is a sham, and the bill is meant to allow proselytizing in the science classroom—Formby has created a record that will undoubtedly resurface should his bill pass and trigger a lawsuit.

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Feds nail webcam on utility pole for 10 weeks to spy on suspect

Court says warrants not needed. Footage revealed what passersby could see.

(credit: Maëlick)

A federal appeals court is upholding the firearms conviction of a Tennessee man whose brother's rural farm was monitored for 10 weeks straight by a remote-controlled camera the authorities installed on a utility pole 200 yards away—without a warrant.

The decision (PDF) by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the nine-year sentence of a man named Rocky Houston, who was caught by the camera as being a felon in possession of a gun. The man was on a Roane County Sheriff's Office watch list after he was cleared of murder charges following a gun battle that left a Roane County law enforcement official dead in 2006.

"There is no Fourth Amendment violation, because Houston had no reasonable expectation of privacy in video footage recorded by a camera that was located on top of a public utility pole and that captured the same views enjoyed by passersby on public roads," Judge John Rogers wrote for the unanimous court, which ruled 3-0 to uphold Houston's 2014 conviction. "The ATF agents only observed what Houston made public to any person traveling on the roads surrounding the farm. Additionally, the length of the surveillance did not render the use of the pole camera unconstitutional, because the Fourth Amendment does not punish law enforcement for using technology to more efficiently conduct their investigations. While the ATF agents could have stationed agents round-the-clock to observe Houston’s farm in person, the fact that they instead used a camera to conduct the surveillance does not make the surveillance unconstitutional."

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The Earth cracked apart in a forest, and it made a sound

It didn’t swallow anybody, but it’s pretty weird and we don’t know what caused it.

(credit: Wayne Pennington/Michigan Technical University)

With no warning, a hellish rumble announces a crack in the ground, opening to a yawning chasm as the walls spread, crumble, and disappear into the abyss—fortunately, this particular seismic disaster occurs only in cartoons. (And ridiculous movies.) But tone down the special effects a bit and then try to put yourselves in the shoes of some residents of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in October 2010.

Early in the morning, folks just north of Menominee, Michigan, heard a loud noise and felt a shake. In that part of the country, a grain elevator explosion is more likely than an earthquake. But when someone went out to finish cutting up a large tree that had come down in a storm two weeks previous, they found a huge crack had opened up in the Earth. It wasn’t going to swallow anybody whole, but you could probably have lost a cell phone in there.

The “Menominee Crack” was a little longer than a football field, over half a meter wide in places, and approached 1.7m deep. It ran through a forested area that had previously been flat. The crack actually sat atop what was now a six-foot-high ridge, with trees on either side now tipping slightly away from vertical. If you look carefully, you can actually see it in satellite imagery.

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NASA’s asteroid mission isn’t dead—yet

Agency delays initial launch date to 2023, program may never fly at all.

NASA's asteroid mission calls for a robotic spacecraft to grab a boulder from an asteroid and return it to cislunar space.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Back in 2010 President Obama wanted to distance himself from the space exploration programs of George W. Bush and his predecessors. Humans had been to the Moon, and while they would one day go to Mars, the president reasoned, they needed a more realistic near-term destination. He chose an asteroid.

“By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space,” Obama said at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, during the one space policy speech he has given as president. “So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.”

An asteroid offered a couple of key benefits. It was new—no human had visited one before. And with a shallow gravity well, it didn’t require expensive landers and ascent vehicles to get onto and off its surface. But there were also problems. Even after searching for a couple of years, scientists couldn’t find a suitable asteroid that came close enough to Earth for astronauts to reach it in a timely manner, and the Orion vehicle NASA was building could only support a crew for 21 days in deep space.

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Oculus Rift will ship with four-month Unity Pro trial

VR-minded Vision Summit 2016 kicks off with other freebies, news announcements.

Enlarge / Another Oculus bundled product: four months of Unity Pro. (credit: Oculus)

The creators of the Unity game engine kicked off a virtual reality focused event in Los Angeles on Wednesday, and it began with a wave of freebie announcements—perhaps most notably, the news that all Oculus Rift buyers will get four months of free, unfettered access to Unity Pro.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey was on hand at the Vision Summit 2016 to confirm the news, pointing back to Oculus' original decision to offer shorter free trials to the VR headset maker's dev kit products. "For virtual reality, we knew a lot of the best ideas and applications weren't going to come from people that you could predict," Luckey told the Vision Summit crowd. "It was gonna come from people who would create things you wouldn't expect."

This news follows prior bundled-software announcements, including a copy of Eve: Valkyrie for every headset pre-order and a copy of the cute platformer Lucky's Tale with all headsets, which may help the slightest bit with the $600 headset's sticker shock.

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“Happy Birthday” is public domain, former owner Warner/Chapell to pay $14M

Winning lawyer says more bogus copyrights may come under legal attack.

(credit: From court records in Good Morning to You v. Warner/Chappell)

The public will soon be free to sing the world's most famous song.

Music publisher Warner/Chappell will no longer be allowed to collect licensing royalties on those who sing "Happy Birthday" in public and will pay back $14 million to those who have paid for licensing in the past, according to court settlement papers filed late Monday night.

The settlement is a result of a lawsuit originally filed in 2013 by filmmaker Jennifer Nelson, who challenged the "Happy Birthday" copyright. "Happy Birthday" has the same melody as "Good Morning to You," a children's song dating to the 19th Century. But despite the song's murky early history, music publisher Warner/Chappell has stuck to its story that the song was copyrighted in 1935, and a royalty had to be paid for any public use of it—until now.

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LibreOffice 5.1 features revamped user interface, remote server support

LibreOffice 5.1 features revamped user interface, remote server support

The latest version of open source office suite LibreOffice includes speed enhancements, a redesigned user interface with menus that help you find certain functions more quickly, and support for opening files on remote servers. For instance, LibreOffice 5.1 lets you add FTP, SharePoint, OneDrive, WebDAV, or Google Drive sources so you can open, edit, and save files […]

LibreOffice 5.1 features revamped user interface, remote server support is a post from: Liliputing

LibreOffice 5.1 features revamped user interface, remote server support

The latest version of open source office suite LibreOffice includes speed enhancements, a redesigned user interface with menus that help you find certain functions more quickly, and support for opening files on remote servers. For instance, LibreOffice 5.1 lets you add FTP, SharePoint, OneDrive, WebDAV, or Google Drive sources so you can open, edit, and save files […]

LibreOffice 5.1 features revamped user interface, remote server support is a post from: Liliputing

Yes, you can rely on Amazon’s new game engine during the zombie apocalypse

Lumberyard terms of service features a carve-out in case of reanimated human corpses.

BRAAAAIIINNNNS! (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Since Amazon launched its free Lumberyard game engine yesterday, the world has been united in a single question: are we legally allowed to use the engine to operate life-saving infrastructure during the zombie apocalypse? After digging through Amazon's updated terms of service for the new engine, we can now confirm that the answer is a definitive "yes."

Don't believe us? Go to the Amazon Web Services TOS and scroll down to rule 57.10. There you'll see the following (emphasis added):

57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.

As obvious jokes hidden in legal boilerplate go, Amazon's efforts fall a little short of the Divinity: Original Sin EULA, which gave out rewards to the first 100 people who bothered reading through the boring language. And the humorous clause diverts attention away from other, potentially more worrying clauses therein, like the engine's collection of "information about system and server resources, features used in the integrated development environment, frequency and duration of use, geographic and network locations, and error and information messages."

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Your brain operates differently depending on the time of year

Working memory activity may peak in the fall, while attention tops out in summer.

(credit: Diana/Flickr)

Winter gloom and springtime glee are common seasonal swings. But beyond swaying how you feel, yearly cycles may also shift the way you think, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Comparing the cognitive function of 28 volunteers tested at different points in the year, researchers noted pronounced seasonal patterns in brain region activity. Namely, areas involved in working memory hit peak performance around the autumn equinox, and areas dealing with sustained attention crested around the summer solstice. Though it’s still early in the research to understand the significance of possible annual mental oscillations, the study hints at a previously unappreciated seasonal rhythm of the human brain that could affect learning and behavior.

For the study, researchers led by Pierre Maquet and Gilles Vandewalle at the University of Liège in Belgium recruited 28 healthy volunteers, split evenly by gender and all around 21 years old. To rule out the influence of daily rhythms and environmental factors, the researchers prepared the volunteers for the study by having them stay in the lab for 4.5 days. During this time, participants endured a 42-hour sleep deprivation routine in a dimly lit sound-proof room with no time cues.

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Microsoft’s Release Preview ring lets you try new features early

Microsoft’s Release Preview ring lets you try new features early

Microsoft’s Windows Insider program allows users to get early access to new builds of Windows 10 before they’re made available to the general public. Not sure you want to risk installing untested updates? That’s why Microsoft has offered a Fast Ring and a Slow Ring, allowing members of the slow ring to get updates only […]

Microsoft’s Release Preview ring lets you try new features early is a post from: Liliputing

Microsoft’s Release Preview ring lets you try new features early

Microsoft’s Windows Insider program allows users to get early access to new builds of Windows 10 before they’re made available to the general public. Not sure you want to risk installing untested updates? That’s why Microsoft has offered a Fast Ring and a Slow Ring, allowing members of the slow ring to get updates only […]

Microsoft’s Release Preview ring lets you try new features early is a post from: Liliputing