...further into the article...The Texas Board of Education will vote Thursday and Friday on amendments to the state's proposed science curriculum. The amendments convey doubt about evolution that, according to scientists, simply does not exist.
"They haven't mentioned creationism or the age of the Earth," said Steve Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, a nonprofit science education and policy watchdog. "It's not openly creationist, but it's anti-science. It demeans and devalues science."
The most recent prominent science-curriculum battle took place last year in Florida, where a statewide campaign engineered by intelligent-design supporters fell short of obtaining science curricula that called for classroom evolution education to be balanced with "alternatives."
Members of the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think tank, helped draft critiques of evolution in Texas as well as Florida. According to Schafersman, the seven Texas Board of Education members who've supported the amendments are Young Earth creationists.
Because teaching creationism as fact in public schools is illegal, supporters have resorted to language about "alternatives" and "strengths and weaknesses" into science curricula. There's little danger of students learning that the Earth is 4,000 years old, or that a supernatural entity carefully arranged dinosaur fossils to look natural. But students might not learn that science is a process of testing hypotheses and accumulating evidence to produce theories, like that of evolution. And when a few outlying critiques are presented as valid alternatives to scientific consensus, critical thinking suffers.
The draft guidelines passed by an 8-7 vote in January, but Board chairman Donald McLeroy, a Young Earth creationist, unilaterally added amendments that, though avoiding mention of "strengths and weaknesses," fail to pass scientific muster.
One amendment requires biology teachers to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency of common ancestry to explain the sudden appearance, stasis and sequential nature of groups in the fossil record.” That all complex organisms are descended from a common ancestor is commonly accepted by evolutionary biologists.
Other amendments to planetary-science guidelines "introduce unwarranted uncertainty to long-settled scientific issues," wrote Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 23 leading members of Texas' science community in a letter delivered to McLeroy on Tuesday.
"These amendments serve only to undermine sound science education in Texas," they wrote.
The board's vote will conclude Friday, and the resulting curriculum will be enforced for the next 10 years.
Right now, said Schafersnan, when a schoolbook "is stamped 'Texas edition' on the front, that means it's been censored to keep the students ignorant." But if the board votes as it did in January, that will no longer be the case.
The malicious program already is thought to have infected between 5 million and 10 million computers.
Those infections haven't spawned many symptoms, but on April 1 a master computer is scheduled to gain control of these zombie machines, said Don DeBolt, director of threat research for CA, a New York-based IT and software company.
What happens on April Fool's Day is anyone's guess.The program could delete all of the files on a person's computer, use zombie PCs -- those controlled by a master -- to overwhelm and shut down Web sites or monitor a person's keyboard strokes to collect private information like passwords or bank account information, experts said.
More likely, though, said DeBolt, the virus may try to get computer users to buy fake software or spend money on other phony products.
DeBolt said Conficker C imbeds itself deep in the computer where it is difficult to track. The program, for instance, stops Windows from conducting automatic updates that could prevent the malware from causing damage.
The program's code is also written to evolve over time and its author appears to be making updates to thwart some of the Conficker Cabal's attempts to neuter the worm.
"The stretching of objects into long thin shapes (rather like spaghetti) in a very strong gravitational field, and is caused by extreme tidal forces. In the most extreme cases, near black holes, the stretching is so powerful that no object can withstand it, no matter how strong its components are."So I'm pretty sure getting stuck in a black hole would be rather unenjoyable. But don't fret, there is some hope at least! This article explains that all hope need not be lost, at least not for a brief moment in time before you tumble through the event horizon. As it turns out, the article explains how to maximize your survival time once inside a black hole, check it out:
...later in the article:
"Black holes have so much mass concentrated into a very small radius that the gravitational force near them is enormous. Since a black hole has no solid surface, as an object approaches, the distances between the black hole and the nearest and farthest edges of the object are significantly different, in percentage terms. In other words, the total distance from the black hole to the nearest part of the object becomes comparable to the dimensions of the object itself. For this reason, the gradient of the gravitional field across the object is very large. Thus, the difference in gravitational pull between the nearest and furthest parts of the falling object is sufficient to cause spaghettification."
"Due to the tremendous tidal forces, an unlucky victim will suffer spaghettification, where differences in gravity from your head to your feet stretch you out. But let's not worry about that for now. You're trying to maximize survival time.
Since you've got a spaceship capable of zipping around from star to star, you've got a powerful engine, capable of affecting your rate of descent. Point down towards the singularity and you'll fall faster, point away and you'll fall more slowly. Keep in mind that you're inside a black hole, flying a spaceship capable of traveling near the speed of light, so Einstein's theories of relativity come into play.
And it's how you use your acceleration that defines how much personal time you'll have left.
In a moment of panic, you may point your rocket outwards and fire it at full thrust, keeping the engine running until you arrive at the central singularity. However, Lewis and Kwan have demonstrated that in the convoluted space-time within the event horizon, such a strategy actually hastens your demise, and you'll actually end up experiencing less time overall. So, what are you to do? Lewis and Kwan have the solution, identifying an acceleration "sweet-spot" that gives you the maximal survival time. All you have to do, once across the event horizon, is fire your rocket for a fixed amount of time, and then turn it off and enjoy the rest of the fall."
mmmmm.... spaghettification. Time for lunch me thinks.From otisarchives1 Flickr account:2,000 boxes!!!! WOW.
We have been blocked from our Flickr accounts by the Army and can upload and access the account from home only. If you send us questions or comments, please have patience; we'll respond as soon as we can.
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From their Tuesday blog post:
Most of these photographs were never described in any database (although there is a set of index cards that fills a wall) and we're discovering and seeing them for the first time too. There are so many pictures that no one of us is seeing all of them - the contractor's scanning team working on this has 7 people just getting the pictures catalogued to be scanned. And there's at least 2000 boxes left to go.
Give me a freaking break.TAKE A HINT FROM THE JAPANESE: Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said that AIG execs should take responsibility by resigning or killing themselves. In a Mar. 16 interview with a Cedar Rapids radio station, he said: "I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed. But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them [is] if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say: 'I'm sorry,' and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."
'BEST AND BRIGHTEST': From a New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial: "AIG officials have, understandably, been hard-pressed to defend this bonus and retention boondoggle. But that hasn't deterred them from trying." As [Edward M.] Liddy, AIG's president, told Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the payments are needed "to retain the best and the brightest talents" to run AIG.
Surely he jests.
"This band of 'best and brightest' just blew a $62 billion hole in the company. What's to retain? Heads should be rolling. Besides, is there really that much cutthroat competition for such an overpaid bunch of losers? Maybe there is—which would explain a lot about what passes for talent around lower New York City these days and, if so, is downright frightening."
DEFLECTING ATTENTION: The Wall Street Journal, in a Mar. 17 editorial, says that the furor over the bonuses is shifting attention from the fact that many of the AIG counterparties that received billions in payments funded by the federal government are overseas financial institutions. "Given that the government has never defined 'systemic risk,' we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And in some cases it's not even American. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company."
"Oh Timmy, that's you right there, that little red dot, see!!! Yes we're watching you Timmy, and this is you yesterday skipping school you little bastard..."Though I'm sure we're all being tracking already anyways.
Astronauts: OH GOD ITS COMING!! Our orders ground command??And with that, I'll end my ramble. Haha.
Ground Command: RUN FOR YOU LIVES! In fact don't run, float! Float damn you! Get the hell out of there!
Astronauts: Sir we won't make it, our top speed is 3 mph....
Ground Command: God speed to you all.
I'd love to work there for a day just to wear their jazzy suits...
