February 01, 2004

Evolution
So the public schools in Georgia will still teach evolution, but will instead call it "biological changes over time." Sounds like someone's trying awfully hard to avoid dispelling any unflattering stereotypes of the deep south. Says one legislator:

"If you're teaching the concept without the word, what's the point?" said Rep. Bobby Franklin, a Republican. "It's stupid. It's like teaching gravity without using the word gravity."
Mr. Franklin, described in the article as a "social conservative who prefers religious creation to be taught instead of evolution," seems at least to realize how stupid it would be not to teach gravity.
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Mars
Latest status of the Mars rovers. This appears to be the source of all the crappy, incomplete news stories you read about the rovers' status, so here's your chance to cut out the middleman. For example, it turns out that the problem with the Spirit rover was a bug hereby there isn't enough RAM to successfully mount the onboard flash card where they store pictures before beaming them back to Earth. Not enough memory to hold pointers to all the files; so they deleted some files and it seems to be working fine, now. Given what I've heard of NASA's excellent programming culture, someone's about to lose their job over this. Bummer.
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