My public high school wasn’t the best, but we did have an amazing history teacher. Mr. L, as we called him, brought our country’s story to life. So when he taught us about the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, Andrew Jackson’s campaigns to force at least 46,000 Cherokees, Choctaws, Muscogee-Creeks, Chickasaws, and Seminoles off their ancestral lands, my classmates and I were stricken.

It was unfathomable that thousands of Native American men, women, and children were forced to march West, sometimes freezing to death or starving because U.S. soldiers wouldn’t let them bring extra food or blankets. It was hard to hear that the Choctaw Nation lost up to a third of its population on the death march. It was disorienting to learn that what amounted to ethnic cleansing had come at the insistence of an American president.

But then it was lunchtime, and we pulled out our wallets in the cafeteria. Andrew Jackson was there, staring out from every $20 bill. We had been carrying around portraits of a mass murderer all along, and had no idea.

More: Andrew Jackson Should Be Kicked Off the $20 Bill: He Ordered a Genocide.

It may have hidden in the ocean for millions of years, but life today poses numerous challenges for the West Indian Ocean coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), the “living fossil” fish that was famously rediscovered off the coast of South Africa in 1938. The few areas in which the fish still swim face destruction from new port construction while the coelacanths themselves risk being caught up in fishing nets intended for sharks. Even climate change poses a new risk for the species.

The coelacanth already has a few protections in place—trade is banned under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, for example—but now one more safeguard may soon be available. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) proposed this week that coelacanths be listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The proposal wouldn’t cover all coelacanths. Instead it would only add protection for the fish that live off the coast of Tanzania, where a genetically distinct population faces the greatest threats. The populations that live near the Comoro Islands and South Africa would not gain additional protection, nor would the separate coelacanth species that lives in Indonesian waters.

More: After 400 Million Years, Coelacanth at Risk of Extinction

Governor Matt Mead signed House Bill 23 into law on March 2, 2015, according to the Associated Press (March 2, 2015), so Wyoming is now free to adopt the Next Generation Science Standards.

The bill repeals a footnote in the state budget for 2014-2016 that precluded the use of state funds for “any review or adoption” of the NGSS. The treatment of climate change was cited as the reason for the footnote.

The blockage of the NGSS was widely condemned by the state’s scientists, educators, and newspapers, and the state board of education declined to develop a new set of science standards independent of the NGSS.

Whether the NGSS will in fact be adopted by Wyoming is up to the state board of education, since the bill directs the board to “independently examine and scrutinize any science standards proposed or reviewed as a template.”

So far the NGSS have been adopted in thirteen states — California, Delaware, Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia — plus the District of Columbia.

More: NGSS Unblocked in Wyoming

Violent collisions between the growing Earth and other objects in the solar system generated significant amounts of iron vapor, according to a new study by LLNL scientist Richard Kraus and colleagues.

The results show that iron vaporizes easily during impact events, which forces planetary scientists to change how they think about the growth of planets and evolution of our solar system.

For planetary scientists, one of the most important and complex research areas is predicting how planets form and evolve to their current state. Generally speaking, planets form by a series of impacts, with the speed of the impacts being slow at first, a few miles per hour, but then faster as the planets grow larger, up to 100,000 miles per hour.

At the end stages of formation, when the impact speeds are high and the material conditions are extreme (high temperatures and pressures), planetary scientists don’t have great models for how to describe what happens to the colliding bodies.

More: Research Gets to the Core of Earth’s Formation - Astrobiology Magazine

Recently Rightwing Watch found David Barton saying something stupid, and nonsensical again.

Youtube Video

Tell me Mr Barton, if HIV /AIDS is really God’s punishment for our sexual “sins” such as homosexuality, why is it that innocent people who get brutally raped by someone with the disease can get infected? Wouldn’t God have set it up in such a way that no one would get the disease that did not actually “deserved” it? Also that off course is even assuming homosexuality is wrong and is actually something that deserves punishment. Also how do you explain all those gay people who live long happy lives, who never get a single sexually transmitted disease? You know, as much as you may not like it, they actually do exist. They’re not like Santa or the Tooth fairy.

Also Contrary to what you have stated, there actually have been successful HIV / AIDS vaccine tests, so you’re wrong again. There already is a promising vaccine for HIV / AIDS. Why has God allowed this, when you insisted that he never would? Do you really know the mind of God, like you seem to think that you do?

Alan Turing, image via independent.co.uk

Tell me Mr. Barton since you’re such a “good historian,” did Alan Turing, the heroic scientist who helped crack the Enigma Code, and help the Allies defeat the Nazis, did he deserve to go to jail for the “sin” of Sodomy? Did he deserve that, in-spite of all the countless lives he saved? Where you upset when the British royal family recently posthumous pardoned him for something that most people nowadays outside of your circle, don’t even think should be a crime? Did you not know that Turing was gay, or do you think his homosexuality was a fabrication, to make “the evil” gays look good? Turing was a hero, but because he was gay, and he lived in a time when most people thought like you, he had to stay in the closet and live in fear. Contrary to what you will insist, and most people thought back than, gay people can’t stop being gay. Sexual orientation is hardwired.

Tell me why he ( or anyone else for that matter ) deserved to be punished for being attracted to someone of the same gender. Tell me why homosexual sex is so wrong, without resorting to the Bible, the type of fake “Christian Nation” history that people like you promote, or pseudoscience? You can’t, can you?

YouTube

Ultron lays out his plans for decimating Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in the latest trailer for Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” in theaters May 1!
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This is some exciting news.

What that means for me and you is that Lighthouse puts your body into the virtual world with stunning precision. I tested it and can confirm: holy shit, yes, this really works. Want to reach out and touch something in VR? Lighthouse is how you’ll do it.

Newell explained Valve’s philosophy behind creating Lighthouse as such:

“The first prototype of our hardware has all these retro-reflective dots. That’s great for one person who’s sitting. If you actually want to have ten people in a room moving around, you need something like Lighthouse. So Lighthouse gives you that precision; it’s not specific to the head-mounted display. We also use it for controllers, but you could use it for anything: you could put it on your tablets or your phones. It’s tracking — it happens that VR likes to use tracking and it’s critically dependent on it.”

Lighthouse currently relies on reflective sensors (32 on the prototype I used) to track movement in Valve and HTC’s VR headset, Vive. There are two motion controllers as well that look and feel similar to an ice cream cone (sugar cone, not waffle/cake cones, you monster). The controllers also have sensors, and they show up in VR as visualizations in front of your eyes, as if you were looking down at them in your hands in real life.

I cannot stress enough here how 1:1 that feeling was. Lighthouse tracked the controllers and my head movement to an incredible degree. When I got to close to the walls of the demo room, a virtual grid popped in VR — this is a measure of Lighthouse’s capability. It suddenly made a lot of sense to me why Newell was so bullish on Lighthouse being an industry-changing technology.

More: Valve Is Solving Virtual Reality’s Input Problem

Added to my lengthy list of misguided and overbearing governance. They really put the bite to us consumers on this one. I’d trust a grilled meat over boiled anytime. Boiled? What an awful thing to do to a tasty meat.

Updated 4;46pm
Ordinarily under our laws, we are allowed to do all those things that are not prohibited. One salient feature of the less wise regulations we face particularly as innovative business people are when we can only do those things that are specifically allowed under the law. Like in this case only boiling or steaming is allowed. The goal here of course is safe food. But that law seems to assume that grilling is not a safe way to cook meat. This of course we know to be false. They wrote a law about the common technology of the time and effectively gave that method a permanent exclusive. They made no provision for any other method like grilling or baking. Probably because those ways were not used on the carts of the day. But now they are. Food cart operators have innovated to make a better Hot Dog and an old law stands in the way. Will the city respond with a law that calls for a minimum temperature like they do for chicken? Might they add grilling to the permitted cooking methods? Stay tuned us foodies need to know these things.

The bacon wrapped hot dog is a staple of Los Angeles street food and everyone from daytime shoppers to late-night revelers seems to enjoy these so-called “heart attack dogs.” The traditional way of serving these dogs in L.A. is to top them with onions, mayo, mustard, onions, green peppers, ketchup and a grilled green poblano chile.

Legal In Nevada and Amsterdam, illegal in Los Angeles. Go figure.

There’s only one problem with these bacon wrapped hot dog’s that everyone loves: they’re illegal. In Los Angeles, the law says that hot dogs sold by street vendors must be either steamed or boiled. For the bacon-wrapped hot dog to cook properly and taste delicious, it needs to be grilled. But grilling a hot dog is a violation of the L.A. health code for street vendors. Sadly, this is not a law that goes unenforced. There have been a number of different reports of food vendors being raided by cops.

More: Busted! Your Bacon-Wrapped Hot Dog is Illegal » So Good Blog