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Education

Submission + - Church of England Apologise to Darwin Posthumously

Submitted by
Landak
Landak writes: "The Church of England officially apologised today to Charles Darwin, one hundred and fifty years after he published his groundbreaking book "The Origin of Species". The apology has been written by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the church's director of mission and public affairs, who said that the church's "Victorian hierarchy showed too much 'anti-evolutionary fervour'" back in the 1860s.

His statement says:

People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and Churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it's easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights. [...] The Church made that mistake with Galileo's astronomy and has since realised its error. Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. [...] So it is important to think again about Darwin's impact on religious thinking, then and now."

The apology, 126 years after Darwin's death was yesterday branded "pointless" by the naturalist's own family, but it is a sentiment that many would wish to see hop across the pond!"

Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail Screenshot-sm 354

Posted by samzenpus from the teach-me-something dept.
There is an old Japanese proverb that goes, "Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher." This week's mail is all about teaching. Whether it is about the seriousness of psychic ability, a short history of trolls or explaining how much free time and malice your dad's attorney has, these people just want to impart information. If what they sent me is any indication, they had a lot of sick days. Click on the link below to become enlightened.
United States

Submission + - Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/science/19carb.html ). The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel. Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology. According to their analysis, their concept, which would cost about $5 billion to build, could produce gasoline at an operating cost of $1.40 a gallon and would turn economically viable when the price at the pump hits $4.60 a gallon, taking into account construction costs and other expenses in getting the gas to the consumer. With some additional technological advances, the break-even price would drop to $3.40 a gallon, they said."

Comment Dear Hollywood (Score 3, Insightful) 705

by Landak (#21922390) Attached to: Warner Backs Blu-Ray. End Times For HD-DVD?
Do you perhaps think that the "Slow HD uptake" referred to in the article might be as a consequence of the overwhelming cost of, and over-restrictive DRM associated with HD video? Have you thought perhaps that for the vast majority of spice-girl-loving, Shrek-3 adoring consumers, DVD is more than "Good enough"?

Apple

Underground Mac Community Foils a Coup 253

Posted by kdawson from the fortunately-bloodless dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In an attempted palace coup that would not have been out of place in a Shakespearian tragedy, a moderator faction at Mac Serial Junkie, one of the largest underground Mac communities, was shut out this weekend after it was discovered that many staff members were plotting a coup. The plans included a surreptitious takeover of the domain name macserialjunkie.com. In an Open Letter to the Community, the founders of MSJ explain how a number of people at the highest levels of the underground planned their takeover activities for almost two years, only to be foiled at the last minute."
Quickies

Submission + - Study shows smart people more likely to be virgins (gnxp.com)

Submitted by
Jack M.
Jack M. writes: "'Each additional point of IQ increased the odds of virginity by 2.7% for males and 1.7% for females', Jason Malloy writes in a coherent(!) blog-posted discussion of research previously done by institutions such as the University of North Carolina and MiT's college magazine (PDF warning); the results reiterate what every slashdotter has known for quite some time and prove to be an interesting piece of statistics. "Only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex", writes Jason before breaking down the results by major: "[The chart shows] that 0% of studio art majors were virgins, but 72% of biology majors [...] and 83% of biochem and math majors were virgins!".

Ironically, or perhaps encouragingly, Computer Science majors were further down the bell curve than I personally expected, with roughly 40% of CS Majors declaring virginity. The majors most likely to have virginal scholars are Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Mathematics (physics does not appear on the chart), and the major with the least number of virgins, at 0%, was Studio Art."
Education

Is The Term Paper Dead? 444

Posted by kdawson from the drop-and-give-me-5,000-words dept.
Reader gyges writes in to tell us that the Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.
Microsoft

Sony and Universal Prohibit Sharing Via Zune 325

Posted by Zonk from the as-if-the-zune-didn't-have-enough-trouble-already dept.
ack154 writes "Engadget has a story about Sony and Universal Music apparently denying Zune owners the ability to 'squirt' songs by certain artists to other Zune users. That's right, if you've actually purchased songs from the Zune marketplace and happen to run into another Zune owner, you're prohibited from sharing certain songs. From the article: 'In a non-scientific sampling of popular artists by Zunerama and Zune Thoughts, it looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.'"
Science

Women "Advertise" Fertility 317

Posted by kdawson from the but-we-knew-this dept.
Dik Zak writes with word of a paper published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. A study found that women take greater care over their appearance when they are at peak levels of monthly fertility. The researchers took two photos of each of 30 women, one near ovulation and one at the other end of her cycle. They then showed the paired photos (with faces obscured) to a group of observers, who were asked to judge in which photo the women were trying to look more attractive. The observers chose the "high fertility" subject nearly 60% more of the time than would be expected by chance.

Gentoo on the PS3 - Full Install Instructions 239

Posted by CmdrTaco from the white-knight-hasn't-shipped-yet-anyway dept.
An anonymous reader writes "My friend Jake just bought a PS3, and he wanted to install Linux on it. Since he didn't know much about Linux, it was my responsibility to help him with it. His requirements — Install a distribution which is easy to maintain and run. He wanted to make the full use of his Linux install, so he needed a distro which wouldn't hold him back with frustrating problems. The only solution was using a distro which had a better package management system, and did its work without bothering you, the end user. Having used Gentoo extensively, I knew that this would be the solution to my problems. What follows is full install instructions, plus personal opinions, on why Gentoo is better than Fedora Core or YDL on the PS3"
It's funny. Laugh.

Nerds Make Better Lovers 1148

Posted by Zonk from the slashdot-editors-mentioned-specifically dept.
ultimabaka writes "The New York Daily News, fine bastion of reporting that it is, released an article today discussing the rise of nerd popularity among women in general, and famous women in particular. Detail is given into the dating exploits of Christina Aguilera and Elin Nordegren (nerdy Tiger Woods' supermodel squeeze), among a bunch of regular Janes. Apparently being a nerd is now in?"

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