A University of Texas poll has found that 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim. Only 45 percent of the people polled correctly identified Obama as a Protestant Christian. Nationwide, the number of people who believe in the "Secret Muslim Conspiracy" is about the same as those who believe that the moon landing was faked (5-10 percent), which makes the high numbers in Texas unusual.

New classroom grading rules in Dallas are drawing fire from teachers and parents as being too lenient on lazy students. The new rules would require teachers to accept late work, give retests to students who fail and force teachers to drop homework grades that would drag down a student's class average. Nancy Bingham, a former teacher, said that she didn't think the rules would help really lazy students adding, "If the kid is hell-bent on failing, they're going to fail anyway." Dallas school superintendent Michael Hinojosa disagrees, saying, "Our mission is not to fail kids. Our mission is to make sure they get it, and we believe that effort creates ability." It's a lot easier to reach for the stars if you lower the sky.

As part of a team building exercise, Chad Hudgens agreed to be waterboarded. "He lay on his back with his head downhill, co-workers knelt on either side of him, pinning the young sales rep down while their supervisor poured water from a gallon jug over his nose and mouth." His boss told the employees present, "You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there. I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales." Chad thought about it for a few days and is now suing. General counsel for the company, George Brunt says, "We're not the mean waterboarding company that people think we are. I don't know if this would even be an issue if it weren't for Guantanamo Bay." He added that the company has seen great success with other torture themed training such as "The Iron Boot of Productivity" and "Drawn and Quarterly Reports."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a Manhattan case, Warner v. Berry, the RIAA sued a man who lives in a homeless shelter, leaving a copy of the summons and complaint not at the homeless shelter, but at an apartment the man had occupied in better times, and had long since vacated. The RIAA's lawyers were threatened with sanctions by the Magistrate Judge in the case, for making misleading representations to the Court which the Magistrate felt were intentional. The District Judge, however, disagreed with imposing sanctions, giving the RIAA's lawyers 'as officers of the Court the benefit of the doubt,' and instead concluded — in his 6-page opinion (PDF) — that the RIAA's lawyers were just being 'sloppy' and had not made the misstatements for an improper purpose.'"

eldavojohn writes "While we made light of it before, the MIT Review is taking a serious look at China's plans to prevent rain over their open 91,000 seat arena for The Olympics. From the article: 'China's national weather-engineering program is also the world's largest, with approximately 1,500 weather modification professionals directing 30 aircraft and their crews, as well as 37,000 part-time workers — mostly peasant farmers — who are on call to blast away at clouds with 7,113 anti-aircraft guns and 4,991 rocket launchers.' They plan on demonstrating their ability to control the weather to the rest of the world, and expanding on their abilities in the future."