A lucky group of 20 teenagers will be taking a 3 day tour of Amsterdam with stops in the red light district and a cannabis college. I'm sure this happens all the time. What makes this trip different is that it has been organized by the Essex County Council's youth service to help children discover how the Dutch tackle drugs, alcohol and sexual health issues. That's right, it's a field trip. I know the candy factory I toured in 5th grade would have been much better if we went to the cannabis college first.

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

dalutong writes "BBC News has an article detailing NASA's replacement for the much-loved Hubble telescope. The $4.5 billion telescope will be placed in orbit 1.5 million km from Earth and will be almost three times the size of the Hubble. It is set to launch in 2013. They also plan to service the Hubble in 2008."

Corey writes "CNet's Crave is reporting that the popular Web 2.0 music site Last.fm is planning to launch a video-on-demand service that dynamically creates a custom video channel for users in the same way it currently does with music. Read/Write Web also cites a recent press release quoting directors at Last.fm as saying they plan to host every music video ever created. This could well turn out to be the MTV of Web 2.0."