Looks like stupid just got stupider. This AP article is poorly written, but apparently the Rhea County commissioners, who on Tuesday approved a resolution urging the state legislature to outlaw homosexuality, have now undone their vote:

Commissioners in the county that convicted John Scopes of teaching evolution 79 years ago on Thursday reversed a vote they made two days earlier to ban homosexuals.

The reason? They got called out by the national media There was a “minsunderstanding”:

Rhea County attorney Gary Fritts said the commission’s 8-0 vote Tuesday started a “wildfire” of reaction that he contends stemmed from a misunderstanding.
Following the vote that took about three minutes, the commissioners hastily left the meeting in a room filled with about 300 noisy spectators.
. . .
Despite talk about changing state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature, Fritts said the Tuesday vote was intended to support Tennessee’s ban on same-sex marriages.
“I’m not saying it wasn’t discussed,” Fritts said. “It will definitely be clarified because there was a misunderstanding. Sometimes you had five or six people talking.”
. . .
“They wanted to send a message to our (state) representative and senator that Rhea County supports the ban on same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is what it was all about,” Fritts said. “There has just been so much misunderstanding about this. It was to stop people from coming here and getting married and living in Rhea County.”

Who is it that failed to understand what was going on? The commissioners?
It’s bad enough that they voted to support an unconstitutional measure. Shall we take it that in addition to being discriminators, they also don’t know what they cast votes for during meetings?
Nice.

We’ve got action:

An asteroid with a diameter of 30m passed close but harmlessly by Earth, astronomers said.
The hurtling rock passed about 42,640km above the southern Atlantic Ocean at 22h08 GMT on Thursday.
It was the closest recorded encounter between Earth and an asteroid, said Steven Chesley, an astronomer at National Aeronautical Space Administration’s (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory who works on a program looking for such objects.
Such encounters, however, are actually believed to occur at the rate of one every two years and have simply not been detected, he said.

I like how the first sentence, similarly reported in the AP story, points out that the asteroid passed “harmlessly” by the earth. Let’s see here: if it misses the earth, there’s not much left nearby for it to harm, is there?
Elsewhere, there’s planetary controversy. When I was in grade school, the powers that be made out the composition of our solar system to be a cut and dried matter. There’s nine planets.
Not so fast. According to Space.com, scientists are just now getting around to defining what a “planet” is. As a result, they may end up declassifying Pluto as a planet, or they may add new planets. The debate is stirring up deep emotions:

“Either Pluto is not a planet, or many other things are planets,” Brown said today. “Which is a better choice? I want my planets to be more special, not less special, so I favor Pluto not being a planet. Emotionally, though, I have to admit that I have grown up thinking Pluto this special odd-ball planet at the edge of the solar system. While I now know scientifically that Pluto is less special, it’s still hard to let go.”

This fight could get ugly.

Score another one for commercialism:

The U.S. fast food firm Wendy’s asked diners “Where’s the beef?,” and Nike commanded sports nuts to “Just do it.” Now Donald Trump is seeking to trademark another pithy phrase: “You’re fired!”
The real-estate mogul and reality TV star has filed a trademark application for the phrase, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Web site.
Known for his gaudy casinos and unusual mane of copper hair, Trump dismisses underlings on the hit TV show “The Apprentice” with a curt “You’re fired.”
Trump said he intended to emblazon “You’re Fired” on games and casino services, and “You’re Fired! Donald J. Trump” on clothing.
Other tyrannical bosses won’t have to alter their vocabulary if the application wins approval, a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office official said, as it will only protect those specific uses.

Given the success of The Apprentice, the only thing surprising about this is that it took Trump so long to do it. If there’s a way to squeeze money out of something, he’s sure to be interested.

The SPYBLOCK Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate last month, but I didn’t learn of it until now. An e-mail from Senator Boxer (D-CA) describes the intent of the bill:

Our SPYBLOCK (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge) Act would prohibit installing software on Somebody else’s computer without notice and consent, and requires reasonable “uninstall” procedures for all downloadable software. Spyware, adware and other hidden programs often secretly piggyback on downloaded Internet software without the user’s knowledge, transmitting information about computer usage and generating pop-up advertisements. Frequently such software is designed to be virtually impossible to uninstall.
This legislation will give consumers control over the programs that are downloaded onto their computers. As more and more people use the Internet, privacy violations become a greater threat, and we want to give computer users the power to protect themselves from spyware and other hazardous software.
The bill also prohibits programs designed to trick users about who is responsible for content a user sees, such as causing a counterfeit replica of a company’s Web site to appear whenever the consumer attempts to navigate toward a legitimate company’s Web site. These types of programs have been used to fraudulently obtain personal financial information from users confused by dummy Web sites.

Sounds good in theory; whether it can effectively be enforced is another matter. Undoubtedly, some distributors of this software will simply set up shop overseas, next door to the spammers. Moreover, some spyware programs already solicit the computer user’s “consent”; people just don’t pay attention to everything they download. So even if the bill became law, I’m sure the spiers would find loopholes through which they distribute their wares.
As long as we’re working on Internet laws, how about a strong bill which protects computer user’s privacy from the government?

Student activism:

Two student legislators at Western Oregon University have launched a drive to ban Red Cross blood drives on campus, claiming the donor screening process discriminates against gays.
The two students are particularly upset about a donor question that reads: “Are you a male who has had sex with another male since 1977, even once?”
The federal Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the Red Cross screening process, will not accept a donation from someone who answers ‘yes’ to the question, in order to help eliminate potentially HIV-tainted blood.
“By continuing to allow the Red Cross on our campus, the university is telling all the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students that we don’t care about you,” said student senator Shauna Bates, who is co-sponsoring the legislation.

Once again, these phony claims of discrimination only pollute the atmosphere and hinder those attempting to raise legitimate issues.
Via Volokh, who asks the obvious: What does a question about males having sex with males have to do with lesbians?