Progress

According to the Charlotte Observer, the NC House has voted unanimously to rename a few geographical locations throughout the state that happen to include a racial slur. You would assume that most people would be more than happy to say goodbye to N—head Creek and N— Skull Mountain, but not everyone is embracing this change:

"If it's there, it's there," said Moore, a former Clay County manager who can trace his family back to the region's first white settlers. "We've got to the point where you can't say anything that's not politically correct."

Clay County resident Joyce Battle said the area doesn't have any discrimination, so the name shouldn't be a problem.

"We don't have a lot of black people in our county," she said. "But the ones who are here are very much a part of the county."

Fortunately, my home state has a much more enlightened attitude than its northern neighbor:

South Carolina doesn't have any places officially named after the slur, but four streams and a reservoir include the word Negro in their names.

Silver Lining

This is just funny:

Scientists have found thousands of worms alive in an experiment container that was aboard the space shuttle Columbia when it broke apart over Texas on Feb. 1. …

"I'm blown away by this," said Fred Sack, a biologist at Ohio State University, whose moss experiment shared a nine-pound locker with the worms during the flight and was also recovered in relatively good shape. "We thought obviously it was a write-off. Now it looks like we may actually recover data."

And science marches on…