Kendra Cunningham
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ACLU Helps Expelled Student Sue School for Illegal Cell Phone Search
On the behalf of a North Mississippi middle school student, the ACLU and its Mississippi chapter have filed suit against Southaven Middle School, claiming that administrators wrongfully expelled the boy after illegally searching his cell phone.
According to Cellular-News, 12-year-old Richard Wade's cell phone was confiscated after he was caught reading a text message. But rather than giving him detention, the honor student's football coach searched through his personal information, including pictures he had taken of himself dancing in his bathroom. After interpreting those dance moves as gang signs (wrongfully, the plaintiff's lawyers say), the coach alerted the rest of the staff, as well as the authorities. The whole escapade resulted in suspension, a disciplinary hearing, and ultimately the expulsion of young Wade -- all founded on the coach's claim that the youngster was throwing gang signs in the illegally seized images.
High School and Porn Site Have Similar Web Addresses
Pace High School shares a domain name with a site owned by PimpRoll, the only difference being the '.net' and '.com.' Teachers and parents are terrified for their kids, and frustrated when they find themselves on the porn site PaceHighSchool.com. (The high school students, on the other hand, have probably been joking about it for months.)
Pace High School Principal Frank Lay told the NWF Daily News, "We found out about this site a couple of weeks ago and there is nothing we can do."
U.S. Lags Behind Latvia in Broadband Speeds
Internet connection speeds are the modern day weather; conversations about upload speeds are just as common as comments about last night's thunderstorm. USA Today writes that a new report from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) reveals that broadband speeds are significantly faster in some areas than in others.
The average download speed for the U.S., reports CWA, is 5.2 megabits per second, but that could be drastically slower depending on where you live. Delaware has the fastest connection of any state, with an average of 9.9 megabits per second, while Alaska and Montana lag behind with a 2.3 average.
Why the vast difference? Much of it is due to the dispersed nature of the physical infrastructure of the Internet in the U.S. Telecom companies have consistently reserved faster speeds and better service for larger, more populated areas.
The average download speed for the U.S., reports CWA, is 5.2 megabits per second, but that could be drastically slower depending on where you live. Delaware has the fastest connection of any state, with an average of 9.9 megabits per second, while Alaska and Montana lag behind with a 2.3 average.
Why the vast difference? Much of it is due to the dispersed nature of the physical infrastructure of the Internet in the U.S. Telecom companies have consistently reserved faster speeds and better service for larger, more populated areas.
Frustrated Flyers Venting via Twitter
A quick Twitter search for major airlines quickly reveals loads of negative flyer comments (e.g. Delta, American Airlines). "It's almost an underground rage factory," Terry Trippler of TripplersView.com, a travel review Web site, told Reuters.
91-Year-Old Man + Rabbit-Hunting Ferrets = YouTube 'Stardom'
Crotchety old men with curious accents and a penchant for smoking and swearing are, face it, charming. So England is touting its newest YouTube personality, Frank Farr, 91, of Budleigh Salterton, Devon, as harkening back to the good old days, when hunting rabbits meant ferrets and a snare.
The three-minute long YouTube video, made by Will Halfacree, is meant to teach younger generations of a dying trade, he told the Telegraph. Halfacree follows around Mr. Farr as the latter sends his two snow white ferrets into warrens, snagging the rabbits as they try to flee. Aside from the ferrets, Mr. Farr is only armed with a net, a metal hook on a stick, and a cigarette. "There's nothing quite like a good rabbit. He hasn't been injected with this, that, and the other," he explains in the video (featured above).
The three-minute long YouTube video, made by Will Halfacree, is meant to teach younger generations of a dying trade, he told the Telegraph. Halfacree follows around Mr. Farr as the latter sends his two snow white ferrets into warrens, snagging the rabbits as they try to flee. Aside from the ferrets, Mr. Farr is only armed with a net, a metal hook on a stick, and a cigarette. "There's nothing quite like a good rabbit. He hasn't been injected with this, that, and the other," he explains in the video (featured above).
DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Research Says
It's hard to believe that crime scenes could get any more complicated than they are on 'CSI,' but The New York Times reports that scientists in Israel have discovered that DNA evidence can be fabricated -- and easily, at that. Apparently, DNA can be cooked up like cookies in an E-Z bake oven... Scientists at the Tel Aviv-based company Nucleix have been able to infuse one individual's DNA into ...Wife of Twitter CEO Tweets During Child Birth
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Sara Morishige Williams, the wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams, twittered the birth of the couple's first child to over 14,000 followers. Sara's going the old school route by sending in tweets via text message. Here's a sample birth-tweet: "Dear Twitter, My water broke. It wasn't like Charlotte in Sex and the City. Now, timing contractions on an iPhone app."
Starting this morning, Sara updated ...Cute-Seekers Overload Zoo's Panda Cam
DesignYourDorm.com Lets Students Plan Their Room -- in 3-D
Are you an incoming college freshman worried about sharing space with new, unknown, and potentially disastrous roommates? Well, luckily for you, a new site called DesignYourDorm allows college newbies to virtually plan their first-year space. The site has 3-D models of average dorm rooms and allows users to drag and drop furniture to get an idea of how much space they'll have and how much stuff ...Will 'Smart Cane' Render Seeing-Eye Dogs Obsolete?
Seeing-eye dogs may soon be looking for work as ordinary house pets, thanks to the development of a new "smart" walking cane. An engineering professor and his five students at Central Michigan University have developed a cane with a navigational system to aid the visually impaired. According to Newsvine, the Smart Cane uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology (the same technology ...
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