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The University of Florida is involved in designing small reconnaissance drones for the US government. The BBC report: Spy craft take gull flight lesson covers an approach to variable wing geometry based on the sea gull.

I don’t worry about local testing, our sea birds will take out any intruders that could threaten access to tourist hand outs, and the pigeons in most cities would probably mug them.

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There is a series of initiatives going through the signature process to transfer the power to redistrict the state from the legislature to a non-partisan commission. All three initiatives must pass for this to take effect.

The Saint Petersburg Times reports on a technical problem with one of the initiatives.

The Secretary of State’s Office approved the wording in March and is investigating how the error slipped through.

Gov. Jeb Bush, who appoints the secretary of state, said the office should have caught the mistake. But he and other opponents reveled in the mistake and suggested organizers should have caught it.

“There is this thing in Microsoft Word that’s called ‘word count,’ ” Bush said with a grin.

The problem is that one of the initiatives has 81 words, not the maximum of 75 required.

A Bush appointee approved the defective initiative, but Bush finds the situation amusing.

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University of Calif. Sued Over Creationism

The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include “Christianity’s Influence in American History.”

According to the lawsuit, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta was told its courses were rejected because they use textbooks printed by two Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books.

For those who don’t know, A Beka Books is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pensacola Christian College and the Florida Department of Revenue spent years getting them to pay taxes because PCC claimed it was a religious operation.

I don’t doubt that the University of California would accept these courses as religious, but there are standards that must be met and the courses don’t meet them. The UC standards must be consistent with the standards of their accreditation organization.

I feel certain that the students would be welcome at Bob Jones University, Pensacola Christian College, or any other “Christian college”, if they had the money.

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