Boy Scouts' decision makes no sense

When the Boy Scouts of America found out den leader Jennifer Tyrrell is a lesbian, the organization's Ohio River Valley Council sent her a letter saying "you must immediately sever any relationship you may have" with the Scouts.

"You should understand that BSA (Boy Scouts of America) membership registration is a privilege and is not automatically granted to everyone who applies," the group wrote in the April 12, 2012, letter that Tyrrell, a 33-year-old mom in Ohio, photographed and sent to me recently. "We reserve the right to refuse registration whenever there is concern that an individual may not meet the high standards of membership the BSA seeks."

That reference to "high standards" is apparently the Boy Scouts way of saying gays and lesbian scout leaders need not apply.

You may have heard people describe the Boy Scouts as gay-friendly this week, since the group voted to amend its draconian policies that banned "open or avowed homosexuals" from participating in the group as Scouts.

The 103-year-old organization -- known for its worthwhile efforts to teach kids to tie knots, survive in the woods and become more civic-minded adults -- decided on Thursday that gay Scouts should be able to participate in the organization. But not gay and lesbian leaders.

The Boy Scouts' 1,400 voting members approved the change with more than 60% of the vote. Still, the Scouts will have a hard time escaping the organization's new reputation as a den for outdated thinking and discrimination. The group's attitudes on gay rights are "more out of style than the scout socks," said Kelsey Timmerman, a former Eagle Scout who mailed his badge back to the organization because of its discriminatory policies.

"I never wore those damn socks," he said, laughing.

It's clear the Boy Scouts are lost in the woods.

Timmerman represents the core of the scouting organization's problem. He's 34, straight and the father of two kids. He credits the Scouts with helping him become an outgoing, confident and successful person. "Scouting was awesome," he said.

But he wouldn't enroll his son in the program unless gays and lesbians are allowed to be Scouts and Scout leaders, too. He doesn't want them to learn to discriminate from an organization that claims to value kindness and bravery.

The same goes for Tyrrell, the former Tiger Cub den leader in Ohio. Her son Cruz would love to be able to participate in the Scouts again, she said. And she would love for him to be able to do so. She noticed improvements in his maturity and confidence when he was part of the group.

But she won't go back unless everyone is welcome.

"They're teaching them to be bigots essentially," she said. "This world is changing so quickly. You can't raise leaders for tomorrow on principles founded 100 years ago."

When I spoke with Tyrrell earlier, I sympathized with her wanting to celebrate the proposal to include gay Scouts as a "tiny step in the right direction."

Hundreds of thousands of people had petitioned the Scouts to allow gay kids to participate. Ryan Andresen became a national celebrity of sorts after he was refusedhis Eagle Scout award because he's openly gay. (Ellen DeGeneres had him on her show and gave him a $20,000 scholarship.)

I am certainly thankful the Boy Scouts did decide to allow all openly gay kids to be members.

But it's frustrating and unfair that Boy Scout leaders also affirmed discrimination against adult scout leaders. The Scouts shouldn't tell children there's nothing wrong with gay kids, but that there is something mysterious and dangerous about gay and lesbian adults.

For one thing, it's illogical.

"How does a (gay Scout) commit his life to an organization who he knows full well is going to dump him the day he turns 18?" Tyrrell asked when we spoke in April, before this week's vote. "It would be really hard for that boy to believe in trustworthiness and loyalty and all those things that are important as a Scout."

Gay kids: fine. Adults? Not so much.

The problem may be that the Scouts are listening too much instead of making decisions with conviction. They're "licking their finger and testing the wind," as Timmerman put it, trying to figure out how to please all constituencies. That's, of course, impossible. The anti-gay Family Research Council recently uploaded a YouTube video (watch it; this sort of over-produced fear-mongering has become a hilarious parody of itself) saying that the Boy Scouts were "abandoning their moral compass" by thinking of including gay Scouts.

I don't think the Boy Scouts of America has abandoned its compass.

But it's clear it still needs to be recalibrated to the times.

Is this (finally) our new flying car?

It's one of science fiction's greatest unfulfilled promises, right up there with teleportation and time travel.

And, no, Terrafugia hasn't built us a Tardis or promised to beam us up. But they say they're closer than ever to giving us a flying car.

This week, the Woburn, Massachussetts-based aerospace company announced it has begun feasibility studies on a car capable of vertical takeoffs and landings. The TF-X would be a four-seat, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, according to the company.

“We are passionate about continuing to lead the creation of a flying car industry and are dedicating resources to lay the foundations for our vision of personal transportation,” Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich said in a media release. “Terrafugia is about increasing the level of safety, simplicity, and convenience of aviation.  TF-X is an opportunity to provide the world with a new dimension of personal freedom!”

Lest you think  the company is just getting our hopes up for some cheap publicity, know this - they've already created a flying car of sorts.

The Transition is a street-legal vehicle that's designed to fly in and out of airports. It was successfully flown for the first time in 2009. The second-generation version of the Transition performed a driving-and-flying demo last year.

The new TF-X project comes as work on the Transition shifts "from research and development to certification, production, and customer support activities," the company said.

Terrafugia says it has about 100 orders for the Transition, which goes for $279,000.

The big difference between the Transition, which is scheduled to hit the market in 2015, and the new flying car is that the TF-X would be able to take off anywhere,  like a helicopter, and not just at an airport.

Its automation systems would make taking off and landing a self-driving process, though the driver would be able to take over manual control at any time.

Terrafugia (Latin for "escape from Earth") says it has had "preliminary conversations" with the Federal Aviation Administration about the TF-X and that the agency has "demonstrated their willingness to consider innovative technologies and regulatory solutions that are in the public interest and enhance the level of safety of personal aviation."

In other words, we might actually get to ride in one someday.

What do you think? Will we see widespread use of flying cars in our lifetimes? Let me know in the comments.

Staples starts selling 3-D printers

Staples  says it is the first major U.S. retailer to sell a 3-D printer. It began selling The Cube, made by 3D Systems , on Staples.com Friday, and the printer will hit "many" of the retailer's brick-and-mortar stores by June.

While 3-D printers have long been used in industrial manufacturing, a recent "maker" movement is slowly popularizing in-home versions of the devices.

The Cube, like other 3-D printers, is a machine that creates physical, three-dimensional objects. The printer uses a digital design file as a blueprint, then builds the item layer by layer with plastic. Users can print anything they can design, including action figures, iPhone docks and coffee cup holders.

The Cube can print items up to five-and-a-half inches tall, wide and long in 16 different colors, and it comes packaged with 25 free design templates. Shares of Cube maker 3D Systems rose 4% after the announcement but ended the day up 1%. Staples stock closed nearly 3% higher.

George Young, a partner at 3D Systems shareholder Villere & Co., says the Staples announcement validates 3D Systems' mission, "because they've been saying their technology can cover all ends of the spectrum -- from manufacturing lines to consumers' homes. And a retailer like Staples is obviously cognizant about what their customers want."

3D Systems says it is devoted to the "democratization" of 3-D printers, making the complex and expensive technology available to the masses. But the company faces a lot of upstart competition.

Perhaps the buzziest 3-D printer company is Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Makerbot, which unveiled its $2,800 "Replicator 2x" at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Following Makerbot's success, crowdfunding site Kickstarter quickly became full of similarly named rivals: Printrbot, TangiBot, Ultra-Bot, RigidBot, Gigabot, and Bukobot.

While many 3-D printer owners may be using the devices to prototype inventions or simply have fun making plastic toys, other industries are tapping into the printers' potential. Chefs are using the printers to create intricately designed food. Doctors are even experimenting with advanced versions of the machines to make artificial organs and prosthetic limbs.

In some cases, 3-D designs have been controversial. Makerbot found itself under pressure to crack down on downloadable designs for printable gun parts late last year, after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. MakerBot's design file repository, called Thingiverse, had long prohibited "the creation of weapons" -- but they were loosely enforced before the crackdown in December.

US jails China engineer for exporting trade secrets

Liu Sixing, who formerly worked in US company L-3 Communications, was accused of taking information on US missile, rocket and drone technology to China.

He was convicted of exporting military information, possessing stolen trade secrets, and lying to the authorities.

Liu says he did not break the law, or intend to pass secrets to China.

Liu Sixing, who was also known as Steve Liu, worked in L-3 Communications' space and navigation unit in New Jersey from 2009-2010 as a senior engineer.

Prosecutors say he stole thousands of computer files in 2010, and took them to China on his personal computer, where he gave presentations about the technology he was working on to universities and conferences linked to the Chinese government.

Prosecutors say he transported the files, which included information on the performance and design of guidance systems for missiles, rockets and unmanned drones, in the hope that it would help him gain future employment in China.

Federal agents say they discovered the computer when Liu returned to Newark Liberty International Airport in November 2010. Liu was convicted in September 2012.

Technical military data covered by US export regulations cannot be taken out of the country without a license.

"Instead of the accolades he sought from China, Sixing Liu today received the appropriate reward for his threat to our national security: 70 months in prison," prosecutor Paul Fishman said.

Liu's lawyer, James Tunick, said that Liu had made "a terrible mistake" by having the files on his computer and taking them to China, but that "it didn't rise to the level of a criminal act."

"He never intended to harm anyone," he said.

Opportunity and Curiosity find similar rocks on Mars

The Opportunity rover is studying the most ancient rocks it has yet seen on Mars - and they resemble those found by its one-tonne cousin Curiosity.

The findings could help build a picture of early Mars - and whether it would have been amenable to primitive life.

The ancient rocks found by Opportunity occur as a light-toned outcrop known as Whitewater Lake.

The outcrop is thought to contain clays, similar to a rock recently drilled by Curiosity.

But there are other uncanny similarities between Whitewater Lake - which lies on the rim of a 22km-wide bowl called Endeavour Crater - and rocks from Gale Crater to the east, where Curiosity landed.

Opportunity's chief scientist Prof. Steve Squyres outlined details of the latest findings at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conferencein The Woodlands, Texas.

He said one of the factors that had drawn the science team towards Endeavour was the evidence gathered by Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) for the presence of phyllosilicates (clay-bearing rocks) along the crater's rim.

The Whitewater Lake outcrop coincides closely with the signature of smectite clays from MRO, Prof. Squyres, from Cornell University in Ithaca, US, explained.

It is very fine-grained, soft, similar in composition to the Martian soil and has fine ridges when seen in cross-section.

Snaking features

Whitewater Lake is "shot through" with light-toned, snaking features called veins, which appear to be filled with calcium sulphate. These are the result of water flowing through fractures in the rocks after the impact that carved out Endeavour Crater.

There are also numerous rounded structures called "spherules" embedded in the rock. Opportunity has seen similar small structures out on Mars' Meridiani plains, which the rover team nicknamed "blueberries".

"The spherules are for the most part distributed throughout the Whitewater Lake rocks, but there are places locally where we find incredible concentrations," Prof Squyres told the conference.

But the comparison to the blueberries, seen earlier in the mission, may only be superficial.

"There are a few small visual differences and then a big compositional difference. These do not have the very high iron content… to be the blueberries we see on the plains.

"They are hard on the outside and chewy on the inside… and the composition is different from the [rock] matrix."

Such spherules can form through the action of water, but a volcanic or impact origin is also possible.

Most habitable environment

Prof. Squyres added: "These Whitewater Lake materials are the oldest rocks yet explored by the Opportunity rover. They record an epoch before the Endeavour impact when there was aqueous activity at a near-neutral pH.

"They therefore represent the most habitable palaeo-environment found [by Opportunity]."

Previous sites explored by the rover are thought to have been shaped by the activity of acidic water, which would pose a more challenging proposition for any simple microbes that might have evolved on the early Mars.

They cannot put an exact age on the outcrop, but it could date to more than three billion years ago, when Mars was a wetter place.

Prof. Squyres showed a comparison of the Whitewater Lake outcrop and rocks found at the location Curiosity is exploring in Gale Crater. They showed many similarities, he said, including the spherules, calcium sulphate veins and fine-grained structure.

"Mars is telling us something. I'm not sure what it is because it's speaking Martian. But it's telling us something," he said.

Opportunity landed on the Red Planet in January 2004, about three weeks after its "twin", the Spirit rover. Spirit's mission ended after getting caught in soft soil in 2009 and succumbing to the Martian winter.

New pope, Jorge Bergogolio, adopts the name Francis

 Pope Francis, the first non-European pontiff of the modern era, revealed himself to the world from a balcony at the Vatican on Wednesday.

Jorge Bergogolio, who served as archbishop of Buenos Aires, took the name Francis shortly after being elected by cardinals in what was apparently the fifth round of voting on the second day of the conclave.

"As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome," Francis told a cheering crowd of thousands packed into St. Peter's Square.

"It seems to me that my brother cardinals have chosen one who is from faraway. ... Here I am. I would like to thank you for your embrace."

The new pope called on the thousands packed into the square -- and those watching around the world -- to pray for him before he delivered a blessing.

Bergogolio, 76, is the first pope to take the name after St. Francis of Assisi, revered among Catholics for his work with the poor.

The new pontiff is considered a straight shooter who calls things as he sees them, and a follower of the church's most conservative wing.

As cardinal, he clashed with the government of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over his opposition to gay marriage and free distribution of contraceptives.

With its approximately 480 million adherents, Latin America is home to an overwhelming plurality of the world's Catholics. By choosing him, the cardinals sent a strong message about where the future of the church may lie.

According to a profile by CNN Vatican analyst John Allen and published by the National Catholic Reporter, Francis was born in Buenos Aires to an Italian immigrant father.

He is known for his simplicity. He chose to live in an apartment rather that the archbishop's palace, passed on a chauffeured limousine, took the bus to work and cooked his own meals, Allen wrote.

Francis has a reputation for being a voice for the poor.

Facebook 'likes' can reveal your secrets, study finds

Your Facebook "likes" might be revealing more than you know about your private life.

It is possible to predict potentially private traits such as a person's sexual orientation, political leanings, religion, intelligence, emotional stability and even if they abuse drugs or alcohol, just by analyzing their Facebook likes, according to a new study out of the University of Cambridge.

Liking something on Facebook is a simple, almost mindless way to pass time on the social networking site, which says it has more than a billion users worldwide. With one click, people can "like" pages -- for brands, public figures, memes, music and groups -- as well as articles, photos or status updates from their friends. But that quick action can be a powerful statement.

"Facebook likes have a meaning that we can use to understand the psychology behind what people do," says David Stillwell, a co-author of the study.

Researchers looked at the Facebook profiles and likes, along with surveys and personality tests, for 58,466 individuals. Using that data, they developed a model that predicts personal attributes from Facebook likes with impressive accuracy. It has the best luck categorizing people as Caucasian or African-American (95% accuracy), followed by gender, male sexuality, Democratic or Republican leanings, and detecting Christians and Muslims.

One of more unusual categories was whether a person's parents had split before they turned 21, which had a relatively low 60% level of accuracy (still high enough to benefit advertisers, noted the researchers). These people were more more likely to like statements about relationships, such as "If I'm with you then I'm with you. I don't want anybody else," and "I'm sorry I love you."

"It gives us a poignant insight into the effects that parental breakup has on children even after they grow up," says Stillwell.

The likes themselves are a combination of obvious and baffling. Liking "Kathy Griffin," "Juicy Couture," or the musical "Wicked" were found to be strong indicators that a man was gay, while liking sports-related topics, "Bruce Lee" and "Being Confused After Waking Up From Naps" were more popular with straight men, according to the the study.

A person's Facebook likes can also be used to predict intelligence, say the researchers. Liking "The Daily Show," "science," "Morgan Freeman's Voice" and the mysterious "Curly Fries" indicates someone is highly intelligent. Lower intelligence was suggested by likes for "Clark Griswold," "Harley-Davidson" and "Bret Michaels," according to the study.

Likes for "beerpong," "Chris Tucker" and "cheerleading" were strong predictors of an extrovert while "role playing games," "Anime" and "Voltaire" pointed to introverted personality types. "Kurt Donald Cobain" and "Vampires Everywhere" indicated neurotic personalities, "Wes Anderson" and "serial killer" were liked by spontaneous people, and competitive types liked "Sun Tzu" and "I hate everyone."

Researchers are opening up the tool to everyone so they can get a peek at their own personal results. People can check out what their Facebook likes say about them by visiting YouAreWhatYouLike.comand logging in with their Facebook profile. The site does an instant personality test and rates how open, stable, agreeable, extroverted and conscientious a person is. While the data is analyzed by researchers to improve the overall test, any personal information is stripped out.

Don't try judging friends based on individual likes, however. Researchers looked at all of a person's likes to make their predictions, and even then the tool isn't perfect.

"It's like meeting someone for a blind date: If you just ask one question then you can't make an accurate judgment about them. But once you've had an hour-long conversation about their favorite hobbies, interests, brands, and celebrities, then you can start to have some confidence in who they are," says Stillwell.

The more likes a person has made, the easier it is to accurately predict these larger nuggets of information about their personalities. Profiles used in this study had anywhere from one to 500 likes on the social network, though the average number of things people liked was 170. The data was collected by a site called myPersonality, which turns serious data gathering for academic research purposes into fun quizzes.

A similar MIT experiment in 2009 predicted whether people were gay based on who they had friended on Facebook. At the time, the concept of deducting potentially private information about someone was more shocking. These days, it's becoming more common and expected. Stillwell says companies are already using these kinds of machine-learning models to make connections, though the companies may not know that they're measuring IQ or extroversion.

Companies like Google and Facebook decide what ads to show people by using scraps of information they gather as users go about their regular browsing and clicking routines. Amazon recommends products by looking at a customer's Amazon browsing history and past purchases.

The next step is connecting all the dots and gathering clues about a person to create a more complete picture of who they are. There are potential positive benefits, such as custom recommendations for movies and restaurants based on your location and what you've enjoyed in the past, or ads that only pitch products you might actually want to buy.

But there is also a loss of privacy when data is collected about people without their permission. Gleaning potentially sensitive information about someone that isn't explicitly shared, such as sexual orientation or drug use, could be abused by companies as well as governments and potential employers.

"My biggest concern is that people do not realize what is possible, so they think that frivolous behaviors such as liking something cannot possibly say anything important about them," says Stillwell.