Sanders introduced the bill in the Senate along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). In the House, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Rick Nolan (D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) joined Jayapal as co-sponsors of the legislation.

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/college-for-all-act-introduced

A TN Bill Putting “In God We Trust” On All New License Plates Has Been Amended To Make It Optional
March 30, 2017
by: Hemant Mehta

After Republicans in Tennessee threatened to put the words “In God We Trust” on every license plate issued by the state, that phrase will now be optional.
The change was made by the bill’s sponsor, State Rep. Bill Sanderson, after Attorney General Herbert Slatery III told legislators that mandating the phrase could be considered unconstitutional.

A Tennessee lawmaker has amended his bill to make the phrase “In God We Trust” optional instead of required on all license plates after an attorney general opinion found the requirement “constitutionally suspect.”

***

It’s the right move, and it’s also the option that should have been offered from the very beginning. There was never any rational, secular reason to force every Tennessean to promote God on their cars, just as it would’ve been unfair to put “In God We Don’t Trust” on all the plates.

Let’s hope this saga is finally over and the legislators have learned their lesson.

Oh, who am I kidding. They’re Republicans from the South. They’ll probably just file the original bill again next year when they think no one’s paying attention.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/03/30/a-tn-bill-putting-in-god-we-trust-on-all-new-license-plates-has-been-amended-to-make-it-optional/

Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year
By Christopher Ingraham
March 28 at 7:00 AM

Spiders are quite literally all around us. A recent entomological survey of North Carolina homes turned up spiders in 100 percent of them, including 68 percent of bathrooms and more than three-quarters of bedrooms. There's a good chance at least one spider is staring at you right now, sizing you up from a darkened corner of the room, eight eyes glistening in the shadows.

Spiders mostly eat insects, although some of the larger species have been known to snack on lizards, birds and even small mammals. Given their abundance and the voraciousness of their appetites, two European biologists recently wondered: If you were to tally up all the food eaten by the world's entire spider population in a single year, how much would it be?

Martin Nyffeler and Klaus Birkhofer published their estimate in the journal the Science of Nature earlier this month, and the number they arrived at is frankly shocking: The world's spiders consume somewhere between 400 million and 800 million tons of prey in any given year. That means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all 7 billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 400 million tons of meat and fish each year.

Or, for a slightly more disturbing comparison: The total biomass of all adult humans on Earth is estimated to be 287 million tons. Even if you tack on another 70 million-ish tons to account for the weight of kids, it's still not equal to the total amount of food eaten by spiders in a given year, exceeding the total weight of humanity.

In other words, spiders could eat all of us and still be hungry.

More:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/28/spiders-could-theoretically-eat-every-human-on-earth-in-one-year/?utm_term=.d04f75a237bc

Today in science: Great Alaska earthquake



March 27, 1964. On this date, at 5:36 p.m. local time, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake struck in the Prince William Sound region of Alaska, causing extensive initial damage and a subsequent tsunami. The quake came to be known as Great Alaska Earthquake, or sometimes the Good Friday Earthquake. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), it was the biggest earthquake recorded in North America since modern seismometers came into general use around 1900.

It had been a relatively warm day in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, about 75 miles (120 km) from the quake’s epicenter. Schools had been closed for Good Friday, along with many offices. In Anchorage, dozens of blocks of buildings were leveled or heavily damaged.

The city of Valdez, closest to the epicenter, was completely destroyed.

***

The earthquake shook the land for nearly four minutes and caused many natural changes. The Latouche Island area, for example, moved to the southeast by nearly 60 feet (nearly 20 meters), according to the Alaska Earthquake Information Center (AEIC).

More:

http://earthsky.org/human-world/this-date-in-science-biggest-earthquake-in-north-america