Today I got an email from District Administrator magazine ( I subscribe to their online daily e-letter) and there was a link from USA Today addressing the issue of Pluto not being a planet anymore.
“I am going to spend the next two weeks whiting the pages in our textbooks out that call it a planet,” Rick Blas, a science teacher at Fort Collins High School, jokingly said.
“But seriously, this is great–it makes for good classroom discussion and gets kids thinking about what a dynamic universe we are living in, and it gets them thinking about science.”
On Thursday, the world’s astronomers who make up the International Astronomical Union stripped puny Pluto of the planetary status it has held since 1930, claiming it doesn’t fit the new definition of a planet the organization adopted this week.
The first thing that occured to me when I read this was……Another reason to credit the Wikipedia as an alternative to the traditional encyclopedias that most of us have relied on in the past. Since I have a little thing going with one of our high school librarians about the merits of the wikipedia, I wrote to her and said,
I haven’t checked, but I’ll bet my last dollar that Pluto’s “new status” is reflected in Wikipedia.
Sure enough, she wrote back after checking it out from home and said,
Yes, I checked the wikipedia on the “dwarf” planet, and… you’re right. Up to date - and the consumer update function is blocked because of vandalism. It’s a sad world we live in. I concede the immediacy………
The worst part of this little story is……I couldn’t even check it at work if I tried. The Wikipedia had been blocked, and not even a block that I can override with my administrative password. We had to contact our local service provider to have it unblocked.
Hmmmmmmm……………………….
1 response so far ↓
1 Reid // Dec 20, 2006 at 5:01 pm
So I want to know does any body else use wikipedia and what for?
what was the most informatibve artical you found there?
What was the wierdest one you found?
I use wikipedia mostly durring my lunch time at work to just read up on stuff. the most informative artical I found was on the mineing and refineing
process for copper (because I learned about the job I have, and got to show off to co-workers ;p) the most interesting was probably on cheese witch I
actualy e-mailed to my self so I could finish reading it after work.
oh well, got wiki?
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