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News Briefs 26-01-2010

Slime molds take their time too.

  • Unclear outlook for radical journal as HIV/Aids deniers evoke outrage.
  • Jumbo-jet laser cannon tested against missile.
  • A nightmare’s impact on the waking brain.
  • Wikipedia doesn’t like me.
  • Aliens visiting Earth will be just like humans.
  • Massive Mayan head found in jungle.
  • On the jury, Gene Weingarten didn’t believe the D.C. police’s eyes.
  • This guy basically actually grows organs.
  • What could human engineers possibly learn from the lowly slime mold?
  • Russian Navy reports that the U.S. created the earthquake in Haiti.
  • Has US hit its final frontier in space exploration?
  • Botox, bioweapon of mass destruction.
  • Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery.
  • Trajan’s hidden Roman aquaduct uncovered by film-makers.
  • Embryos destroyed for minor disorders.

Quote of the Day:

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

Thomas Huxley

  1. Wikipedia

    People work hard in their lives to accomplish things. They don’t need to have some homeless, muttering, schizophrenic wander into a public library, plop their reeking selves down in front of the public internet, and log onto Wikipedia with a “private” name, to take out their resentments against their betters, by re-writing articles with so-called facts that were born in their drug-soaked, in-and-out of consciousness, mind. Nobody needs that.

    […]

    But it gets better. For, down the road, a few hundred miles, is one of those homes where “we-the-people” store recently out of prison pedophiles. You know the ones. They have to be a minimum 1000 feet from a school yard or a children’s playground. Handily, there is only one small window, in that home, where the perverts can peer out, using their binoculars, scanning that schoolyard – so maybe only two-at-a-time can use the window leaving the other twenty-eight roommates to fight over the use of the five internet-connected computers, all of which have blocking devices keeping them away from the kiddy-porn sites. Since there is no kiddy-porn available why not edit Wikipedia, eh? Do it long enough and you can become an administrator? And, you can make friends, with similar thought paths… like a maybe a “library-using-crazy?”

    The wonderful world of Wikipedia “privacy.”

    So, guess what happens. The “library-using-crazy” gets really sick of this professional changing back his writings every night so he contacts his admin buddy over at the pervert center and complains. “Perv” fixes the problem by pointing out that the professional is violating Wikipedia rules by editing information about himself, and bans him from Wikipedia indefinitely. Then the professional gets upset and demands to know who these people are – so the “Perv,” and the “library-using-crazy” complain to the ArbCom group and they, of course, ban the professional forever for trying to “violate privacy,” leaving the bad information on the article page

    And that’s Wikipedia in a nutshell.

    I think it is being run from a tree house

    Cynic much? Nice to see how he divides the world in 2: in one side are the library-using-crazies & the paedophiles; on the other are the respectable professionals. And in the middle? well, who knows, we’re much too busy making a point here.

    1. reference material
      I find wikipedia useful as a starting poing for non-controversial stuff, like the number of electrons in a neutral Carbon atom.

      For historical material, it is often tainted by political views.

      For anything relating current issues, it is utterly useless. Opinions abound, and their system of resolving differences doesn’t work.

      And of course you can’t cite it as a reference, because you don’t know what it will say five minutes from now.

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