A hyperlinks route from a casual surf at work, or how the sun has set on the British empire.
A while back, while reading boingboing I read about edit wars that go on in Wikipedia over the smallest of things, like the spelling of Aluminum/Aluminium. This reminded me of an edit war my friend Gabe tried to provoke about Corn because some Wikipedians seem to think that the British term, Maize is more authoritative on a staple that is native to the Americas. So after reading interesting topics on the wikipedia/paedia homepage, I read about the Goiânia accident where a radioactive "Caesium salt" was scavenged from an abandoned hospital. The only thing that threw me off about the article was that it was about something called caesium, which I mentally pronounce as caseium, I guess subconsciously like how I know the German Kaiser is a derivative of the Roman Caesar. Come to find out, that's how the British spell Cesium, even though googlestats prove that it is the more commonly used spelling.
Here is a funny cartoon from one of the sites I check every morning before I leave for work.
toothpastefordinner.com
1 comment:
This is exactly the strength of wikipedia and other wiki setups. Sure, scholars will argue that wikipedia is not an exact science, and that there will be more errors than professionaly edited, but think about how you would know that other cultures argue these terms. You would have to live in that culture to find out all of these differences, now you don't have to, you can just read the arguments in wikipedia. I think it makes a better psychology study than an encyclopedia.
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