Friday, April 4, 2008

meanwhile, at the MENSA convention

"5th-grader finds 27-year-old Smithsonian mistake"

ha ha... all are you smarter than a 5th grader jokes aside...

"On a winter break trip [...] the 11-year-old southwestern Michigan boy noticed that a notation, in bold lettering, mistakenly identified the Precambrian as an era."

and just so you know, in academic circles, mistakenly indentifing something as an era is just as bad if not worse than showing up to an event in the same dress as someone else.

the boy and his father noted the mistake on a comment card on the way out and last week they recieved a letter saying he was "spot on."

the smithsonian tried to downplay their blunder saying that department staff had noticed it back in the day and it bugged them but i guess they were just to lazy to paint over the word "era" which is the current solution being employed now.

in another move of shear brilliance, the museum addressed the kid's letter to "Kenton Slufflebeam"... that's MR. sTufflebeam to you!

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