Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit has to delete entries if they aren’t good. WikiDumper.org is the place that Wikipedia articles go to die.
There are a ton of funny entries that are rightly or undeservedly removed based on your standpoint. Some examples include Satan Claus, the theory that Santa is actually the devil, and the ever special Beard Theorem that draws a connection between beard size and socialism.
A fun site that takes on what Wikipedia sheds off.
Ever since the Chinese government uncensored Wikipedia, people in China have been visiting the site in droves. Explosive growth of the site’s content is a great sign for freedom in China.
“Activity on nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s Chinese Wikipedia site has skyrocketed since its release, which Internet users in China first started reporting on Nov. 10. Since then, the number of new users registering to contribute to the site has exceeded 1,200 a day, up from an average of 300 to 400 prior to the unblocking. The number of new articles posted daily has increased 75% from the week before, with the total now surpassing 100,000, according to the foundation.”
If research is to be believed, your kids may start coming home with less homework. For younger students, a few schools are reducing the number of repetitive exercises given, and replacing them with assignments designed to engage the mind.Â
Years of research supports the idea that there is no link between grades and the amount of homework assigned. In a study covering 50 countries, students with the highest grades (such as Japan and Denmark) did very little homework, compared to children with the lowest grades (such as Greece and Iran), who did lots of homework. Due to various research reports, some teachers and parents now see no need to assign a lot of afterschool work in the early and middle grades.Â
Harris Cooper, one of the leading researchers on homework in the United States, firmly believes in extra schoolwork. “Kids at all grade levels are going to benefit from practice,” he states. “…If it’s practice that gets you to Carnegie Hall, homework’s going to help.”
However, he acknowledges that too much does not mean better grades. His rule of thumb: children shouldn’t do more than 10 minutes of homework for each grade.  For example, a Grade 2 student should have only 20 minutes of homework; a Grade 7 student, 1 hour and 10 minutes.
At Vernon Barford Junior High in Edmonton, teacher Judy Hoeksema now assigns half the work she did last year. “We’ve all been under this illusion that lots of homework creates good study habits for the future,†the math teacher of 26 years says. “Now, we’ve realized it isn’t making much difference.â€
As a bonus for scaling back homework, many families are seeing  increased quality time for children and parents , less household stress, and less physical stress on their kids due to less books being carried.
Studying at Yale is beyond the means of most, with high admissions standards and a hefty price tag of about $46 000 a year for tuition and board. Â Now, thanks to a new initiative to make the Ivy League school more accessible and a $755 000 grant, courses will be available for free on the internet.
This facility is already offered by other institutions including the likes of MIT and Princeton, Yale will be the first to offer videos to accompany course notes and transcripts of lectures. The initiative will include 7 first year courses.
The courses will not be counted as credits towards a Yale University Degree, nor will they substitute normal lectures.
Wikipedia, that great resource for all sorts of information, is refusing to censor itself to gain an audience in China. The site was censored by China in October of last year because it has bad things to say about the country according to the Chinese leadership.
The founder of Wikipedia has “challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.”
“We’re really unclear why we would be [banned],’ Wales told The Observer. ‘We have internal rules about neutrality and deleting personal attacks and things like this. We’re far from being a haven for dissidents or a protest site. So our view is that the block is in error and should be removed, but we shall see.'”