Routine

I don’t like routine, as a rule. It bores me to do the same thing day after day, or even week after week. And yet, this morning, I woke up when my alarm went off, got up, used the bathroom, got dressed, went downstairs, ate a quick breakfast, checked my e-mail, put on my backpack, took the bus to Penn Valley, and walked up to work. From six-thirty (six o’clock if I take a shower) to eight in the morning, there is very little variation in this routine.

It’s unusual for me to do the same thing every morning. In fact, I’ve only been following this particular routine since the first day of classes a week and a day ago. Unless I find a non-bus ride to school in the mornings, I doubt it will change until December. Normally, that would bother me. Somehow, though, I don’t mind.

I think it’s because this routine gets me from sleep to a state in which I can face the day. I’m always a little groggy at home and on the bus, but by the time I get to work, I’m ready and able to handle life as it comes. When Mom or Bill drove me to school most mornings, that grogginess stayed with me through my first class. This way, even if I’m still sleepy when I get to school, I have a few hours of early-morning work to help me wake up before I need to really focus on anything. (Of course I focus on my tutoring sessions, but most papers are suffering from a subset of a group of problems I've learned to explain so that most students will understand. I don’t always need to use my brain very much.)

If my routine stayed the same all day, every day, I would hate it. And my days now are similar enough that after a while, they could get old: I have the same schedule each week, plus or minus a few things, and I see mostly the same people. But it’s varied enough to keep me interested for now, and it will all change next semester. I’m happy with that.

Am I just completely oblivious?

I just got a message through the NPL list about a study, published in Nature magazine, that compared scientific Wikipedia articles with online Encyclopedia Britannica articles and found about 4 errors per Wiki article and 3 per Britannica article. Britannica argued that the study was unfounded, and the battle between Nature and Britannica continued in public statements, editorials, and (wow, how professional) ads in the London Times.

The original article was printed last December. How on earth did I not know about this before now? I've spent the last hour or so reading the article, the supplementary information about the study, Britannica's response to the study (PDF), Nature's initial rebuttal (PDF), an editorial from the March issue of Nature, and a more detailed rebuttal to Britannica's attack (PDF). I tried to find the newspaper ads referenced by Nature, but they don't seem to be online. I'm pretty sure Nature is in the right here, anyway.

This is absolutely fascinating.