A first for me...

[Firemeboy]

I don't know if any of you read Digg, but it's a great site to get caught up on the latest geek news, among other stuff.  Anyway, I wrote an article on a blog that I contribute to, and it was submitted to digg and made it to the front page.  Kind of fun...

http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Wikipedia_dilemma_What_is_the_ideal_reading_level

[Spriggan]

that's awesome, your like internet famous for the day.

[Firemeboy]

Yeah, I probably just used up my 15 minutes.  Rats, I was hoping my 15 minutes involved dry ice, plastic tubing, and lots and lots of peanut brittle.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

What about the rubber snakes?

[Firemeboy]

Well, the rubber snakes are implied, of course. 

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I see you use your real name in this one.

[Faster Master St. Pastor]

Yeah, I probably just used up my 15 minutes.  Rats, I was hoping my 15 minutes involved dry ice, plastic tubing, and lots and lots of peanut brittle.

This 15 minutes wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the Darwin awards would they?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Duuuuuuude what's the reading level of this paragraph from the Scurvy article?

Pathophysiology

Normal collagen synthesis depends upon the hydroxylation of proline and lysine residues in the endoplasmic reticulum, to form hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine, respectively. Prolyl and lysyl hydroxylase, the enzymes that catalyze the hydroxylation reactions, require vitamin C as a cofactor. In cases of chronic deficiency, hydroxyproline and hydroxylysine are not formed in appreciable amounts and the resulting collagen fibrils are considerably weaker. This is due in part to the loss of hydrogen bonding between hydroxyprolines and constituent heteroatoms within the collagen ?-helical trimer, which otherwise confer mechanical stability.

[dawncawley]

Umm, well, I cut and pasted that segment into Word, and did a Spell and Grammar check, which then gave me the readability score, which on the Flesch-Kincaide grade level was at a 12.0.  Don't worry, I didn't keep the work, I was just awfully curious about the answer to that question

Edit: That grade level seemed low to me and I remember that the ease of readability number was also on there, so I checked it, and the above mentioned paragraph had a readability score of  0.0, which I thought was interesting.

[Pink Bunkadoo]

in the endoplasmic reticulum

Wait, I know that word!  Endoplasmic reticulum.  Yes, it rings a bell.  Now what does it mean?

[Archon]

If memory serves, the endoplasmic reticulum is a part of animal cells that acts as a kind of transport system throughout the cell.

[Shrain]

Yeah, that sounds right. Hmm. I remember when I made this "cell cake" for AP Bio back at OHS. I got a pack of cinna-crystal gum, and shaped them into bunches of wavy endoplasmic reticulum. Funnest cake I ever baked. What sucked is that it took our teacher forever to grade them, so it was kinda too stale and gross to eat. Dang. And I was looking forward to devouring that cell.