Wallace, no Gromit

I want to draw your attention to Wiki1B, which is not actually a true Wiki, but is simply the Summer Bio1B lecture outlines linked to appropriate Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia certainly has its critics but I believe it is a tremendously useful resource for introductory classes, allowing you to easily follow up on anything that you find unclear or interesting. It is also a great tool for any curious person. Today it struck me that I didn't know whether Malthus had been as influential to Wallace as he had been to Darwin (I already knew that Lyell had been a tremendous influence to both men). In the past I would have had to go to the library, find some biographies on Wallace, hope they weren't checked out, and then hope that the indexer had done a good job and put Malthus in the index so I didn't have to read the whole book. But now, especially with Wikipedia, it was the work of seconds to pull up the Wallace article and search for Malthus:

'Wallace spent a lot of time at the Leicester library where he read An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus'.'
and
'According to his autobiography, it was while he was in bed with a fever that Wallace thought about Thomas Malthus's idea of positive checks on human population growth, and came up with the idea of natural selection.^'

Question answered. Whether Wikipedia is a suitable tool for primary research is a contentious topic but it sure is handy for answering quick questions - most of which I'd never bother to find out otherwise.

Just today Wikipedia helped me find the name of the guy in the hat who won the 800m at the Munich Olympics : Dave Wottle - and there's a link to a YouTube video of the race! I can even make this relevant to the class because slow and steady really DOES win the race sometimes. Although it looks like he sprints past everyone at the end Wottle actually runs a perfectly evenly paced race and it is everyone else who is slowing down.

This time last year: A Wizard did it.