Pride and Prejudice Loses to Comet Landing

Wondering a bit today why Wednesday’s ESA’s Philae probe landing on a comet after 10 years traveling in space did not garner more attention. The probe hit a moving target after a decade of flight…and I did not hear one thing about it! Given that I have been rather cloistered away from the news, I asked several teacher friends, neighbors, and the girls in the office…and they were not aware of it either! It certainly was not the national frenzy of the rocket times of “October Sky” or the Space Race.

Using my favorite Google Trends algorithm, KimK beat the comet landing in newsworthiness and so did Dancing With the Stars, which aired two days earlier. I had to go back to an even more obscure reference, my favorite book “Pride and Prejudice” before the comet won. In the age of social media, I wonder why the news did not permeate more…

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