Fuck Off, Lemurs

Proof that education needs the Internet and vice versa.

In sixth grade, I was reading H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man. The main character, before subjecting himself to his irreversible treatment, tests it on a cat. The cat turns completely invisible, except for its tapetum.

In sixth grade, I didn't know what that meant. I asked my teacher. She didn't know. I hiked down to the school library, where every reference text I could find: World Book, EB, and God help me, Compton's, all turned up empty-handed.

For years, it bugged me that a student in a school couldn't answer a simple veterinary question. Eventually I put two and two together and concluded that it must be that part of a cat's eye that reflects light. Tonight, practically twenty years later, I found out I was right. In sixth grade, there was no Wikipedia and there was no ever-growing treasure trove of trivia that was easily accessible and easily digested by people who don't have the letters "DVM" after their names. Anymore, kids in any classroom in the U. S. could probably have that question answered inside of sixty seconds. Technology!