Question the Data
"Nancy, stand up and give us your history report." Mrs. Baldwin, fifth grade teacher at Middletown Elementary pointed to a girl in the third row of the class. Nancy got up from her desk and moved to the front of the class, where she turned around and addressed the class while reading from her paper.
"My history report, by Nancy Prague." She shifted her weight on her feet and continued.
"One hundred years ago, in the year 1958 scientists on Earth made a discovery of an object in the sky. It was a new star that they called Bellus. It was a very small and dim star, smaller than the planet Jupiter. It was traveling very fast and some scientists were worried that it might get too close to Earth. As it got closer, they found out that there was also a planet orbiting around it that they called Zydra."
"Zyra dear. The scientists called it 'Zyra'. Go on" the teacher corrected.
"Sorry. A planet they called Zyra. It was much smaller than Bellus. As the two new bodies got even closer to Earth, a scientist named Dr. Cole Hendron and his daughter who was also a scientist took measurements of where they were in the sky and got REALLY worried. They put all their numbers into a machine they called a Differen…Diffener…"
"Differential" the teacher suggested.
"Differential Analyzer, which used a lot of mechanical levers and switches to calculate numbers, but much slower than our computers do now. The machine told them that the planet would get very close to Earth, but the star would run into us. So they got some rich men to build big spaceships and they put all the best students from lots of different sciences who volunteered on board, along with animals and medicines, and copies of lots of books that they put on pieces of film."
"When the planet got close to Earth there were lots of earthquakes, tidal waves, floods and other disasters that caused a lot of people to die near the coasts. Over two weeks later the star got close and the ships flew off into space to be safe when the star crashed into Earth. Then the ships were designed to fly to the new planet Zyra and land to save the people and keep life going." Nancy paused to find her place on the paper.
"And then what happened?" asked the teacher.
"After the ships took off, the star came by and missed the Earth but crashed into the ships and killed all the smart young scientists. After they cleaned up the Earth and got everything going again, they found the information they put into the Differential Analyzer was wrong; somebody put in a '7' where there was supposed to be a '1'. They made movies about how brave the people were that went up in ships that had never been tried before, and have a special holiday for them every year. The End"
"Thank you Nancy, you can be seated now. There was an important lesson that we learned from that report. Does anybody know what it is?" the teacher asked the class. Several hands went up. "Yes Tommy?"
"Never volunteer."
"How about you Stan?"
"Live away from the ocean" he offered.
"And what do you say Alice?"
"Question the data. My dad always says that."
"Your dad is a smart man, Alice because that's our lesson for today. Now let's move on to our grammar lesson…"
The End
A/N: I always liked this movie, watching it on Saturday afternoon reruns of old sci-fi shows. I'll even overlook the cheesy painting of the new landscape at the end of the film; that wasn't the director's fault and for the time and budget it was made they did a pretty good job with the rest of it. But you just have to wonder how they calculated those equations. Not a slide rule in sight!