April 05, 2005
April Fools' (and some tangents)
April Fools’ Day jokes have never been my talent. My abilities lie more with being the naïve target of such jokes.
This year, Ed did not disappoint. He was visiting his parents at the beach last week and called me first thing Friday morning at work.
“Did you hear what happened?”
“No,” I replied.
“You didn’t watch the news this morning? Have you looked at the News & Observer yet?”
“No,” again, getting a little nervous.
“Sean May went and got himself a DWI last night. He won’t be playing in Saturday’s Final Four game!”
I couldn’t believe it. Turns out, I didn’t need to. Of course I’d forgotten to check my calendar to notice that it was indeed April 1. I fell for it, though. Hard. My first clue that it was a joke was probably the loud laughter I could hear in the background – Ed’s mom, that is, who just couldn’t contain herself. So proud of her prankster son.
(And lest anyone should Google this or otherwise stumble upon it and for even one second think that our fine young #42 would do such a thing – again, it was just a prank. Never happened.)
UNC of course went on to win the National Championship, proving itself to be the best team in the country, but I digress. Really, that has nothing to do with my post, I just wanted to acknowledge the greatness of my alma mater and its phenomenal basketball coach and players.
Ahem. Meanwhile, back on topic . . . I came across a fabulous op-ed in the NY Times by Paul Krugman. It’s about the recent attempts by some conservatives to attack the so-called “liberal bias” or “liberal slant” on college campuses. I guess we all have our causes. These cases amuse me and I hope to address this topic in a future post. But Krugman mentions an April Fools’ Day incident that I thought was brilliant and worth sharing with the two, maybe three readers of this site.
Surely we’ve all read recently about the Creationism vs. Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate. Apparently, Scientific American magazine published a spoof editorial in its April Fools’ Day issue titled “O.K., We Give Up.” In the editorial, the magazine editors basically apologize for endorsing the theory of evolution. They admit they succumbed to “the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do.” They call on readers to blame scientists, since after all, “They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.”
I assure you, it’s well-worth a read; these two quotes I pulled from it simply do not do the piece justice. Enjoy.
And feel free to share any memorable April Fools’ stories from your past. Clearly, I’m a sucker.
Posted by kristin at 13:40 | Comments (0)
