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Gravity and Levity by Clifford Will
Joe played a clever prank on me in 1990, the year a crackpot Missouri "scientist" predicted an earthquake on the New Madrid fault for the exact date of December 3rd. This wacky prediction got a lot of press coverage. A few weeks before the anticipated quake, Joe prepared the following notice and posted it around the department. Important Notice To protect lives and property from the consequences of the earthquake predicted by the media, gravity will be turned off in both Crow and Compton (the Physics buildings) starting Monday December 3, 1990 at 12:01 a.m. Gravity will not be restored until either a building inspection has been performed after the quake, or at 11:59 p.m. in the event that the earthquake did not materialize. Any questions concerning activities possible in the absence of gravity should be addressed to Professor Clifford M. Will |
Gravity is my field of expertise (pun assumed intentional, -ed) and so I would be the logical person to deal with the results of turning gravity off. Luckily for Joe, I was NOT inundated with phone calls. This note, now yellow with age, is still tacked to my office bulletin board.
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