> I wish this stupid [April Fools' Day] custom would go away. It's
> getting to the point where there needs to be a moratorium on
> discoveries for a month starting in mid March.
I think April 1 ought to be a sacred holiday for rational minds-- a day devoted to honing the bullshit-detection skills that have atrophied in too many people. A day the press can shed its silly pretense of objectivity and force the public to evaluate news skeptically, as they should be doing every day anyway. A day for scientists to see what they can get away with publishing to catch the unwary reader. If you are distressed that you cannot tell a legitimate announcement from a phony one, perhaps you should complain not that papers publish in April, but that they aren't giving enough information in the story for a skeptical reader to properly evaluate it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC