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Re: April fools

From: Norm Wolcott <nwolcott2ster~at~gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 10:48:33 -0400
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

One item Garmt-- I later went back to your "newspaper Article" but I could
find the .mp3 on your website. Did you actually make one? and is the
Newspaper article part of the game? If so I congratulate you. Unfortunately
it took a long time to download so many may have missed the fun. (On my W98
I had to give up before it all came down!). Please repost the mp3 or email
it to me!!

On 4/4/06, Norm Wolcott <nwolcott2ster~at~gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cheers! Garmt for taking me in completely. I must admit that I have
> moderated my attempts at humor since I posted "Missing Pages of 80 Days" in
> April 1998, since that attempt was greeted with the reaction one might
> expect from attempting to modify the Koran.
>
> http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum/1998/04/0026.html
>
> Garmt of course immediately spotted the date, 01-April-1998. Of course
> here the actual text of the missing pages was made available then so one
> could judge their authenticity directly. But has Garmt even offered us the
> sound bites he promised with the Dutch interrogator? That would have been
> the coup de gras, taking us in with a bogus sound recording. Garmt, my only
> complaint is that you did not complete your "Joke" by letting us follow you
> down the garden path completely, listening to your mumbled Dutch;but maybe
> you could not fake the JV accent correctly. That would have been the fitting
> conclusion to this elegantly crafted spoof.
>
>
> On 4/4/06, Garmt de Vries <G.deVries~at~phys.uu.nl> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > One last comment on the April Fool's joke I played on you, and then I'll
> > let the subject rest.
> >
> > I have received many reactions, both through the forum and personally.
> > Opinions on the propriety of the joke were divided: a majority felt it
> > was
> > a good hoax, even if they were taken in big time. I have also received a
> >
> > fair amount of criticism, basically saying that my trustworthiness was
> > affected by the joke, and I shouldn't have announced the existence of
> > the
> > interview before 1 April (or even that I shouldn't have done it at all).
> >
> >
> > This may be a cultural thing. In the Netherlands, it's quite common to
> > announce some extraordinary event some time before 1 April, always in
> > terms of "next Saturday" or "tomorrow". When the time is there, it turns
> >
> > out that "next Saturday" is in fact 1 April, and that the announcement
> > was
> > false. For example, some years ago, Dutch people were asked to point
> > their
> > cellphones to the east "early Thursday morning", in order to form a
> > giant
> > antenna that could detect the faint signal still coming from the Huygens
> > probe on Titan. The announcement was all over the newspapers one or two
> > days before 1 April, and it spread even more thanks to the internet.
> >
> > The tradition may be different in America. The fact that none of the
> > French or Dutch victims of my joke have complained certainly seems to
> > suggest so.
> >
> > Also, there's the fact that due to the time difference, the Americans
> > may
> > have read the "punchline" before 1 April as well. That's a pity, but it
> > couldn't be helped. It was either that, or having the punchline come too
> > late for the Dutch victims, and I didn't really have a choice anyway, as
> > I
> > had no mail access later on Saturday.
> >
> > As to my compromised trustworthiness: if people decide to doubt
> > everything
> > I say from now on, well, so be it. I guess most will recognize a joke
> > for
> > what it is, and either laugh about it or shrug their shoulders, and just
> >
> > get back to business as usual.
> >
> > I'm glad that so many people have had a good laugh, that's what it was
> > all
> > about, and if the joke has achieved that goal, I'm happy.
> >
> > I'll switch back to serious mode now.
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > Garmt.
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Norman Wolcott, nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu
>

--
Norman Wolcott, nwolcott2 at post.harvard.edu

Received on Tue 04 Apr 2006 - 17:48:52 IDT

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