Well, it's April 1... April Fool's Day. MSN.com has an article showing the Top Ten April Fool jokes. The one that really caught my eye (and is fitting for this community):

In April 1976 the British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 a.m. a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event would occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and reduce the Earth's gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 a.m. arrived, BBC2 received hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her 11 friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room. — from Museum of Hoaxes

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

For those of you frustrated with MSN trying to find it among a flood of searches and April fool stories on MSN, here's a direct link (I hope).

It's the top ten as determined by the experts at the Museum of Hoaxes.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Wikipedia is running a number of practical jokes today, as well as things that make you think they are jokes, but they are not.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

You don't have to go far to get a practical joke, or stories about them.

Everybody's going to get on the bandwagon, and the trick is going to be weeding out the good ones.

There are some very good ones out there (like Jim's). What I don't like is the volume of malicious ones out there. I like a good prank, but not at the expense of someone. Many of them sound funny at first, but have some serious side effects that might not be visible.

It's enough that people are gullible enough to go to extremes in thier reactions to some of them.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

From spaceweather:

http://www.spaceweather.com/


Also, to prove there's more than one born every day, some folk who refuse to acknowledge the joke even when it's pointed out to them:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread345903/pg1

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Andy

Manager Ukweatherworld

The game City of Heroes has a good one today. It's an MMORPG, like World of Warcraft, only set in a world where comic book style superheroes are common. For the last few weeks they've been unveiling a lot of stuff that will be added to the game in the next big update, and this morning we get:

Visual Sounds!

What makes it work is that if it were optional, it would welcome by a good number of the players.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

The one I like is the move by the US Postal Service to match what cell phone companies are doing (allowing you to keep your phone number when you move or switch carriers) by introducing Portable ZIP Codes^TM; now, if you move, you can take your ZIP with you.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

APOD's contribution

Google Books 'Scratch and Sniff'

Google Wake-up Kit

More from Google

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

That APOD one is great! It almost looks like Dextre is waving his tools around in anger...

And a good article at the Guardian today, too:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgri...ng_pengui.html

also, I learned a lot from the wiki entry on april fools' day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_F...il_Fool_hoaxes

I love to read stuff like that...

and finally...

I haz a spoof too ...

http://thespacewriter.com/wp/

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Starry, starry night...

My site TheSpacewriter.com
and my blog: TheSpaceWriter's Ramblings

My Own Original (at least two friends believed it):

International Astronomical Union
IAU-UAI Secretariat
98bis bd Arago, F-75014 Paris, France
Contact: Tel: +33 1 43 258 358
For Immediate Release: April 1, 2008


International Astronomical Union Decries "Interlopers" in Planet Debate

Paris, France (AP): The International Astronomical Union today took the unusual step of officially condemning a host of bloggers and lay advocates who have been using the Internet to advocate the reversal of its demotion of Pluto and new planet definition adopted in August 2006.

According to IAU president Catherine Cesarsky, the organization has been bombarded with correspondence, both electronic and paper, by individuals who know little about astronomy but are being influenced by bloggers and others with emotional attachments to Pluto, requesting that the new planet definition be overturned and Pluto be reinstated as an official planet.

On several occasions, the IAU server actually crashed from an overload of visitors, most of whom came to the site to email protests against Pluto's demotion, Cesarsky said.

"In no other field, do we have outsiders without scientific backgrounds interfering in the decisions of professional scientists," Cesarsky emphasized, noting the IAU's frustration with criticism and attempts to discredit the group coming from the media and the Internet.

"Unfortunately, the Internet has allowed all manner of conspiracy theorists and people either unknowingly or deliberately spreading ignorance to be given the same degreeof credibility as real scientists," she lamented.

Anyone who believes lobbying efforts will lead to a reconsideration of the 2006 planet definition is "delusional," she added.

In a resolution unprecedented because it was passed in a special meeting rather than during a General Assembly, the IAU formally condemned non-scientists who have inserted themselves into the planet debate and went as far as to specifically name a few people regarded as the worst offenders.

Among them are Stuart Atkinson of Great Britain, Dipankar Subba of Singapore, and several Americans including Michael Burstein, Jay Miller, Carl Bergmanson, Laurel Kornfeld, and Siobhan Elias. These were cited for their repetitive attempts to discredit the IAU in multiple blog posts on the Internet over the last year and a half.

The resolution, which also formally banned those named from taking part in any IAU activities, including next year's planned International Year of Astronomy commemorations, noted that none has any astronomy background whatsoever and urged citizens worldwide to disregard any statements they make on the planet definition controversy.

This isn't mine.. And it's not an April Fools gag- but funny all the same:

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

Nope. Just your garden-variety internet humour. Cute, though not authentic.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I always set my desk calendar at work to March 32 on April 1. Nobody's noticed it (or said anything about it, anyway) yet.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

If you regularly look anything like what you do in your avatar- that might explain why they never say anything...

YouTube had every featured video link to a rickroll.

My favorite April Fools was when a local newspaper published an article stating that fake 20 Kr. notes had been seen and that, for one day only, people who found a fake could get a replacement at the local bank.
They could be easily recognized because one of the birds would be missing a leg
In case the link stops working, the notes had two birds and three visible legs in the good version.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.