A Brave New World

In the new media world, a law professor's prank sparks a huge fake retirement story.  I'd guess that the identity of the news outlet doing the reporting will (rightly) take a hit, and the folks who ran with the story will probably be more circumspect in trusting news published by news reporting organizations that don't have an established reputation for telling it like it is.  Of course, this won't excuse the media from ignoring the next rumor published by the National Enquirer.

On another front, you gotta love the potential for mass chaos.  If I were a physics professor, I'd open class by announcing that me and my colleagues would be announcing later that morning that we had successfully completed work on a time machine.  I would then look at two people sitting in the back row and say, "I don't want to give away a lot about the future, but you two should NOT get married."