My dog didn’t eat my homework

Rocky’s daughter found a new and creative excuse for missing a homework deadline. It didn’t involve dogs, cats or “mosquito bites triggering an allergic reaction to paper and ink.”

She read that the massive Chilean earthquake knocked the earth off its axis — and caused “time to be lost.” At school today, she asked Mrs. Calabash for a 1.26 microsecond extension on her research paper about dinosaurs. (Her request was immediately granted.)

From the NASA website:
JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth’s rotation should have changed as a result of the Feb. 27 quake. Using a complex model, he and fellow scientists came up with a preliminary calculation that the quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds (a microsecond is one millionth of a second).
The full NASA link is here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth-20100301.html

[Disclosure: For students who need more than an extra microsecond, a list of good excuses can be found here: http://www.jobprofiles.org/library/students/the-ferris-bueller.htm .... Rocky awaits an announcement from the NY Stock Exchange whether the trading day will be shortened by 1.26 microseconds.]