Our college has an (expensive) automated alert system. If there is an emergency on campus, then this system will broadcast news and warnings to all members of the campus community via telephone, cell phone, text messaging, email, etc. (I don’t think they’re set up for Twitter yet.)

They sent one of these alerts today because a transformer had failed and part of the campus was without power. At the end of the phone message they said that anyone needing emergency assistance should call “seven billion, one hundred seventy two million, four hundred fifty one thousand, x hundred xx” (where xxx is the last three digits of the phone number.)

Ha! I’m glad it wasn’t a real emergency!