Waitwait, in the sawdust-and-orange experiment, is the claim here that (a) the table exerts a gravitational force on the sawdust or that that (b) the Earth exerts a gravitational force on the sawdust and the table gets in the way?
Sorry, I seem to remember peeking into this thread when I first joined and quickly bypassing it due to its utter mindlessness, but the recent post has reawakened by interest... or at least, my astonishment.
Anyway, if the claim is (a), then consider this other experiment I did. First I replicated the original experiment: put an orange on the table, spun the orange, poured the sawdust. Sure enough, I replicated the original results! The sawdust seemed attracted to the flatness of the table. Wild! I thought, hm... what a neat effect... maybe I could design a propulsion system around this! So I turned the table on its side, and tied the orange from the ceiling by a string. Poured the sawdust... but this time, the sawdust went all the way to the floor. Amazing! I tried the table in a variety of orientations. Still, the sawdust always seemed to go down. Thinking maybe my big, flat floor was attracting the sawdust, I reran the experiment outside, and from the top of a tall building hanging over the edge, and on top of a very pointy (not flat at all) mountain. No matter what, the sawdust always went down (same direction I feel *myself* getting pulled). So I concluded that the nonsense about flat things attracting things is absolutely worthless, especially when considered from the standpoint of "WTF was I thinking???"
If the claim is (b), or if you still believe (a) but want to claim that it's the Earth's flatness that was attracting the sawdust the whole time... well, try to realize that the Earth's shape is exactly what's in question here. Noticing that the Earth attracts things doesn't immediately give you any information about its shape. It certainly seems, btw, that other objects in the universe attract one another, despite being vehemently not flat.
Anyway, I can understand why this thread is as dead as the brains of those who initiated it. Hopefully it will soon return to its quiescent state and leave us alone.
-Erasmus