Warning: Geeky humor ahead

Here are two things I thought were pretty funny:

1. A former student sent me this spoof article showing that the value of pi has changed over time.  Although it’s mostly making fun of the recent (and scientifically legitimate, by the way) studies of whether fundamental physical constants vary over time, I think I detect a hint of mockery of the old Creationist claim that the speed of light has changed over time.  (The claim used to be that the speed tended to infinity at, conveniently enough, about 6000 years ago.)

2. From Andrew Jaffe: This erratum was published in the Astrophysical Journal:

As a result of an error at the Publisher, the term "frequentist" was erroneously changed to "most frequent" throughout the article. IOP Publishing sincerely regrets this error.

You probably have to be someone like me who uses the word “frequentist” in casual conversation to find this funny.

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Ted Bunn

I am chair of the physics department at the University of Richmond. In addition to teaching a variety of undergraduate physics courses, I work on a variety of research projects in cosmology, the study of the origin, structure, and evolution of the Universe. University of Richmond undergraduates are involved in all aspects of this research. If you want to know more about my research, ask me!