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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Wimpy Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: net.rumor,net.origins,net.math,net.religion
Subject: The Institute for Pi Research
Message-ID: <14930@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 20-Jul-86 02:18:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.14930
Posted: Sun Jul 20 02:18:04 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jul-86 04:13:06 EDT
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Summary: pi is 3 any way you slice it

Followups are directed to net.rumor, where this originated.

>While such laws [pi==whatever] are moronic, let's not forget the crea-
>tionists' law that was passed in Arkansas, [...] "land of the ignorant".

Actually, the creationists are not alone.  Samuel Dicks, a professor of
medieval history at Emporia State University, has founded the Institute
for Pi Research, located at 617 Exchange Street/Emporia KS 66801.  Their
plan is to put God back into mathematics.  Dicks blames much of modern
society's woes on the Godless pi, which he says is "an atheistic concept
promoted by secular humanists.  To think that God in his infinite wisdom
would create something as messy as this (3.14 and so on) is a monstrous
thought."  They believe that ethical relativism, "the most evil of modern
moral philosophies", can be traced directly to the arbitrariness of axiom
systems as used by modern mathematics.  The institute has produced a vid-
eotape promoting its views, and has sent letters to various Midwestern
state legislatures asking for equal time in schools for the Biblical val-
ue of pi.  According to Loren Pennington, an economic historian, their
next goal "is to replace the insidious humanistic meter with the Biblic-
al cubit."

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Wimpy Grad Student/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720