I have these great April Fools ideas but there’s no space for them in the margin of this blog

Not really. Actually I have no good April Fools ideas this year.

Usually I write an April Fools post months in advance, but it’s been such an overwhelming year in so many ways with a pandemic, an attempted overthrow of the government, and lots more, that somehow the inspiration never came. Bu we should have something on this special day, so below are some scattered ideas.

I joined the pandata.org advisory group!

A new NFT: Stancoin! This is Mitzi’s idea. Front side of the coin is the Stan “S” with a vertical line making it look like a dollar sign and the flip side something about Ulam. Then lots of stuff about how the longer your model takes to run, the more Stancoins you get. Mitzi also informs us that 10 StanCoins are called a Hamilton.

The Philipson Curve as the hot new idea in economics.

Brian Wansink, Marc Hauser, and Dr. Anil Potti walk into a bar . . .

Ya got nudged!

I’ve never read anything by John Updike or George V. Higgins. I was kidding all the time. Who has time for that crap??

I proved this theorem for Stephen Wolfram and all I got is this lousy T-shirt.

Something something something Why We Sleep guy.

P.S. Previous April Fools posts:

2020: Moving blog to twitter

2019: Impact of published research on behavior and avoidable fatalities

2018: This April Fools post is dead serious

2017: Move along, nothing to see here

2016: In the biggest advance in applied mathematics since the most recent theorem that Stephen Wolfram paid for . . .

2015: Enough with the replication police

2014: Association for Psychological Science announces a new journal

2013: Wolfram on Mandelbrot

2012: A randomized trial of the set-point diet

2011: So many topics, so little time

2010: Problems with inappropriate combination of data

2009: Why tables are really much better than graphs

2008: Why I don’t like Bayesian statistics

The 2018 post really was dead serious. And the 2013 post had no April Fools content at all (except to the extent that Wolfram is a floating punch line). So I guess there’s precedent for us to skip a year. The 2011 post was closest to today’s, except then I had more energy and actually produced some jokes, whereas this time I’m just pointing to potential jokes. A sort of DYI April Fools effort.

11 thoughts on “I have these great April Fools ideas but there’s no space for them in the margin of this blog

  1. yes, the post I didn’t write would have been titled: “E Pluribus Ulam” – because US coins have “e pluribus unam” on the flip side.
    introducing StanCoin, the gambler’s crypto-currancy of choice. based on Stan chain technology.

    two reasons I didn’t write this: the joke would have involved far too much Adobe illustrator to be worth it.

    also, joke crypto-currencies are no longer a joke – cf DogeCoin

    which brings me to the final problem: there’s nothing funny about an enterprise that’s entirely based on untold amounts of energy consumption. I’m just too freaked out about the climate crisis to be able to make jokes.

    • “there’s nothing funny about an enterprise that’s entirely based on untold amounts of energy consumption. I’m just too freaked out about the climate crisis to be able to make jokes.”

      If you’re worried about climate change isn’t consumption exactly what you should be hoping for? Rising demand would drive up the price of energy and make alternatives to fossil more competitive, not to mention generating numerous other economic benefits – which would in turn create more demand and more opportunities for alternatives. The “put on the brakes” mode does just the opposite – reduces the need for new capacity and the incentive to create new forms of energy, and having the negative side effect of reducing the standard of living.

  2. Boy, am I glad that you didn’t come up with a new one this year! I’m still reeling from last year’s move to twitter. I admit that I fell for that one…

  3. All right, I agree, we’ve all been busy and overwhelmed. April Fools can wait for other Aprils, other fooleries. But maybe it’s “time” (relatively speaking, within the next couple of years) for another Seminar Speaker Contest?

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