Hi WAMUGgers
Nothing better to do, just before Christmas? Do some action research
for your next masters degree! Use your Mac of course.
As I was browsing the ABC News just now I came across this gem:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1537135.htm
"Missing spoons stir scientists into action"
"Australian scientists have proved what is common knowledge to most
people - teaspoons appear to have minds of their own.
In a study at their own facility, a group of scientists from the
Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in
Melbourne secretly numbered 70 teaspoons.
They then tracked the movement of the spoons over five months.
Supporting their expectations, 80 per cent of the spoons vanished
during the period.
The spoons in private areas of the institute lasted nearly twice as
long as those in communal sections.
"At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased
annually to maintain a workable population of 70 teaspoons," they
wrote in Friday's festive edition of the British Medical Journal.
They say their research proves that teaspoons are an essential part
of office life and the rapid rate of disappearance proves that this
is under relentless assault.
Regretting that scientific literature is "strangely bereft" of
teaspoon-related research, the scientists have offered a few theories
to explain the phenomenon.
Taking a tip from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
books, they suggest that the teaspoons are quietly migrating to a
planet uniquely populated by "spoonoid" life forms living in a
spoonish state of Nirvana.
They also offer the phenomenon of "resistentialism" in which
inanimate objects like teaspoons have a natural aversion to humans.
On the other hand, they suggested, people might simply be taking them."
Have fun
Reg
