Scientific Gossip (38-4b)
Contains 100% gossip from concentrate
Me-Quotient
This year, political turf battles have again killed U.S. federal funding for I-analysis. I-analysis is a simple, straightforward analysis of speech or text. I-analysis produces a single number known as the Me-Quotient:
Me-Quotient = (number of occurrences of the word “I”) / total number of words)The Me-Quotient quantifies the speaker or writer's relative sense of self-importance. I-Analysis was developed by political scientists at the University of Chicago. It has consistently drawn the ire of politicians and academics to whose speeches it has been applied.
Warm Pats
Butter has long intrigued food technologists. Innumerable techniques have been developed to rapidly transform chilled, hard pats of butter into the warm, soft form so beloved by diners. The tricky part is to do so without impairing the characteristic “buttery” fragrance and taste. Jesse Eppers of Salem State College in Salem, Massachusetts has experimented with all of the accepted methods of warming butter. The most satisfactory method, it turns out, is for waiters to wrap the butter in aluminum foil and melt it between their hands.
Refreshed Baloney
A similar line of research has been pursued by Piet Van der Valk and Trix Hufflebloom of the Food Services Research Institute in Rotterdam. They found the secret to thawing frozen baloney without impairing its taste or consistency: warm it with your feet.
The Mystery of Whiteness
Clothing washed in India’s Ganges River, one of the filthiest waterways of the world, is generally whiter than clothes cleaned in washing machines in the high technology West. Why? Part of the answer is that most Indians dry their clothes with sunlight, a natural bleaching agent, while Westerners generally use chemical bleaches and lightless drying machines. But a portion of the Indian whiteness is not accounted for. Several investigators are looking into the mystery.
The Heart of Baldness
Controversy is still raging over a report by Boston University researchers that certain kinds of male baldness are associated with a high risk of heart attack. Motil Belanger of The Estragon Research Institute in Buenos Aires has proposed a new explanation. Belanger contends that baldness itself neither influences the heart nor is it caused by underlying factors that lead to heart attacks. Rather, according to Belanger, it is the anxiety caused, in some individuals, by baldness that leads to strain on the heart.
© Copyright 2003 Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
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