2009-03-07
Readers of this column know that I am highly
critical of the government giving away vast sums
of money to scientists who conduct studies about
unimportant things when the money would be much
better spent funding newspaper columnists who
write articles about unimportant things.
For example, I think it was a
waste of money to spend $1.2 million to study
the breeding preferences of the woodchuck. Turns
out they mostly prefer to breed with other
woodchucks. Shouldn't we instead have spent the
money to determine, once and for all, how much
wood a woodchuck could chuck if it only could
chuck wood?
People have been asking that
question for more than a century, whereas I
can't recall a single instance of someone asking
me whether I knew exactly what woodchucks do on
their third date. If I were to guess, I'd say
that the male woodchuck takes the female
woodchuck out for a nice dinner — say, a chuck
steak — then invites her back to his burrow to
watch a DVD ("Groundhog Day").
Meanwhile, Australian
scientists recently determined what happens when
you give bees cocaine. The buzzed bees were
enthusiastic about going out for nectar and were
spotted dancing all night and spending a lot of
time on their cell phones selling people shares
of Enron. The scientists claim that observing
how the bees behave on the drug gives us insight
as to how humans behave on cocaine, though for
that you could just study the life of Robert
Downey Jr.
And $1 million was spent on a
study to determine why people don't like to ride
their bikes to work. It was discovered that
there were many factors, such as "flop sweat,"
"the interstate highway system" and "winter in
Wisconsin." More funding will be required to
determine why no one has ever sold a bicycle to
a woodchuck.
Regardless of the
reasons for their reluctance, we'd better figure
out ways to get people on bicycles, because
after a decade of study, a group of Japanese
scientists, led by a professor Yuki Sugiyama of
Nagoya University, has determined the reason
commuters are occasionally caught in jams for no
obvious reason: It's that
there are too many cars on
the road.
Sugiyama could probably have
reached this conclusion in less than 10 years,
but he was always late to work due to traffic.
(One definition of the word "traffic" is "too
many cars on the road, causing congestion."
Think of all the time that could have been saved
if someone had just handed Sugiyama a
dictionary!)
Not all scientific studies
are frivolous. The Macfarlane Burnet Institute
for Medical Research and Public Health in
Melbourne, Australia, recently launched an
investigation into a strange phenomenon: They
kept running out of teaspoons in the break room.
(Or, as they put it, they conducted a
"longitudinal cohort study of the displacement
of teaspoons in an Australian research
institute.")
In this controversial
experiment, 70 teaspoons were placed in the
break room and observed for five months, which
had to be more exciting than just about anything
except maybe watching a pair of woodchucks out
on the town. At the end of the experiment, fully
80 percent of the spoons were missing, though
they forgot to try to figure out
why.
(Professor Sugiyama is of
the opinion that the reason the teaspoon drawer
is almost empty is that there are so few spoons
in there, though he would need another
nine-and-a-half years to reach a conclusion.)
Speaking of spoons, a team
headed by Brian Wansink, director of Cornell
University's Food and Brand Lab, has determined
that people tend to eat more at all-you-can-eat
buffets. In fact, they tend to eat all they can
eat! (And yes, Professor Sugiyama, we would
agree that the buffet line moves more slowly if
there are more people in line.)
Now, all of the above
information comes to me by way of searches on
the Internet, though I never found the one I
suspect must
exist: a federal study to
determine whether more money is needed to fund
federal studies. This is a huge oversight that
should be addressed as soon as possible.
I just need a few million
dollars, and I'll get right on it.
To write Bruce Cameron, visit his Website at
www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about
Bruce Cameron and read features by other
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