Saturday, December 24, 2005

Knew it all the time...

This is an article I found on Yahoo news at 12:36 am...

LONDON (Reuters) - Australian scientists have proved what is common knowledge to most people.
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 and tracked their movements over five months.
Supporting their expectations, 80 percent of the spoons vanished during the period -- although those 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 said their research proved that teaspoons were an essential part of office life and the rapid rate of disappearance proved that this was under relentless assault.
Regretting that scientific literature was "strangely bereft" of teaspoon-related research, the scientists offered a few theories to explain the phenomenon.
Taking a tip from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books, they suggested that the teaspoons were quietly migrating to a planet uniquely populated by "spoonoid" life forms living in a spoonish state of Nirvana.
They also offered 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.


In my household, of course, it's the butter knife that tends to disappear. I use them to pry the doors open to the rooms that I have locked (in desperation) to keep my toddler out.

1 Things not left unsaid:

Gretchen Shelby said...

I hate when my small spoons fall into the garbage disposal and I don't realize they're in there until I flip the switch and hear the grinding metal. The spoon is only good for stirring coffee after that, because the rough edges scratch the mouth. I think we're down to just four cereal-worthy spoons.