"Why
are you running out of the room?"
Of course, they'd say that all
in Chinese.
Anyway, the study isn't what got
me. What got me is that it took a team of scientists
five months to measure 148 volunteers. All of
the volunteers were measured flaccid, so it's
not like they needed any special preparation.
Let's say it took five minutes to measure each
guy, and they measure each one five times just
to be sure. With one scientist, it'd take five
12-hour work days. With a team of scientists,
you could do it all in a day. But it took five
months. Maybe one guy kept watching Baywatch before
he went in, throwing the measurements off. (After
all, the show is very popular in other countries).
At the end of the study, the scientists
were able to compare their results to similar
studies done in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Israel,
The Phillipines, and America. And then the question
becomes, what the heck are we spending our money
on?
There have been tons of studies
about how teenagers are now using prescription
drugs to "get high." Which is a great
way to spend our money, instead of simply looking
around at any high school or college in America.
Then again, the people looking are so out of touch
they still talk about drugs with phrases like
"get high." (Incidentally, I'm not a
chicken, but you're a turkey).
We study things like the sweatiest
city in America, that better weather and the ability
to attract people with money increases tourism,
and how watching golf can improve your golf swing.
Incidentally, the sweatiest city is El Paso. The
people who studied that probably took their money
and are now touring the country playing golf in
nice weather.
Studies seem to come in three
forms: useful, obvious, and who really cares?
Perhaps the residents of El Paso take a certain
pride knowing that they are sweatier than Milwaukee,
but I'd rather we spend that money studying how
to stop us from spending so much on studies.
Of course nice weather increases
tourism. But it took a team of researchers at
Michigan State University to make it official.
Rumor has it they asked a few of their friends
if they wanted to go out on a rainy day, and their
friends replied, "nah." But it took
another twelve months to analyze the data.
And watching professional golfers
would most certainly help people get better at
golf. That's what happens when you watch professionals
do something - you pick up tips on how to do it
yourself. I'm glad that a student and professor
at the University of Western Ontario teamed up
for the results of this one. The student says
he got better at conducting useless studies by
watching the professor in action, but I won't
know for sure until I commission a study.
Knowledge is good, and we should
want to know the answer to every question. But
there are better and more pressing questions.
Ones that will produce more relevant answers than
"El Paso."
Maybe the size of male genitalia
is more important to the Chinese way of life than
I am assuming. Or maybe not, considering there's
a limit on children over there. But I believe
that the results will change nothing. People will
still make hacky jokes based on pre-conceived
racist concepts. I don't picture someone interrupting
such a joke to say, "You're wrong! There
was this study..."
As an aside, the studies list
Italians as the largest of those countries, and
men from the Philippines as the smallest and thus
most likely to buy sports cars. A follow-up study
suggests that knowing that the men in the Philippines
have slightly smaller genitals than everyone else
could really hurt tourism.
Steve
Hofstetter is the author of the Student Body Shots
books, which are available at SteveHofstetter.com.
He can be e-mailed at steve@stevehofstetter.com.
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