As long as males and females have been living with indoor plumbing they have argued over the placement of the toilet seat. Most often, males leave the toilet seat up and females leave the toilet seat down. Males may not necessarily have a problem with the toilet seat down, but then females will suffer from wet bottom syndrome from time to time. If males leave the seat up, females may “fall” into the toilet particularly at night. A solution to this problem is to always leave the toilet seat in a particular position: the toilet seat remains down and males must lift the toilet seat to urinate, but then return it to its down position; alternatively, the toilet seat remains up and females must always place the seat down to use the toilet and return it to its upright position when done.

The trouble with this solution is: in which position should the toilet seat be placed? This decision has, no doubt, been the source of many arguments in male-female households. Previous scientific research has been undertaken on this household problem. Choi (2002) uses an optimization method to identify the efficient placement of the toilet seat. He finds that unless the costs of changing the toilet seat position are asymmetric across the parties involved, the optimal toilet seat placement follows the selfish rule: do not change the toilet seat position when you are finished using the toilet. Harter (2005) and Siddiqi (2006) both use game theoretic models to show that optimal toilet seat placement is up. However, Harter (2005) does note that in order to avoid marital conflict the toilet seat may best be in the down position.

In this paper, an efficiency-based argument is used to show which position the toilet seat should be in, depending on the composition of the household. This is done through a mathematical modeling approach that extends previous research by considering households with more than one male and more than one female. Because it takes effort to raise and lower the toilet seat, the toilet seat should be left in the position that minimizes the number of times it must be moved. It is shown that the optimal toilet seat placement depends on the ratio of males to females.

In order to determine the optimal toilet seat placement, a mathematical modeling approach is taken. In order to perform such modeling, a number of axioms must be made.

Axiom 1: Females always use the toilet with the seat in the down position.

Axiom 2: Males urinate with the toilet seat up in the up position and defecate with the toilet seat in the down position.

Axiom 3: Males and females defecate once per day and urinate 7 times per day.

Axiom 3 is clearly critical for the results, but in a sensitivity analysis the results presented below were shown to be robust. Considering these axioms, the toilet seat ratio is calculated as follows:

This ratio is bounded by zero and unity. If the TSR is greater than 0.50, the optimal toilet seat placement is up; if the TSR is less than 0.50, the optimal toilet seat placement is down; and if the TSR is equal to 0.50 the optimal placement is either up or down. The TSR is calculated for all combinations of 1 – 5 males and 0 – 6 females.

The results of the mathematical modeling are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1. Figure 1 also shows the 0.50 mark (grey line) and all TSR values greater than 0.50 in Table 1 are in bold.

Figure 1. Toilet Seat Ratio

Table 1. Toilet Seat Ratios, ad nauseam

The first point to notice in this analysis is that the claims of previous research have not been replicated here: when there is one female and one male in the household the optimal toilet seat placement is down. However, as evident in Table 1, all hope for having the toilet seat in the up position is not lost for males.

Overall, the general results clearly show that if the number of females is greater than or equal to the number of males the optimal placement of the toilet seat is down. Additionally, when males outnumber females, the optimal toilet seat placement is not always up: when there are four males in a household, the optimal toilet seat placement is only definitively up when there are two or fewer females; and when there are five males in a household, the optimal toilet seat placement is only definitively up when there are three or fewer females.

Through the use of mathematical modeling, the analysis in this paper has shown that the optimal placement of the toilet seat can be calculated based on the number of males relative to the number of females. The general result (that is not sensitive to reasonable changes in Axiom 3) is that when the number of females in a household is greater than or equal to the number of males the optimal placement of the toilet seat is down. Therefore, there is no longer any need for males and females to argue over the placement of their toilet seat as long as they are concerned with the efficient expenditure of household energy.

Choi, J.P. (2002). Up or down? A male economist’s manifesto on the toilet seat etiquette. Department of Economics, Michigan State University Working Paper.

Harter, R. (2005). A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem. The Science Creative Quarterly.

Siddiqi, H. (2006). The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: a game theoretic analysis. MPRA Paper No. 856.

There are 42, exactly.

For what seems to be an interminable period of time biologists have been whining that all of the other sciences know more about their basic inventories than we do. Chemists have filled out the periodic table (except for rare reports of newly discovered, ridiculous elements, such as Whocaresium with a half-life of a picosecond); physicists have completed their quark menu (including all 31 flavors), astronomers have catalogued the stars (in fact, they have a few dozen catalogues suggesting that the project is pretty much old hat), and mathematicians have calculated pi to 1 million, mind-numbingly irrelevant digits. However, we biologists can’t seem to estimate the number of species on earth to the nearest order of magnitude.

The standard explanation for our ignorance is that we don’t get enough grant support. If only we had another 20 million taxonomists, all would be well in Nature (albeit hellish in departments of biology, entomology, botany, etc.). But the taxonomists are the problem, not the solution. Let’s face it, scientists who fail calculus become biologists and those who flunk arithmetic become taxonomists. If you doubt my assessment of the average quantitative skills of systematists, ask your local expert to explain the mathematical assumptions and processes that lie behind whatever software program s/he is currently using to crank out the next long-awaited, earth-shattering cladogram.

Clearly, the question of how many species live on earth needs the talents of an ecologist who has both quantitative skills and biological insights. Like me. So I used several widely accepted data collection methods and mathematical analyses to arrive at a final, definitive, and precise answer so that biologists could move onto something more important, like debating creationists, moving genes between unrelated organisms, sequencing long strings of nucleic acids, and building simulation models of ecosystems.

Step 1: Picking a Starting Point

According to E.O. Wilson, Terry Erwin claimed that two-thirds of all species live in tropical forest canopies (Wilson, 1992). Now if Terry said it (and he is an ecologist) and Ed repeated it, then the Gods have spoken. And I, for one, don’t want to mess around with Biological Scripture. However, only a fool would take this information and then decide to start inventorying life on earth by traveling through snake-infested jungles in order to “fog” the tropical canopy, so that he could then multiply this measure of species abundance by 1.5 to arrive at a global value. This strategy smacks of somebody who sneaked one too many snorts on the canopy fogger. A sane, unintoxicated, and clever ecologist would sample in areas that are not tropical canopies and then multiply the estimate of species richness by 3 (arriving, presumably, at the same number with a whole lot less work). So, I decided to determine the number of species in a non-tropical-forest-canopy habitat (NTFC).

Step 2: Determining the Number of Species in an NTFC Habitat

Given that the National Science Foundation sent all of its Biodiversity dollars down to the gang at INBio, they were unwilling to fund the OUTBio (Organization of Utterly Trivial BIOlogy, of which I’m the executive director) proposal for an ATBI of the French Riviera. As such, I decided to use local funds. The people of Wyoming have such implicit faith in their university faculty that they don’t even ask what we do with their money. On a particularly sunny day I sat on a bench outside my office and conducted a complete census of all life forms. After several hours of observation and one short period of inattention, I was able to find and identify seven species. In all, I saw one robin, one dog (black), one administrator (white), four students, 17 pine trees, 79 ants (red), and 1,000 blades of grass. Some biologists might argue that the administrator is conspecific with the students, but these scientists have obviously never spent any time with a university administrator (see also Darwyn 1987). Based on this data set, I decided to estimate the number of species using a really simple formula that even a taxonomist could follow (although the little bitty numbers above and below the letters might be off-putting):

where N_T is the total number of species, N is the number of species observed, and I is the number of species observed only once. So, plugging in the numbers we find that:

Step 3: Determining the Completeness of the Census

One might ask how I know that there are really 12.25 species in my typical NTFC habitat. Well, I plotted the rate at which I found new species across observations, and by the time I hit the one thousandth blade of grass it was clear that discovery rate had reached an asymptote. So further observations would have failed to reveal more species. This clever mathematical move along with good ol’ common sense should be sufficient to dismiss any annoying reviewers with the chutzpah to suggest that my census was incomplete.

Step 4: Determining the Level of Endemism

While there are precisely 12.25 species on the campus of the University of Wyoming, you might wonder if this richness represents the total number of species in all non-tropical-forest-canopy (NTFC) habitats. To ascertain the universality of my finding, I called several colleagues at Montana State University, but the secretary reported that it was “huntin’ seezun for the boyz”, so they were all out blasting warm, fuzzy, gentle ungulates to strap across the hoods of their pickups and then hang in their garages.

So, I called a buddy down at Colorado State University (home of the fabled Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory and dozens of ecological modelers who are highly unlikely to be out hunting). Being paragons of productivity, the CSU faculty are always willing to lend a hand. I managed to catch my esteemed ecological colleague after his 2-hour lunch, just as he was leaving for a racquetball game. I asked him to conduct a census of all biological species on his campus. Being a theoretical ecologist, he expressed serious reservations about the possibility of having to “go outside”. I suggested that he could collect the data by looking out the window, which he did. He reported seeing one lawn, one dog (brown), one mosquito, two birds (“medium-sized with red tummies”), four trees (probably pines, but he wasn’t sure), 22 students, and 114 ants (actually these were consuming his sandwich on the window ledge but we included them in the census).

Incredibly enough, the species he reported appeared to be identical to those recorded in Wyoming. The only controversial classification might be the conspecificity of the administrator (WY) and the mosquito (CO). But given that they are both blood-sucking, small-brained parasites with overwhelming urges to make more of their own kind, I decided that they could be safely subsumed under a single species. Such is the advantage of thinking in terms of ecological function rather than morphological similarity. To mathematically determine the overlap between the species in Colorado and Wyoming, I used Jaccard’s index:

Only an ecologist really grasps what the horseshoes mean, but this is clearly a complex—and hence true—bit of mathematical legerdemain. Using some really cool software that I “borrowed” from another ecologist (like all of your software was purchased?) and my brand-new laptop computer I was able to determine the extent of overlap was 99.9%. You might think that two apparently identical sets would have 100% similarity, but this merely suggests that you don’t understand statistical variation, formal logic, tensor calculus, and computer software that is written by people who are smarter than you. As such, accept that each non-tropical-forest-canopy (NTFC) university campus would add an additional 0.1% to the total species inventory completed at the University of Wyoming. The precision of this finding allows me to conclude, by the way, that my final value was not destined to be one of those namby-pamby “estimates” but the real, authentic, incontrovertible determination of the number of species on Earth.

Step 5: Determining the Total Number of Non-Tropical-Forest-Canopy Species on Earth

Because university campuses are built all over the earth, it is really easy to figure out the total number of species living in NTFC habitats across the entire planet. There are exactly 1,750 universities located in non-tropical forest canopies (Smith 1994), with each one having 0.1% endemism. Thus, these habitats collectively add an additional 1.75 species (i.e., 0.001 x 1,750) to the recorded total of 12.25. This calculation leads to the irrefutable conclusion that there are precisely 14 species on all non-tropical-forest-canopy habitats.

Step 6: Determining the Total Number of Species on Earth

Since Erwinian ecology dictates that one-third of all species live in non-tropical-forest-canopy habitats, we (you’ve read this far, so the first-person plural is appropriate) can simply multiply our species richness of 14 by 3. Thus, we find that the final, definitive, and precise number of species on Earth is 42.

The greatest mind in the universe concurs with my finding:

“All right,” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to the Great Question …”

“Yes …!”

“Of Life, the Universe and Everything …” said Deep Thought.

“Yes …!”

“Is …” said Deep Thought, and paused.

“Yes …!”

“Is …”

“Yes …!!!… ?”

“Forty-two,” said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

It can be no mere coincidence that the most powerful computer in the Universe also arrived at the value of 42 (Adams 1979). Indeed, my finding substantiates the fact that all other scientific disciplines are irrelevant and petty. At long last Ecology has discovered what the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, for which the answer is most assuredly 42 (Adams 1979). I could go on, but when you’ve revealed the Greatest Question in the Universe and validated its answer, what else is there to say?

I would like to thank the editor of The Science Creative Quarterly for not cashing my check for “annual dues” until this manuscript was accepted. And as for funding, I have nothing but contempt for various grant agencies that couldn’t recognize a solid scientific proposal if it bit ‘em on the butt.

None. You can’t really call what we publish in scientific journals “literature”.

Adams, D. 1979. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Harmony Books, New York.

Wilson, E.O. 1992. The Diversity of Life, Norton, New York (Note: yeah, sure there’s newer stuff, but the biodiversity-thing is really just a reiteration of the same old stuff for the last 15 years as we come no closer to knowing what a species is, how many there are, or what can be done to save them).

Darwyn, C. 2004. On the contraspecificity of Homo administratus and Homo sapiens: Implications for the end of civilization. Journal of Social Parasitism 37: 867-898.

Smith, T. R. 2007. Guide to the World’s Universities. Vol 2. Campuses located in Non-Tropical-Forest Canopies. Nonacademic Press, 893 pp.

JAL, from the University of Wyoming, is an ecologist of international repute. If you’ve not heard of him, then don’t share your ignorance with others as this will only lead them to conclude that you’re out of the loop regarding the movers and shakers in science. Among his other honors, he is a lifetime member of Modelers Anonymous (“National Science Foundation please grant me the funds to model that which I can simulate, the serenity to accept that which is stochastic, and the software to tell the difference”). At present he works in the department of philosophy (or at least as much as one can call doing philosophy actual work), which is a really long story involving academic intrigue, administrative ineptitude, and professorial metamorphosis.

Cake recipes include:

Monera – probiotic yogurt cake
Protista – green kelp diatom cake
Fungi – polish yeast cake
Plantae – zucchini cake
Animalia – honey cake
Genetically modified icing, coconut finch nest, Japanese white chocolate almond ptarmigan egg and spinach seaweed

R. H. Whittaker (1969). “New concepts of kingdoms of organisms”. Science 163: 150–160. link

Darwin, Charles Robert (1859). On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray: London, England.

Charlotte Adamson^1,3, Alaine F. Camfield ¹, Amanda B. Edworthy ¹, Meagan M. Grabowski ¹, Michaela Martin ¹, Isla H. Myers-Smith ^1,2, Andrea R. Norris ¹, Natalie L. Stafl ¹, Kathy Martin ¹

1. Martin Lab, Faculty of Forestry, Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia
2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta
3. Department of Biology, Simon Fraser University

Abstract
The purpose of this analysis is to determine the evolution of gravity in the Mario video game series as video game hardware increases.

Introduction
Gravity is force which is responsible for keeping us on the ground. It is also the force that prohibits us from jumping 50 feet in the air. However, in Mario’s world, gravity does not quite work that way. Mario is able to jump 5 times his height and fall with accelerations that would be deadly to humans.

We will find Mario’s acceleration due to gravity by using the formula:

where s is the distance he falls, s₀ is his initial distance, which is 0, v₀ is his initial vertical velocity, which is also 0, a is his acceleration due to gravity, and t is the time it takes for him to fall. When we solve this formula for a, we get:

Procedure
1. Record video clips of Mario falling from a ledge in the following games:

• Super Mario Bros 1, 2 & 3, for NES
• Super Mario World for SNE
• Super Mario 64 for N64
• Super Mario Sunshine GCN
• Super Paper Mario for Wii

2. Watch the clip in Quicktime Video Player and use the frame by frame option to determine the number of frames it took Mario to fall. Also using Quicktime, the FPS, or frames per second, of each video must be found.

3. Take a screen shot of Mario standing next to the ledge. This Screen shot will be used to determine the distance of the fall.

Analysis
First, you must find the time it took Mario to fall from the edge of the ledge to the ground in each game. To do this, we opened each clip in Quicktime movie player, and using the frame by frame option, found the total number of frames it took Mario to fall. We then used the formula:

To find the time of each of Mario’s falls. Once we knew the time, we needed to figure out the distance Mario fell in each game. We used a screen shot of Mario next to the ledge he fell from in each game, and found the height of Mario and the ledge in pixels. According to Wikipedia, Mario is “a little over five feet tall.”, so we used 5 feet, or 1.524 meters, as Mario’s height. We used the formula:

Once we had the distance Mario fell in each instance, we were able to use the formula

to find Mario’s acceleration in each game. Mario was in free fall in each case, so this acceleration was equal to gravity. His initial velocity was 0, as was his initial position. Our results in m/s2 as well as in multiples of g are outlined in the table below.

Finally, we graphed the acceleration due to gravity in each game as the bit rate of the graphics processor increased. Since Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 were from the same console, we took an average of the three values. Also, the Nintendo Wii never clearly defined its bit rate, but sources say that it is 96 Bits, which is actually less than that of the Nintendo GameCube. As for the other systems, the NES is an 8 Bit system, the SNES is 16 bit, the N64 is 64 Bit, and the GCN is 128 Bit. We set a power fit to this graph, and the result is shown below.

Conclusion
We determined that, generally speaking, the gravity in each Mario game, as game hardware has increased, is getting closer to the true value of gravity on earth of 9.8 m/s². However, gravity, even on the newest consoles, is still extreme. According to Wikipedia, a typical person can withstand 5 g before losing consciousness, and all but the very latest of Mario games have gravity greater than this. Also, with gravity that great, it is a wonder Mario can perform such feats as leaping almost 5 times his own body height!

Sources of Error
The primary source of error in this experiment would be the assumption that Mario is 5 feet tall, and that his height stays constant in each game. In most Mario games, he can become bigger by consuming mushrooms or other powerup objects, and the 5 foot height may be referring to this state. Also, in the 3D Mario games, the camera angle was always angled down, so when measuring the height of Mario and the ledge, this angle caused the measured distance to be different than the actual distance.

Celebrities and Artists of the Excretory System

Actors/Directors
Kidney Pollack
Sylverster Aldosterone
Nora Nephron (no relation to Zac Nephron)
Sarah Michelle Glomerular
Robert Uric
Sharon (Renal Artery) Stenosis

Musicians
Pissy Elliot
Don “Loop of” Henle
Filtrate Collins
Micturate Jagger
Renin DMC
Urethra Franklin

Authors
Bladder-mir Nabokov
Michael Creatinine
Harper Pee
ADH Lawrence

In which we learn that true love could be where the 3rd or 4th cousin is…

ABSTRACT:
Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins. Owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of Icelanders, and the observation of highly significant differences in the fertility of couples separated by very fine intervals of kinship, we conclude that this association is likely to have a biological basis.

In which we learn that a trip to the pharmacy is not always necessary.

TEXT:
Nasal congestion is defined by the blockage of the nasal passages usually due to membranes lining the nose becoming swollen from inflamed blood vessels [1]. This occurs when the nasal blood vessels expand in response to exercise, cold air, spicy food, even stress. Common causes of nasal congestion are common cold, influenza, Hay fever and chronic sinusitis [1], [2] and [3]. It impairs the natural human drive for nasal breathing and leads to lower self-esteem and to impaired quality of life [1]. There is a host of conservative treatments, including decongestant pharmacotherapy, antiallergy measures, nasal dilation devices and several surgical procedures [1] and [2], but it is still a symptom that is difficult to treat.

Decongestants are the main pharmacologic agents for the treatment of nasal congestion and act by stimulating α-adrenergic sympathetic nervous system. This leads to vasoconstriction of the nasal blood vessels and subsequent alleviation of the symptoms. However, oral or topical use of decongestants can have adverse effects of sympathetic stimulation such as hypertension. Furthermore, if used for more than two or three days, they can actually make congestion worse [4] and [5].

Herein, the author would like to provide a new treatment strategy for the treatment of nasal congestion in mature men. It is known that sexual arousal in men is followed by penile erection and subsequent ejaculation. Ejaculation has two phases: emission and ejaculation proper. The emission phase of the ejaculatory reflex is under control of the sympathetic nervous system, while the ejaculatory phase is under control of a spinal reflex at the level of the spinal nerves S2-4 via the pudendal nerve. A refractory period succeeds the ejaculation, in which the sympathetic nervous system counteracts the effects of the parasympathetic nervous system [6] and [7]. As it is seen, ejaculation can be used as a potential treatment of nasal congestion because its emission phase provides a sympathetic stimulation and subsequent vasoconstriction and nasal decongestion. Also, the refractory period serves as a sympathetic reservoir and maintains the decongestive state for a considerable while. This method does not wish to have the adverse effects of pharmaceutical decongestants because it is a physiologic stimulation of the sympathetic system in the body. According to the current idea, sexual intercourse or masturbation is proposed in the cases of nasal congestion in mature men. It can be done time-to-time to alleviate the congestion and the patient can adjust the number of intercourses or masturbations depending on the severity of the symptoms. This hypothesis suggests a unique treatment of nasal congestion because it uses a physiological mechanism of the human body for encountering the problem.

(Also available as a pdf file)

Large woody debris plays and important role in stream habitat for fish, macroinvertebrates and thinking spots for “half-pint” from Little House on the Prairie and Pooh (Milne 1948). Little data exists monitoring the actual accumulation of debris, including whole trees, on the forest floor (Robison and Beschta 1990). For centuries, humanity has pondered the question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound”(Cockburn 1988).

Many researchers have attempted to solve such philosophical debates but have been proven unsuccessful. An attempt to determine why the chicken crossed the road showed inconclusive data and resulted in the loss of all test subjects due to traffic fatalities (Hoyman 2001, Larsen 1987). In urban river engineering studies, various gods were employed to install large rip-rap but no upper limit of rock size was found (Robinson 1989). Others have attempted to answer the question, can a five-ounce bird carry a one-pound coconut (Nigget 932)?

No existing data could be found to support the sound of falling debris in forests. Objects or situations may be essentially silent, but they could still be construed as having made a sound (Simon and Garfunkel 1965). We postulated that there is actually a compression of sound waves that could be detected in the absence of a human subject. As part of a broad attempt at getting paid for not doing any real work, this study used up a lot of grant money to test the hypothesis. While we were out there, we decided to study the language habits of all of the people who kept coming up to us and bothering us by asking “what are you (yooz) guys doin’”.

Methods

Large woody debris accumulation events or “falling trees” were recorded using some bitchin recording equipment that our undergraduate student had in his basement. Man, that dude can rock. He was playing a kick-ass guitar like Van Halen and Satriani and shit. Awesome! Video footage was collected with a Hitachi Z900 video camera and audio data was collected using a Shure SM58 microphone and three Shure DM 25 directional microphones with parabolic collector dishes. Recordings were made on a Tascam 850 8-track digital recorder and Yamaha 16-channel mixing board. Pot-smoking undergraduate assistants were employed for almost no money to monitor the equipment from a tricked out Chevy van outside the National forest boundary. Decibel tests were made just outside the van to make sure they couldn’t hear any wood falling.

Video footage and audio footage were reviewed back in the “lab” and fallen trees were verified by personal observation and measurement.

Results

We collected over 20,000 hours of video/audio tape. Twenty incidences of large woody debris falling were recorded, with two entire trees falling. The remaining incidences were really large branches, which if you stood them upright, could pass for trees in most circles. In order to do proper statistical analysis, we made up some data and included that too.

Decibel levels were adjusted based on the distance of the incident from the microphone. Using the inverse square law and some other cool math equations, we transformed the data and have represented the decibel level, as it would sound to a person standing 20 feet from the impact point. We tried to remove the trend line from the graph but that goddamn Excel program wouldn’t let us do it. Anyway, each falling LWD event did show a positive decibel reading, and we found good correlation (R2=0.789) between LWD length and decibel level.

Data collection took place near the Chequamegon National Forest boundary. To analyze pronunciation of the word “Chequamegon”, (pronounced Shuh-wa-muh-gun), we recorded the answers of various participants and inferred their state of origin from license plate data. We treated the proper pronunciation as the original condition and the mispronounced word as the treatment condition. From verbal pronunciation, we recorded the approximate spelling of the mispronounced words using the Franklin phonetic method of English pronunciation. Jaccard’s Coefficient (Jaccard 1912), a qualitative community comparison index was used to examine differences in the syllables present.

No, that’s Jaccard, not Picard. Oh I know what you’re going to say, that the Next Generation is superior to the old in a technical sense, but they often rely on last second gadgetry to get out of situations, whereas Captain Kirk would just use intelligence or brute force. Sure, Picard is a better diplomat, but…

Analysis showed that the blood alcohol content (B.A.C.) of hunters and snowmobile riders was positively correlated with mispronunciation (R2=0.74, Figure 2). These data correlate inversely with local sheriff department data for mortality due to shooting, drowning or crashing into moose. Data from non-inebriated local residents showed nearly 100% proper pronunciation, so it was assumed that these individuals would know the proper pronunciation if sober.

Residents and non-residents were asked about their feelings regarding mispronunciation (Table 1). Minnesotans, who were mostly mountain-biking yuppies from Minneapolis, were generally horrified that they had mispronounced the word, and promised to remember to pronounce it properly the next time. Nearly all Illinois residents could care less and most told us to “fuck off” or “get bent” or asked if we were high.

We really don’t think anyone reads the results sections of these articles because they are tiresome, so in an effort to spice things up a bit, we’ve included the box scores of last weekend’s NHL action (Table 2).

If you really do read the results section then you obviously have too much time on your hands and need a social life. Here’s a clue, just read the abstract and the discussion, then move out of your mother’s house you frickin loser.

Discussion

In the discussion of falling trees and the sounds they make, it is important to define the term “sound”. We define sound as a compression or fluctuation of air molecule density and location that can be interpreted by a device that measures that compression or fluctuation. Sound levels were found to be inversely proportional to the distance from the microphone. It is indeed possible that although the sound is made, people may not hear it as decibel levels may be below the threshold of human hearing. Results show that in every instance, when large woody debris falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, it does indeed make a sound.

Our research did not answer those technical questions posed by Romm (1996) where he speculates; what if the tape player breaks?, what if its played backward?, what if the budget runs out and no one is there to listen? Romm also poses some philosophical debates such as, what if the tree is an Ent, and it trips looking for the Entwives? Or what if aliens hear it and they don’t have ‘ears’ in the same evolutionary sense as humans. This topic was not addressed in Havel (1998).

This information could be used to monitor the accumulation of large woody debris near streams and could serve as an ice-breaker at really nerdy parties. Yeah, that’s a good idea, why don’t you talk about science at a party. People will flock to you, really. Trust us.

Citations

Cockburn, B. 1988. If a tree falls; in Big Circumstance. Golden Mountain Music Corp. (SOCAN)

Havel, J.H. 1998. Growth of shitake mushrooms on dead logs in my parent’s woods. Bull. Shit. Mush. Soc. 17(2): 29-45.

Hoyman, T. 2001. Logic based decision making for pedestrian poultry crossings of county roads in Wisconsin. J. Am. Chick. Cross. 12:217-219.

Larsen, G.A. 1985. Bride of the Far Side. Andrews McMeel Publishing, New York.

Milne, A.A. 1924. Chapter 9 in Winnie the Pooh; in which Piglet is nearly surrounded by water. Methuen and Co., London.

Nigget, D.E.K. 932 A.D. Monty Python’s Holy Grail, Act One, Scene One. Python Productions, London, UK.

Robinson, P. 1989. Rip-rap placement by deities: Can god make rip-rap so large even he can’t lift it? The River Existentialist. 104(3): 200-209.

Robison and Beschta. 1990. Identifying trees in riparian areas that can provide coarse woody debris to streams. For. Sci. 36: 790-801

Romm, D.E. 1996. If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to write the back cover blurb… The Ethical Spectacle, March 1996.

Simon, P. and A. Garfunkel. 1965. The sounds of silence; in Wednesday Morning 3 am. A&M Records, London, UK.

Well, a few weeks later my curiosity got the best of me and I began to ponder the idea of using the beloved Cheeto Puff™ as a fire starter. I mentioned the idea to a couple of people I know here in Vancouver and was asked whether only Cheetos brand cheezies would suffice or if I thought that maybe our own Canadian brand of cheezie, Hawkins Cheezie™, would work as well. I decided that I must know the answer to both of these questions. First, can Cheetos Puffs™ and/or Hawkins Cheezies™ really double as fire starters? Second, if they do in fact burn which Cheezie takes the cake or the cheese in this case as a fire starter?

I promptly set out to purchase both brands of combustibles…I mean cheese snacks. I found both at my local grocery store. Upon my return home I equipped myself with matches a key component in this research and headed out to the concrete pad at the front steps of my apartment. I first opened the Cheetos Puffs™ and…ate only one, well OK two. I then lit a match and reluctantly put it to the next Cheeto out of the bag. At first nothing happened but as I held the match to the Cheetos Puff™ for a few seconds it began to slowly ignite and burn. Sure enough the Puff did pouf in a puff of smoke and flame. Next I opened the bag of Hawkins Cheezies™, I was sure the claim that our Canadian brand was made with only 100% real cheese would limit its potential as a comparable fire starter. Again I held a match to the Cheezie and sure enough it ignited and began to burn and then it began to burn brighter and bigger until a flame twice the size of the Cheezie itself was achieved. I began to wonder if I should have a fire extinguisher near by. I also began to wonder if my neighbours would think I had gone absolutely mad when they saw me burning Cheezies on my walkway. In the end our crunchy, all Canadian, real cheese contender burned brighter and bigger and longer than the American competitor, the Cheetos Puff™ (Figure 1).

So now the question is: Why do these beloved cheese snacks burn? A quick review of the product label and ingredient list reveals some interesting facts. Both snacks are made from corn. Yes, I know this was an exciting surprise for me as well and actually the Cheetos Puff™ is made from cornmeal enriched with such things as iron and B vitamins. Thoughts of health food began to run through my mind until I realized that they were talking about a deep fried, cornmeal paste entity that is similar to the coating on a corn dog. Yum! So of course the next ingredient in both cheese snack brands is vegetable oil. Eureka (well not really)! But at least, Houston, we have…ignition.

Now that explains why our beloved snacks burn. Oil saturated, log shaped, compressed (or puffed) cornmeal entity plus flame equals fire. However, one problem still remains. Why does the Canadian Cheese out compete the American Cheese in this war of fire starters? The answer lies in the fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics, or the study of energy.

Another look at the product labels (Figure 2) and few minor calculations show that in a single 50 gram bag of Hawkins Cheezies™ there are 22 of the little snacks per sack compared to 29 Cheetos Puff™ in the same 50 gram bag. Hence, a single Hawkins Cheezie™ is actually heavier and denser and than the Cheetos Puff™, so apparently mass and density matter when it comes to fire starters.

Here’s the why? A quick review of some Thermodynamics basics reveals that a single Hawkins Cheezie™ weighing in at 2.3grams on average has more potential energy or stored energy than a single Cheetos Puff™ which only weighs in at 1.7 grams on average. Once set on fire the conversion from potential energy into kinetic energy (or energy in motion which in this case is fire) translates in to a bigger bang for your cheese with the Canadian coming out on top. That’s the why of the longer burn. The brighter burn according to Fire Experts (ref) is the result of fat content which is the fire starter fuel or the flammable substance in the Cheezies. Even though one serving of Cheetos Puffs™ has 2 grams more fat than a similar size serving of the Hawkins Cheezies™, the Hawkins Cheezie™ still has more grams of fat, .62 grams, per individual ‘cornmeal entity’ than the Cheetos Puff™, which has .53 grams of fat.

Now at the risk of being a bit cheesy or corny if you prefer we can summarize our findings as such; the all Canadian Hawkins Cheezie™ beats the American contender Cheetos Puff™ in a rivalry to determine who is the best fire starter based on the fact that Cheezie for Cheezie the Canadian has more Potential Energy (stored energy) according to the Laws of Thermodynamics which translates into more Kinetic Energy (energy in motion) than the American.

So remember, if you go out in the woods tonight, bring along some Hawkins Cheezies™ as your fire starter. And hey they can double as a good wholesome fried cornmeal snack in case you get the munchies. Yummy!

In which we learn that microbes were created on Day 3, no wait – Day 4 – hang on a minute, Day 5?