From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Thu Dec 17 1998 - 18:17:19 MST
[ headers dry-heavin' in the gutter ]
A contest was held for people to submit their theories on ANY subject.
Below are the winners:
4th RUNNER-UP (Subject: Probability Theory)
If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup
trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number
of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world's great
literary works in Braille.
3rd RUNNER-UP (Subject: Bio-Mechanics)
Why Yawning Is Contagious: You yawn to equalize the pressure on your
eardrums. This pressure change outside your eardrums unbalances other
people's ear pressures, so they then yawn to even it out.
2nd RUNNER-UP (Subject: Symbolic Logic)
Communist China is technologically underdeveloped because they have no
alphabet and therefore cannot use acronyms to communicate technical
ideas at a faster rate.
1st RUNNER-UP (Subject: Newtonian Mechanics)
The earth may spin faster on its axis due to deforestation. Just as a
figure skater's rate of spin increases when the arms are brought in close to
the body, the cutting of tall trees may cause our planet to spin dangerously
fast.
HONORABLE MENTION (Subject: Linguistics)
The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If
omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks his
cah,"the lost R's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and
invest in "erl" wells.
GRAND PRIZE WINNER (Subject: Perpetual Motion)
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is
dropped, it always lands buttered side down. It was proposed to strap
giant slabs of hot buttered toast to the back of a hundred tethered cats;the
two opposing forces will cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the
ground. Using the giant buttered toast/cat array, a high-speed monorail
could easily link New York with Chicago.
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