Ooooh hallo dear English speaking-thinking-reading
visitor, welcome back to me @sciencemug, the blog that talks about science, the
subterranean war penguins fight to overcome bunnies and become the new official
Easter pets, and the pressing issue of carob addiction among the Santa’s
reindeers.
Aaaand that does all of this in Eng?ish, a language
that is to real English what Alien vs
Predator was to a “non-commercial art driven only project”, “the soup of
the day” to something one orders lightheartedly at the restaurant after having
seen Fight club, aaaand homeopathy to something that actually work.
Sooo, there’re Dr. Donath and these five other
scientists of the University of Basel who do an experiment to test the
probability Santa Claus has to trip and fall and injury himself while doing his
job on Xmas Eve.
The researchers recruit seventeen 20-40 years old,
fit, healthy males for their experiment. A bunch of these guys is dressed up
with Santa’s garb and handed up with a 20 kilograms [pick the joke about the metric-system AKA SI that you
prefer and say it outloud three times in a row in front of a splintered mirror,
then spit on your left hand and make a 180 degree turn on yourself… And realize
that there’s no sense at all in it (I mean, I’m not talking of the SI, that’s
absolutely rational and functional, no, I was referring to the things I
mentioned after the SI)… Gee, are you always so gullible or is it just that
there’s a sensible lack of oxygen in your brain since your stomach is sucking
most of the blood given you’re still digesting all the food you've gulped down
during the holidays?] heavy sack. This is the Santa Group (SG). The other guys are in the Non
Santa Group (NSG) and, as you can imagine, they dress normally and carry no
sack.
All the volunteers take three
tests, two to check their gait (a walk along a short path and a brief session
on a treadmill), and one to monitor their sway (a short stand on a plate
connected with sensors). The volunteers take all tests barefoot (in order to
exclude anything that can alter their responses during the tests. Or, maybe,
but it’s just a guess, ‘cause Donath et al’s initial idea, before it were sunk
by the lack of funds, was to couple their experiment with that of a group of
Lapp endocrinologists interested in determining the amount of sweat - and
therefore the intensity of the stink - produced by Santa’s feet on Xmas Eve and
to set, like that, the level of biohazard he represents for the children of the
world exposed to high doses of his “residuals” on Xmas early morning SM’s Note).
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| I S.W.A.Y. (by sciencemug) |
Moreover, the Donath’s volunteers go for the tests both while focusing just on them, and while doing at the same time also a
