Wednesday, May 07, 2008

The fresh scent of a new posting

Today is, in all likelihood, the last day I will ever get to waste the Biostat department's money by blogging during the office hours they pay me to hold.

Please observe a moment of silence for this sad event.

I know, I know, it's a tough job, but someone has to do it. But enough about me, let's talk theory already.

Postulate #16: Athletes, in general, will always be sucky role models.
Even the casual observer can probably think of several instances of professional athletes exhibiting criminal behavior. I'll name a few: OJ, the 2005 Vikings cruise of debauchery on Lake Minnetonka, Michael Vick, Brett Myers' domestic abuse fiasco, Rae Carruth getting convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. Headlines like these happen a lot. The obvious factor that people blame is background or socioeconomic status as adolescents, but I think that another more important factor confounds the relationship between pro athletes and violence. That factor is testosterone levels. Increased testosterone levels are highly correlated with aggressive behavior, but lo, they are also highly correlated with increased muscle mass. Therefore, in selecting for outcomes associated with higher muscle mass, like pretty much every professional sport does, you are forming a much more concentrated population of conviction-prone people. But what are we going to do, not care about how well an athlete performs on the field in order to have a more socially beneficial pool of heroes for kids? That would be ridiculous too.

Postulate #17: Having a rear spoiler on a car will lead to a significantly reduced lifespan of the car's transmission.
The theory in this case is that since the rear spoiler is functionally useless on a front-wheel drive car, the only people that would go out of their way to have one on their car are those people that just want to feel youthful or something because they have a fast and sporty ride. These are the same people that peel out as soon as the light turns green, and this undue acceleration will bring about the premature demise of the transmission over time.

I'm actually collecting data on this to analyze for my final project in my ANOVA and design class,
you can help me validate my theory by taking this ultra-easy 5-question survey that will take less than a minute of your time, please for the love of all that is good, click here.




1 comment:

Chris said...

u should blog a lil more about your last days as a bachelor... ;)

see u in a couple weeks!