by Dave Barry
Whatever topic you select, your project should be divided into three parts: (1) The Hypothesis; (2) The Part That Goes After the Hypothesis; and (3) The Conclusion (this should always be the same as the Hypothesis).
The hypothesis—which comes from the Greek words “hypot,” meaning “word,” and “hesis,” meaning “that I am looking up in the dictionary right now”—is defined as “an unproved theory, proposition, supposition, etc. tentatively accepted to explain certain facts.” For example, a good hypothesis for your science-fair project might be: “There is a lot of gravity around.” You could prove this via an experiment in which you pick up various household items such as underwear, small appliances, siblings, etc., and observe what happens when you let go of them. Your conclusion would of course be: “There is a lot of gravity around.” This would be dramatically illustrated, in your science-fair exhibit, by the fact that your Official Science-Fair Display Board was lying face-down on the floor.
If that project sounds like too much effort, you might consider duplicating the one that my wife swears she did in the seventh grade late on the night before the science fair. It was called “Waves,” and it consisted entirely of a baking pan filled with water, and a pencil.
“You swished the pencil around in the water, and it made waves,” my wife explained.
I asked her what scientific principle this project demonstrated, and, after thinking about it for a moment, she answered: “The movement of the water.”
Impossible though it may sound, I did a project in sixth grade that was even lamer than that. It was called “Phases of the Moon,” and it consisted of a small rubber ball that I had darkened half of by scribbling on it with a pen. You were supposed to rotate the ball, thus demonstrating scientifically that the phases of the Moon were caused by, I don’t know, ink.
The total elapsed time involved in conceiving of and constructing this project was maybe 10 minutes, of which at least nine were devoted to scribbling. But it still might have been a success had it not been for the fact that some of my fellow students found it amusing to snatch up the Moon and throw it, so that it became sort of a gypsy exhibit, traveling around the Harold C. Crittenden Junior High School gymnasium, landing in and becoming part of other projects, helping to demonstrate magnetism, photosynthesis, etc. So my project ended up being just a sign saying “PHASES OF THE MOON” sitting on an otherwise bare naked table, the scientific implication being that the Moon is a very moody celestial body that sometimes gets in a phase where it just takes off without telling anybody.
Of course if you want to get a good grade, you have to do a project that will impress your teachers. Here’s a proven winner:
“HYPOTHESIS—That (Name of Teacher) and (Name of Another Teacher) would prefer that I not distribute the photo I took of them when they were ‘chaperoning’ our class trip to Epcot Center and they ducked behind the cottage-cheese exhibit in the Amazing World Of Curds.”
Depending on the quality of your research, you might get more than a good grade from your teachers: You might get actual money! Yes, science truly can be rewarding. So why wait until the last minute to start your science-fair project? Why not get started immediately on exploring the amazing world of science, without which we would not have modern technology. Television, for example. Let’s turn it on right now.
The Tool Man
I was walking through my bedroom on a recent Sunday morning when I suddenly had a feeling that something was wrong. I’m not sure how I knew; perhaps it was a “sixth sense” I’ve developed after years of home ownership. Or perhaps it was the fact that there was water coming out of the ceiling.
But whatever tipped me off, I knew that I had a potentially serious problem, so I did not waste time. Moving swiftly but without panic, I went into the living room and read the entire sports section of the newspaper, thus giving the problem a chance to go away by itself. This is one of the four recommended methods for dealing with a household problem, the other three being (1) wrapping the problem with duct tape; (2) spraying the problem with a product called “WD-40”; and (3) selling the home, and then telling the new owners, “Hey, it never did that when WE owned it.”
Unfortunately, when I went back to the bedroom, the ceiling was still dripping. My wife, Michelle, suggested that maybe there was water sitting on the roof and leaking into the house, but I knew, as an experienced guy of the male gender, that she was wrong. I knew that the problem was the plumbing. It’s time that we homeowners accepted the fact that plumbing is a bad idea. Many historians believe that the primary reason why the Roman empire collapsed is that the Romans attempted to install plumbing in it. Suddenly, instead of being ruthless, all-conquering warriors, they became a bunch of guys scurrying around trying to repair leaking viaducts. (Tragically, the Romans did not have “WD-40.”)
So I knew that our plumbing had broken, and I also knew why it had chosen that particular morning: We had a houseguest. Plumbing can sense the arrival of a houseguest, and it often responds by leaking or causing toilets to erupt like porcelain volcanoes. And of course our plumbing had waited until Sunday, which meant that the plumber would not come for at least a day, which meant that it was up to me, as a male, to climb up into the attic and do the manly thing that men have had to do as long as men have been men: shine a flashlight around.
“Maybe you should check the roof first,” said Michelle. “Maybe there’s water sitting up there.”
She was fixated on this roof theory. Women can be like that. I had to explain to her, being as patient as possible considering that I had urgent guy tasks to perform, that she was being an idiot, because THE PROBLEM WAS THE PLUMBING.
So I got my flashlight and climbed up a ladder into the attic, where I was able, thanks to my experience as a homeowner and my natural mechanical sense, to get pieces of insulation deep into my nose. I was not, however, able to locate the source of the leak, because my attic turned out to be a cramped, dark, dirty, mysterious place with pipes and wires running all over the place, and off in the distance—just out of flashlight reach, but I could definitely sense its presence—a tarantula the size of the Reverend Jerry Falwell.
So I came briskly back down the ladder and told Michelle that, to stop the plumbing from leaking, I was going to turn off all the water to the house until the plumber came. Speaking in clipped, efficient, manly sentences, I instructed Michelle to fill containers with water and write a note for the houseguest telling him how to flush his toilet with a bucket.
“Before we do all that,” she said, “Maybe you should check the . . .”
“DON’T TELL ME TO CHECK THE ROOF!” I explained. “STOP TALKING ABOUT THE ROOF! THE PROBLEM IS THE PLUMBING!”
Sometimes a man has to put his manly foot down.
So while Michelle wrote toilet-flushing instructions for our houseguest and prepared a small apologetic basket of fruit and cookies, I tried to locate the valve that would shut off all the water. This was very difficult, because our plumbing system turns out to have approximately one valve for every water molecule. We could start a roadside tourist attraction (“TURN HERE FOR THE AMAZING VALVE FOREST”).
The fascinating thing is, not one of these valves controls the flow of water to our particular house. I shut a number of them off, and nothing happened. So if, on a recent Sunday, the water stopped flowing in your home or store or nuclear power plant, that was probably my fault.
Since I could not turn off our water, our ceiling continued to leak all Sunday night, so that by morning our bedroom carpet was a federally protected wetland habitat teeming with frogs, turtles, Mafia-hit victims, etc. So we were very happy when the plumber arrived. And if you are a student of literary foreshadowing, you know exactly what he did: He looked at the ceiling, went outside, got a ladder, climbed up on the roof, and found some water sitting up there. It couldn’t drain because there was a little place clogged by leaves. The plumber fixed it in maybe 10 seconds. I could have easily fixed it myself at any time in the previous 24 hours if I had
not been so busy repairing our plumbing. I wrote the check in a manly manner.
So far Michelle, showing great self-restraint, has said “I told you so” only about 450,000 times. Fine. She’s entitled. But don’t YOU start on me, OK? Not if you want me to turn your water back on.
The Toilet Police
If you call yourself an American, you need to know about a crucial issue that is now confronting the U.S. Congress (motto: “Remaining Firmly in Office Since 1798”). This is an issue that affects every American, regardless of race or gender or religion or briefs or boxers; this is an issue that is fundamental to the whole entire Cherished American Way of Life.
This issue is toilets.
I’m talking about the toilets now being manufactured for home use. They stink. Literally. You have to flush them two or three times to get the job done. It has become very embarrassing to be a guest at a party in a newer home, because if you need to use the toilet, you then have to lurk in the bathroom for what seems (to you) like several presidential administrations, flushing, checking, waiting, flushing, checking, while the other guests are whispering: “What is (your name) DOING in there? The laundry?”
I know this because I live in a home with three new toilets, and I estimate that I spend 23 percent of my waking hours flushing them. This is going on all over America, and it’s causing a serious loss in national productivity that could really hurt us as we try to compete in the global economy against nations such as Japan, where top commode scientists are developing super-efficient, totally automated household models so high-tech that they make the Space Shuttle look like a doorstop.
The weird thing is, the old American toilets flushed just fine. So why did we change? What force would cause an entire nation to do something so stupid? Here’s a hint: It’s the same force that from time to time gets a bee in its gigantic federal bonnet and decides to spend millions of dollars on some scheme to convert us all to the metric system, or give us all Swine Flu shots, or outlaw tricycles, or whatever. You guessed it! Our government!
What happened was, in 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which declared that, to save water, all U.S. consumer toilets would henceforth use 1.6 gallons of water per flush. That is WAY less water than was used by the older 3.5-gallon models—the toilets that made this nation great; the toilets that our Founding Fathers fought and died for—which are now prohibited for new installations. The public was not consulted about the toilet change, of course; the public has to go to work, so it never gets consulted about anything going on in Washington.
But it’s the public that has been stuck with these new toilets, which are saving water by requiring everybody to flush them enough times to drain Lake Erie on an hourly basis. The new toilets are so bad that there is now—I am not making this up—a black market in 3.5-gallon toilets. People are sneaking them into new homes, despite the fact that the Energy Policy and Conservation Act provides for—I am not making this up, either—a $2,500 fine for procuring and installing an illegal toilet.
I checked this out with my local plumber, who told me that people are always asking him for 3.5-gallon toilets, but he refuses to provide them, because of the law. The irony is that I live in Miami; you can buy drugs here simply by opening your front door and yelling: “Hey! I need some crack!”
Here’s another irony: The federal toilet law is administered by the U.S. Department of Energy. According to a Washington Post article sent in by many alert readers, the DOE recently had to close several men’s rooms in the Forrestall Building because—I am STILL not making this up—overpressurized air in the plumbing lines was causing urinals to explode. That’s correct: These people are operating the Urinals of Death, and they’re threatening to fine us if we procure working toilets.
The public—and this is why I love this nation—is not taking this sitting down. There has been a grass-roots campaign, led by commode activists, to change the toilet law, and a bill that would do that (H.R. 859—The Plumbing Standards Act) has been introduced in Congress by Representative Joe Knollenberg of Michigan. I talked to Representative Knollenberg’s press secretary, Frank Maisano, who told me that the public response has been very positive. But the bill has two strikes against it:
It makes sense.
People want it.
These are huge liabilities in Washington. The toilet bill will probably face lengthy hearings and organized opposition from paid lobbyists; for all we know it will get linked to Whitewater and wind up being investigated by up to four special prosecutors. So it may not be passed in your lifetime. But I urge you to do what you can. Write to your congresshumans, and tell them you support Representative Knollenberg’s bill. While you’re at it, tell them you’d like to see a constitutional amendment stating that if any federal agency has so much spare time that it’s regulating toilets, that agency will immediately be eliminated, and its buildings will be used for some activity that has some measurable public benefit, such as laser tag.
So come on, America! This is your chance to make a difference! Stand up to these morons! Join the movement!
Speaking of which, I have to go flush.
Smuggler’s Blues
I say it’s time our “leaders” in Washington stopped blathering about sex and started paying attention to the issues that really MATTER to this nation, such as whether we should declare war on Canada.
I say: yes. I base this position on a shocking document that I have obtained via a conduit that I will identify here, for reasons of confidentiality, only as “The U.S. Postal Service.” Here is a direct quote from this document:
STEP ONE: Before inflating Passionate Pam, be sure to smear plenty of . . .
Whoops! Wrong document! I meant to quote from an article in the July 1998 issue of Contractor magazine, which was sent to me by alert reader Steve Hill. The article, written by Rob Heselbarth, begins:
WINDSOR, ONTARIO—Americans are crossing the Canadian border near Detroit to purchase 3.5-gallon-per-flush toilets.
That is correct: Canada has become a major supplier of illegal 3.5-gallon toilets. These toilets were banned by Congress in 1992 under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which decreed that henceforth U.S. citizens had to buy 1.6-gallon toilets, which would conserve a lot of water if they worked, which unfortunately most of them don’t, the result being that U.S. citizens now spend more time flushing their toilets than on all other forms of exercise combined.
But that is not the point. The point is that 1.6-gallon toilets are the law of the land, and as the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter stated: “Just because Congress passes a stupid law, that is no excuse for awwwggh.” Unfortunately, Justice Frankfurter died at that point, but most legal scholars believe he intended to finish his sentence by saying “. . . that is no excuse for people to go up to Canada and buy working toilets.”
Yet that is exactly what is happening. The Contractor article quotes a Canadian plumbing wholesaler as follows: “We’ve definitely seen an increase in the sales of 3.5-gallon toilets. The people who buy them are mostly from the States. They tell us outright they’re Americans who came here to buy them.”
The article quotes officials of both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency as stating that it is illegal to bring these toilets into the U.S. But it also quotes a Customs Service official as saying that Customs makes NO EFFORT to confiscate the toilets. “As long as they tell us they have them,” the official said, “it makes no difference to us.”
In other words, people can simply waltz across our borders with illegal toilets supplied by ruthless Canadian toilet cartels headed by greed-crazed Canadian toilet kingpins who will stop at nothing to push their illicit wares on our vulnerable society. If you are a parent, consider this chilling scenario: Your child is attending a party, when another youngster—a “bad apple”—approaches and says, “Psst! Wanna try a 3.5-gallon Canadian toilet? All the other kids are doing it!” The next thing you know, your child is acting furtive and sn
eaking off to a “bad part of town” whenever nature calls. Your child is hooked.
Perhaps your parental reaction is: “My little Tommy would NEVER do a thing like that!” Well, let me ask you a couple of questions:
—Do you fully comprehend the power of peer pressure?
—Are you aware that your child is not named “Tommy”?
—Did you realize that “peer pressure” was a toilet-related pun?
If you answered “yes” or “no,” then maybe you are beginning to see why we, as a nation, need to send a clear message to the Canadians, in the form of either a sternly worded letter or a nuclear strike. Strong words, you say? Perhaps you will change your mind when you hear what ELSE Canada is exporting. I refer to an article sent in by alert reader Joe Kovanda from the June 1998 issue of Farm Times, reporting that Canada’s foreign trading partners were complaining that shipments of Canadian feed barley contained excessive amounts of—get ready—deer excrement. The headline for this article, which I am not making up, states:
DEER MANURE IN BARLEY MIFFS JAPANESE
So there is little doubt that the entire world, or at least Japanese barley purchasers, would stand with us if we put a stop to Canada’s criminal reign of terror; if we finally stood up to Canada and said:
“Listen, Maple Breath, we are FED UP with your efforts to DESTROY OUR WAY OF LIFE with your LARGE, WORKING TOILETS and your EXCESSIVE DEER DOOTS, which by the way would be an EXCELLENT NAME FOR A ROCK BAND.”
Some other advantages of declaring war on Canada are (1) It’s one of the few foreign nations that average U.S. citizens—even possibly the CIA—can locate on a map; and (2) Professional ice hockey would be canceled. There’s virtually no downside! So I urge you to call your elected representatives TODAY and tell them, in no uncertain terms: “I am strongly in favor, although don’t ask me of what.” Also let them know that we, the people, don’t want to hear another word about this Washington sex scandal. Or, if we HAVE to hear more, how about some new episodes? Speaking of which, I have to go; Passionate Pam has sprung a leak.