Mine is Bigger Than Yours 5/121/05
According to a recent study, the myth that Chinese men have smaller genitals is just that - a myth. Of course, the study was conducted in Hong Kong.
I've got a feeling the results of this study would have been kept quiet if the Chinese hadn't measured up.
"How's it coming with that genital study?"
"Didn't work out. Yeah, nothing conclusive."
"Why are you running out of the room?"
Of course, they'd say that all in Chinese.
Anyway, the study isn't what got me. What got me is that it took a team of scientists five months to measure 148 volunteers. All of the volunteers were measured flaccid, so it's not like they needed any special preparation. Let's say it took five minutes to measure each guy, and they measure each one five times just to be sure. With one scientist, it'd take five 12-hour work days. With a team of scientists, you could do it all in a day. But it took five months. Maybe one guy kept watching Baywatch before he went in, throwing the measurements off. (After all, the show is very popular in other countries).
At the end of the study, the scientists were able to compare their results to similar studies done in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Israel, The Phillipines, and America. And then the question becomes, what the heck are we spending our money on?
There have been tons of studies about how teenagers are now using prescription drugs to "get high." Which is a great way to spend our money, instead of simply looking around at any high school or college in America. Then again, the people looking are so out of touch they still talk about drugs with phrases like "get high." (Incidentally, I'm not a chicken, but you're a turkey).
We study things like the sweatiest city in America, that better weather and the ability to attract people with money increases tourism, and how watching golf can improve your golf swing. Incidentally, the sweatiest city is El Paso. The people who studied that probably took their money and are now touring the country playing golf in nice weather.
Studies seem to come in three forms: useful, obvious, and who really cares? Perhaps the residents of El Paso take a certain pride knowing that they are sweatier than Milwaukee, but I'd rather we spend that money studying how to stop us from spending so much on studies.
Of course nice weather increases tourism. But it took a team of researchers at Michigan State University to make it official. Rumor has it they asked a few of their friends if they wanted to go out on a rainy day, and their friends replied, "nah." But it took another twelve months to analyze the data.
And watching professional golfers would most certainly help people get better at golf. That's what happens when you watch professionals do something - you pick up tips on how to do it yourself. I'm glad that a student and professor at the University of Western Ontario teamed up for the results of this one. The student says he got better at conducting useless studies by watching the professor in action, but I won't know for sure until I commission a study.
Knowledge is good, and we should want to know the answer to every question. But there are better and more pressing questions. Ones that will produce more relevant answers than "El Paso."
Maybe the size of male genitalia is more important to the Chinese way of life than I am assuming. Or maybe not, considering there's a limit on children over there. But I believe that the results will change nothing. People will still make hacky jokes based on pre-conceived racist concepts. I don't picture someone interrupting such a joke to say, "You're wrong! There was this study..."
As an aside, the studies list Italians as the largest of those countries, and men from the Philippines as the smallest and thus most likely to buy sports cars. A follow-up study suggests that knowing that the men in the Philippines have slightly smaller genitals than everyone else could really hurt tourism.
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