Longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons (2005) | Hacker News Reader

Longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons (2005)

bmj.com

65 pointsdddddaviddddd19 comments

This is an article from the BMJ Christmas issue. https://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/article-type...:

“We publish a special two-week issue of The BMJ over Christmas and New Year. We are pleased to consider all kinds of articles, including reports of original research, for this issue.

The soul of the Christmas issue is originality. We don’t want to publish anything that resembles anything we’ve published before. While we welcome light-hearted fare and satire, we do not publish spoofs, hoaxes, or fabricated studies.”

See https://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6679 for examples.

A few times, I almost emptied some scraps on my plate together with a spoon or a fork directly into a rubbish bin. Since observing that, I have always wondered how many other spoons I have inadvertently thrown over the years.

I lose forks and knifes, not spoons.

I also used to eat a lot of pizzas. Once I went to throw away used cartons and I found forks&knives I left inside and forgot about it. That explains it. I wonder how many I threw away over the years.

Same as me but with small garden hand tools. I've lost several over the years in my reasonably large garden. Nowadays I prefer to buy ones that have bright orange or red handles, or similar.

That's all fine and good... but where have all the good forks gone? I bought 20 nice Oneida® stainless steel forks, brand new.... and I'm now down to the one I keep in private reserve. This in a household of 3 people, and 2 cats.

Sure, the weird old forks with 3 tines, or the tiny old shrimp forks?? never disappear... just the good ones.

Are the cats hiding the good forks?

I know your comment is light-hearted, and you're probably aware of the below, but nevertheless....

Presumably you use the good forks more often than the weird old forks? So each good fork's exposure to 'times when it might be lost' - being used for dinner, cooking, etc. is greater (perhaps once every two to three days) than a weird fork which you may only use once a month or less (when other forks are exhausted, or you need a tiny shrimp fork!)

Hmm, maybe dedicated "measuring out" spoons should be chained to their corresponding container, so at least you can use them for measuring out sugar and coffee. For stirring you can always use other utensils in a pinch.

that was a funny read... but the thing that made me spit tea was:

>Teaspoon displacement and loss leads to the use of forks, knives, and staplers to measure out coffee and sugar, inevitably causing a reduction in employee satisfaction

How on earth does one measure granulated tea/coffee etc with a fork or a STAPLER?!?

I'm assuming for the fork, people use the handle. And for the stapler, they can open it and use the lower section as a makeshift spoon. Either way, since there's not much of a 'bowl' in any of those, one can only get a few grains of sugar out each time. As a person who's done this before with a fork, I can tell you it's extremely frustrating and time consuming (and that's why it's frustrating!)

Yup. 2 forkhandles-worth ~ 1 teaspoon for me.

No, I wanted four candles.

Carefully

Bottom of the lower jaw is often concave. Would use one, in a pinch.

Come civilizational collapse, we will all be measuring out ... something ... with staplers. If we're lucky. Invest in renewables!

I fear the spring in the stapler won’t be strong enough, but try this: open stapler, remove staples, pour in ground coffee, press tight, close stapler.

Now, every press of the stapler will dispense one staple-size of coffee. Only 100+ presses for a cup of coffee :-)

For sugar, pour in a saturated sugar solution and let it dry.

You could also 3D-print sugar staples with saturated sugar water. That might have a slightly better chance of working.

Best paper I’ve read in a month, even before they quoted Douglas Adams.

> Ethical approval Our study was approved by the director of the Burnet Institute.

For research on humans, you need to use the institutional research board. It’s unethical to use approval from a director, as they have a direct conflict of interest in this crucial research being performed.

My parents hosted a wedding reception at their house. After the reception, my aunt insisted on digging through all the trash. We let her have her fun. She triumphantly returned an hour later with a dozen pieces of my moms silverware. People are careless.

When all the cups and glasses have disappeared in our house, usually a trip via the teenagers bedrooms rounds up the missing vessels.

We don't have strong teaspoon attrition though - maybe because the teenagers don't drink tea or coffee? Who knows...

Butter knives seem to stay forever, since no one really uses them.

Then spoons.

Forks being the most useful, seem to disappear the fastest.

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