Full Circle Associates

Anjo has thrown down a challenge I can't resist to see if chocolate shows up as some sort of signature word in my blog. With a little kismet in the wind, John Smith sent me the link to this lovely research articlePlokta Issue 23 - An Appraisal of the Utility of a Chocolate Teapot. Too good to miss:

Simon Bradshaw, Amanda Baker, Bridget Bradshaw, John Bray, Gordon Brignal, David Clements & Del Cotter

THE CHOCOLATE teapot remains popular as a general comparative standard for the failure of an object to perform in accordance with its intended function, rivalled only by its close relative (in terms of composition, if not morphology), the chocolate fireguard. However, whilst numerous items are colloquially labelled as being ‘as useful as a chocolate teapot', there does not appear to be any objective standard for the usefulness, or indeed uselessness, of a chocolate teapot itself. In the absence of any British, European or ANSI Standard, Def Stan or MIL-STD for this important but poorly-specified reference item, it was decided to conduct an independent assessment of exactly how much use one of them was. As well as filling an significant gap in the standards literature, it was felt that this study would add to the body of work published in the Annals of Improbable Research on the scientific evaluation of common metaphors (Sandford, 1995; Paskevich and Shea, 1995; Dubik and Wood, 1995; collected in Abrahams, 1998).

So what does this have to do with online interaction? I could make something up. Well, it could also be a confessional about my research methods. I would have eaten the chocolate teapot and ruined the research. But my keen intuition would have reached the same conclusion and my chocolate-requiring-cells would be much happier.


chocolate