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Proof Is In: Kansas Is Flatter Than A Pancake
plotdot writes "When motorists drive across Kansas with its expansive, fertile fields of grain, they most often observe that the state is flat as a pancake. Now, three scientists have proved that observation wrong. The May/June issue of Annals of Improbable Research
(AIR) carries a story by Mark Fonstad, William Pugatch, and Brandon Vogt proving that Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake."
Pancake sales in Kansas increase by 20% because the Citizens of Kansas now feel in some way superior to the pancakes!
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Its not exactly hilly like a costal California city might be, but most of it isn't too flat. I live in the Kansas City area; there's plenty of hills around. And when I'm not in KC I'm attending school at KSU, where it is also not flat. The region is called the Flint Hills. Not the Flint Plains, nor the Flint Flatter-than-Pancakes. Hills.
Of course, do be warned, I've never lived on a pancake, so my anecdotal evidence might be flawed =).
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"But then again that's as useful as complaining it's not news for nerds, stuff that matters."
Who but a nerd would correct somebody about the flatness of Kansas when compared to a fluffy brekfast food?
Declaring kansas flatter than a pancake based upon a comparison to ONE pancake hardly seems fair. A mean value for the flatness of a pancake should have been derived from multiple pancakes and a standard deviation value given. Besides, you get hash browns and a side of variable meat with the 3-pancake special at IHOP.
to which my friend calmly replied -> I'm reminded of a scene in one of Donald Westlakes weirder caper novels. Two guys are travelling through a really flat section of Oklahoma. One is a stone killer with no sense of humor or irony. They reach a place where the land is so flat and featureless, you can't even see the horizon. The killer turns to the other guy and says, "You know, before the white man came, there was absolutely nothing here!"
One of my friends was hitch-hiking across Kansas/Oklahoma when a really weird guy picked him up. They drove for miles and miles without the guy saying anything or even looking at him. Finally he said in a low, slow voice, with his eyes fixed steadily on the road ahead -
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With a statement like that, nothing else needs to be said.
You need less maple syrup to cover kansas than the equivilent sized pancake????
As the title says...And Still No Cure for Cancer.
This research is faulty in many ways. They did not account for anisotropy is the samples (i.e. different flatness in different directions) and they fail to mention if the pancake was from the bottom or the top of the stack. Also, I don't think a confocal microscope is the best tool- they probably could have gotten better results with a stylus or an AFM (Atomic Food Microscopy) instrument. With an AFM they could have also nano-indented the sample to hold more syrup. The pancake measurement seems under-sampled from both the digital image processing and the confocal measurements, and it was probably stale well before they finished. I think that this report would have a 'rougher' time in any peer-reviewed journal.
P.S. Their next research- seeing if the humid summer air is really thicker (more viscous?) than the leftover maple syrup...
See the photo here. (No joke.)