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What Clown On a Unicycle?
R3d M3rcury writes "The New York Times has an article about walking and using a cellphone. 'The era of the mobile gadget is making mobility that much more perilous, particularly on crowded streets and in downtown areas where multiple multitaskers veer and swerve and walk to the beat of their own devices.' But the interesting part was an experiment run by Western Washington University this past fall. There was a student who knew how to ride a unicycle and a professor who had a clown suit. They dressed a student up as a clown and had him ride his unicycle around a popular campus square. Then they asked people, 'Did you see the Unicycling Clown?' 71% of the people walking in pairs said that they had. 51% of the people walking alone said that they had. But only 25% of the people talking on a cellphone said that they saw the unicycling clown. On the other hand, when asked 'Did you see anything unusual?' only about one person in three mentioned a unicycling clown. So maybe unicycling clowns aren't enough of a distraction at Western Washington University..."
Wazu is known for being quite the party campus, so it surprises me not that students don't notice things like unicycling clowns, though it's highly unlikely that the cause is cellphones and not booze. What would have interested me is if they had the unicycling clown cycle around campus while talking on his cellphone and seeing how long it took for him to swerve into a parked car. And since it would be a clown, it'd be a lot more funny.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
What the study (or the reporting of it) failed to note is whether clowns, unicycling, or unicycling clowns are common on the campus. For example if everyone at the campus wears a clowns suit or unicycles then one more unicycling clown isn't noticible.
Bad reporting. No donuts.
Who in his right mind would not interpret unicycling clown as extremely threatening?...
One that hath name thou can not otter
> ...a clown isn't that unusual for a college campus.
Right. The frats, for example, are populated entirely by clowns.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The summary may be right. A student that has a clown suit and knows how to ride a unicycle, may as well know how to ride a professor. Ok, perhaps there's a comma missing somewhere.
At an amusement park, a female friend returned from the restroom relating how a man entered while talking on his cellphone, looked her dead in the eye then turned to enter a stall, talking all the while.
Other women heard him talking and asked "is that a guy in here?" She responded, "Yeah, he doesn't realize he's in the 'ladies', don't worry about it."
He finished the call, finished in the stall, came out and his eyes widened when he saw all the women.
Ah, so the clown must have been a member of the Judean People's Front!
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
The submitter must have been talking on his cell phone when he wrote the summary.
-Dave