Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Create Equation For a Perfect Handshake
Hugh Pickens writes "Discover Magazine reports that despite the average person shaking hands nearly 15,000 times in a lifetime, one in five (19 per cent) admit they hate the act of the handshake and are unsure how to do it properly, regularly making a handshake faux pas such as having sweaty palms, squeezing too hard or holding on too long while over half the population (56 per cent) say they have been on the receiving end of an unpleasant handshake experience in the past month alone. But help is at hand as scientists have developed a mathematical equation for the perfect handshake taking into account the twelve primary measures needed to convey respect and trust to the recipient. The research was performed at the behest of Chevrolet as part of a handshake training guide for its staff and is meant to offer peace of mind and reassurance to its customers. A full guide to the perfect handshake is available on Flickr."
Seeing as how this came out of Chevrolet, a GM division, it's good to see that they put all that federal bailout money to good use!
What irks the hell out of me is someone who grabs the hand too fast without getting skin-to-skin contact between each others' thumb-and-index webspace. I end up with some idiot who's got hold of my fingers only. Those are the clowns that get the do over and instructions on proper handshaking, usually punctuated with something like, "Slow down, idiot!"
This isn't the kind of thing you expect from Slashdot, or Slashdot submitters/readers.
It's a PR stunt, but it's filed under 'science'.
It's also linking to a third party blog, 11 days after it was news.
Press release containing contact info: http://media.gm.com/content/media/gb/en/news/news_detail.brand_chevrolet.html/content/Pages/news/gb/en/2010/CHEVROLET/07_15_perfect_hand_shake
Original (as far as I know) blog entry mentioning it: http://jalopnik.com/5588201/this-is-the-formula-for-the-perfect-handshake
Contact email on the press release is chevrolet@mischiefpr.com.
If a Slashdot contributor gets taken for a line with that one, and editorial staff allows it through as a Science (not Idle) story, while nobody bothers to do even the slightest amount of digging, it might be high time to revise standards and practices, since Slashdot is starting to descend to a less-timely, less-informed, more gullible version of reddit.
I remember when Slashdot was THE place for techie/geeky news, and the comments were considerably more often than not insightful. Nowadays, people seem happier to quibble over minor semantics in an article while missing the big picture. I'm not trying to put Slashdot, one of my favorite sites, down but I'd rather it retain or improve level of quality, not slip toward the same plateau as Slashdot Parody Sites[tm].
If you're going to accept PR advertisements, at least put them in the ad box in the corner and accept payment, so people can opt out.
"A Goddess rarely smiles for she is forced by others to be an island unto herself." - Zephiris