Come around children, and let me tell you about the real horror of Friday the 13th. This does not involve a masked Jason, a screaming Jamie Lee Curtis, or any of the Fox pubescent girls screaming their heads off. This story is true - and it involves the tenants of this very buildling. Unknowingly, all you are taking part in an abnormal experiment whose cruelty is immeasurable, and whose measurements will only be known in a hundred years.

A few decades ago, scientists came up with a theory that it is possible to transfer intelligence through unusual means. They began performing experiments to prove this theory and came up with some fascinating results. Flatworms were trained to solve a simple maze, at end of which was some food. After the worms got very good at choosing which way to go in the maze, they were chopped up into tiny little worm morsels, salted, and fed to a new generation of worms who had never seen a maze in their life. Amazingly enough, this new generation of worms learned how to get through the maze in much less time than their meals, er, I mean, predecessors.

Research in this area seemed to come to an abrupt halt in the 70s, but it was actually continued in deep secrecy. The implications of the initial experiments were too important to ignore: eating smart animals makes you smarter. You don't think that these sort of experiments go on in this very building? Let me ask you a few thought-provoking questions then:

- Do you know some graduate students that seemed to have disappeared from the building, purportedly getting a fancy piece of paper called a "degree"?

I thought so.

- Go to your adviser's office. Does he or she have a copy of "Numerical Recipes"?

Hmmm. You can't cook numbers, but you can sure cook graduate students.

- Estimate the number of meals served at the trucks. Are there really that many chickens on this planet?

I didn't think so.

Beware people, beware. Our only recourse is to make ourselves more stupid. Only then will the experiments stop. This, of course, can easily be done by coming to this week's

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7th floor playroom February 13, 1998 5:30pm