Revealed: your phone-cord tangler

The dignity of vegetables can no longer be ignored

By Nury Vittachi

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Yay for universities. Academics have solved one of the most puzzling mysteries of modern times: how telephone cables get knotted.

You know the scene. You walk into the living room, pick up the handset, and the entire body of the phone swings up with it, sending the jar of pencils flying and smashing a vase of wilting carnations onto your suede shoes.

Puzzled, you realize that the cable has been so intricately tangled that it would take a truck-full of boy scouts weeks to unravel it. How did it get like that?

For years, I suspected that acrobats had been sneaking into my home and chatting to their friends while practicing lengthy series of somersaults and contortions. (Given the size of my phone bill, this remains the most likely explanation.)

But an alternative theory was revealed earlier this month at America’s Harvard University, during the Ig Nobel Awards, a celebration of the world’s most obscure academic studies.

“Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String” was the title of a research project published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It showed that clumps of string, hair and cables could form complex knots with minimal human input. It was interesting, although I was disappointed that the scientists did not even consider the question of whether they, like me, had an infestation of acrobats.
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The event’s Peace Prize went to a paper called “The Dignity of Living Beings With Regard to Plants: Moral Consideration of Plants for Their Own Sake”. Plants have a legal right to live with dignity, it concluded. The prize was jointly presented to the writers, a Swiss group studying vegetal dignity, and the citizens of Switzerland for putting up with them.
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The Biology Prize went to a team of French scientists for discovering that fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than fleas that live on a cat. The only way I can see that “A Comparison of Jump Performances of the Dog Flea and the Cat Flea” will benefit mankind is that it sets a new low in obscurity and thus makes most other academic studies seem useful.
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The Nutrition Prize went to a joint Italian-British project which discovered that if you electronically enhance the sound of the crunch that a potato crisp makes, the eater will think a stale crisp is fresh. “The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips” could help snack manufacturers offload stale products. They merely have to attach sound-processing equipment to the heads of all snack-buyers.
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Asia was ably represented by Japan. The Prize for Cognitive Science went to “Intelligence: Maze-solving by an Amoeboid Organism”, a paper which revealed that slime moulds are surprisingly capable. Hey, here in Asia, we already know that slime moulds can become state leaders, prime ministers, top businessmen, chief justices, and so on. Just look around.
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Ad last but not least, the Literature Prize went to a paper from a London business school called “You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations”. This showed that people who thought colleagues were being obnoxious got annoyed.

 I reckon this paper did contribute something useful to the sum of human knowledge. It proved conclusively that people who give out research grants have an astonishingly low threshold of discrimination.

I suspect many are dignified vegetables.

Comments

[karuna]

after lengthy research done during office hours, we had discovered the reason for tangled phone cables and it was not "Spontaneous Knotting"

When the phone rings, you pick up the handset with your right hand.
And as you start talking, you may find that you need to write with your right hand or check the inner layers of your nostril.
You then move the phone from your right to your left hand.
This motion of transferring the phone from the right to left hand, creates one tangle to the telephone cable.
After a dozen phone conversation, the cable will be totally tangled.

now about those acrobats that sneak into your house when your wife is not around..hmmmmm...!!!!

[Lucie S]

i like karuna's theory about the handswapping which "rings" true (groan) but I can confirm that the acrobats theory is also true and works with the handswapping theory.
have you ever seen a child or teenager having a phone conversation? First he stands there. Then he lies on the floor. Then he turns around and watches tv while listening to whoever is talking. then he pulls the phone cord over to the sofa and sits on the sofa, upside down. After 10 minutes of having a conversation in which he changes position every 20 seconds, he puts the handset down. it is irrevocably (isthat the right word?) tangled. for a teenager, increase the 10 minutes to 1 hour.

[Vince A]

To add to the mystery, down here in Australia the phone cords twist in counterclockwise fashion.

[Rika]

Get cordless phones for crying out loud. You may not find them when needed, but at least anything made of glass located close to the phone stays in one piece. And when you want your kids to have a bit of exercise hide the phone and call them from your mobile.

[fardel]

Did you notice that when you get home, small objects are not where you left them?
Well !when you are out , the whole house is having a good time.
The phone being the only thing with a wire, it has to be tangled up

[vickna]

or in my country, dignified politicians... if there is such a thing..
=D

[expandable phone requirements]

Just a simple and proper handling of phone is a tip. Be careful in using your homephones.