I hope you're ready for this one. In 1999, 4498 adults participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. For the last 6 years researchers have been analyzing the results. Last month at the American Heart Association's annual conference, these results were finally made public. Shocking? You decide.

1. People who work full-time have less discretionary time than part-time workers.

2. People with more discretionary time are more likely to use some for exercise

3. People who use their discretionary time to watch TV or play video games are less physically fit than people who use their time exercising.

That's it. I'm not kidding. 6 years of research costing God knows how may million and millions of dollars and that's all they could come up with. Over the years I have seen many of these "reasearch, analyze and report on the fucking obvious" type of studies. But this one wins hands down.

Here is an actual quote from the lead researcher Meghan Warner. Please try to remember that somone has spent thousands of dollars on her education, not to mention whatever her current salary is:

"People who work full time and people who work part time have different amounts of discretionary time. Among full-time workers, people who watch more TV spend more time surfing the web and playing video games (and) exercise less than people who don't."

Wow Meghan. Your folks must be real proud.

The best part of all of this is that my email is a summary of a three column, quarter page article in today's Courier-Joural under the news-worthy headline : "Full-time Workers Exercise Less". Yes, there is like 15 paragraphs of wasted paper endlessly discussing this sudy. There is also a helpful drawing of businessmen walking on a clock to illustrate the story.

On the other hand, the story just below it is headlined "Tiny corkscrew is beneficial to stroke victims."

I'd like to think it's so they can still open the wine after losing the use of one of their arms, but somehow I doubt it. Oh, no, just as I thought. It's about a tiny medical device that unplugs a vein by pulling a bloodclot out just like a cork.

Come to think of it, almost anyone could use a one-arm corkscrew. What if the wineglass is in your other hand, or some brie on a cracker? Or the steering wheel? I think someone could make a fortune by inventing a tiny corkscrew that you can use with one hand.