A few friends and I were discussing the correlation between stupidity and bleached-blonde hair a while back, and I though that this might get a chuckle out of the more academic types out there. I did acquire the permission of the original author of the "paper" before sending it off to you.

From: IN%"[email protected]" "Prof. Curtis Eberwein"
To: IN%"[email protected]"
Subj: RE: hey you

I think I have an answer for your deep research question. We begin by assuming (or more appropriately we take as an axiom) that dumbness, d, is an increasing function of fake blondness, fb. That is, d=F(fb). This could be caused by peroxide fumes, excessive poofing--known in the literature as EP--or brain damage resulting from too many stupid come-on lines (ToMSCOLs). All we say at this point is that F is strictly increasing and twice (or maybe even thrice) differentiable.

On the other hand--or should we say scalp--dumbness may have a causal effect on fake blondness, viz. individuals who possess high values of dumbness may be more prone to undertake fake blondness. We call this the propensity to fake blondness. That is fb=G(d) where G is an increasing function satisfying the same conditions as F, possibly a few more too. A solution then requires that both d=F(fb) and fb=G(d) simultaneously. That is d=F(G(d)) or equivilently fb=G(F(fb)). As is well known, the Some-Russian-Guy-with-a-Really-Long-Name Theorem implies that a F(G()) and G(F()) will have fixed points if we can restrict attention to compact sets (ones that hold lipstick, eye shadow, etc.). These are closed and bounded sets. Here we have a difficulty because, while dumbness may be closed, we all know that it is unbounded--no matter how dumb people get, they can always get dumber. Fortunately, we can get out of this difficulty by transforming fake blondness to the Revlon Topology. This makes fake blondness fall in a compact set by having the makeup stored in the hair. This assures us that a Fake Blondness Equilibrium (FBE) exists.

Fortuantely, our theory has absolutely no predictions or empirical content, so nobody can prove us wrong.

To complete the paper, we have a few closing remarks. First, further research can be applied in many areas. For example, does excessive use of perfume cause dumbness through olfactory attrition or does dumbness just cause excessive use of perfume? Finally, since this paper is written by a single person to whom does "we" refer anyway? We will take up these important and interesting issues in future research since doing it here would make for a smaller vita.

Curtis J. Eberwein
Somewhere North of Plattsburgh
Sometime in the 20th Century

Responding to the research on Fake Blondes posted here earlier, a co-worker, Don Reeck, adds:

Gee, kind of a restrictive treatise on the FB phenomonon. It totally fails to include causative effects outside of the experimental scope of his theory. For example, it has already been proven (refer to the Journal of TV Advertising, circa 1967 or the Journal of Irreproduceable Results, 1984) that one characteristic of the larger set B (blondes) is that they have More Fun. (MF is proportional to B, with the limit being reached when B approaches TB, or Totally Blonde)

However, MF may itself depend on another factor, MTL, or Male Testosterone Level. As MTL increases, the attraction for B or FB increases. In other words, in high testosterone cases, the tendency to seek out blondes wishing to have more fun increases. ((author's note: this is where the logic gets a little fuzzy, as it will in any biological experiment, and traditional mathematics fails to adequately model the phenomonon) The connection is therefore obvious, it is really the MTL factor that tends to dominate the energy, or forcing, function in this reaction. It should be obvious that FB would not occur by itself; ie. there is no forcing function in either of the proposed equations ( d=F(b), or fb=G(d) ). In other words, there is no concentration gradient in d=F(b) that would skew the results towards B in preference to R or Bl or any other possible outcome.

One obvious result of this research is that the original work must be put to the test. Does the MF equation really hold? If it does, then the next questions would logically be as follow: Why does MTL cause the phenomonon known as "Gentlemen prefer blondes"? Does MF correlate more strongly with the condition of the F-factor (female being blonde) or the M-factor (high MTL men prefer blondes) or even the A-factor (advertising can make us believe really stupid things). This, then, brings us full circle to again consider the relationship of D (dumbness) as it relates to the three factors (M,F,A) and to the original postulate, d=F(fb). My hypothesis is that the d-factor most strongly affects, or is affected by, male testosterone level. In fact, empirical evidence strongly suggests that d and MTL show an exponential correlation; ie. dumbness increases exponentially as MTL increases. This evidence is widely available in such respected Journals as Inside Sports, Sport Magazine, Boxing Today, and Sports Illustrated as well as in television documentaries such as Monday Night Football, to name but a few.

Left unexplored in this treatise is the question of why females are attracted to, and wish to please, men with high MTL. If this question can be answered, we will be a long way towards explaining the fb syndrome.