From Lose Friends Radio comes this ‘Believe it or not’ segment Number 7, called ‘Keep your eyes on the road’. You can read the transcript below, or listen to the original broadcast by clicking on the green play button:
Jonar_Nader_07_keep_your_eyes_on_the_road.mp3
Believe it or not, according to Jonar Nader, students contemplating a topic for their PhD are running out of options. They are scratching their heads trying to find a topic that is acceptable to their professors, and one that has not been thought of before.
A new service now exists to provide Doctoral students with ideas that are guaranteed to be original. For a fee of $5000 US dollars, students are provided with three topics. A UK student who parted with his money found the service useful. He is now undertaking his research into “why drivers find it necessary to look at their passengers when having a conversation with them”.
The study will delve into the psyche of drivers who cannot keep their eyes on the road. They put lives at risk when they turn their head to look at their passengers. Some drivers even try to hold a conversation with passengers in the back seat, terrifying everyone with their need to make eye-contact with passengers. Taxi drivers will also be included in the study.
Although this sounds like a strange subject to research, the student believes that it opens the way for a detailed investigation into why most people feel that eye-contact is a vital part of communication to the extent that many feel uncomfortable talking over the telephone. What was once thought to be ‘techno phobia’ might actually be an inability to communicate without eye contact. The doctoral student is also considering the benefits of attaching a dash-mounted mirror (similar to a rear-vision mirror) to enable the driver to keep an eye on the passenger without having to turn around. Web cams might also prove useful.
The other two suggestions for a thesis were “the body language of smokers”, and “why some people find those who bite their fingernails sexually attractive”!
Believe it… or not.
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