Scientists all over the known universe have been surveying Review readers and staff alike to try and comprehend what exactly it is that manages to hold together such a varied, unorganized, sleep-deprived, crazy, smelly, electric, sleep-deprived, scrappy, international, diverse — did I mention sleep-deprived? — group of people. The recent short poll consisting of 1,639 questions issued by the Branch for Scientific Review of the Universal Agency for the Evaluation, Justification and Resolution of All Known Questions and Concerns within the Borders of the Milky Way Galaxy and Possibly Beyond received great acclaim. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the poll was conducted in Standard Galactic by statisticians conforming to the rulebook of the Branch for Scientific Review (UAEJRAKQCBMWGPB), responses from anyone who actually might ever have read or worked for the Review were limited. Apparently Oberlin town residents refused to open their doors to the six-eared, purple-skinned vacuum salesmen. Students living in Harkness simply let the men inside and fed them excellent vegan food while talking to them about the problems of those unable to afford vacuum cleaners. And Review staff members just thought that the Grape was playing some sort of joke. Some might assume that the results of the survey would, therefore, be inconclusive.

However, a few scientists from the Division of Psychic and Telepathic Communication across the Universe (subsection of the BSR of the UAEJRAKQCBMWGPB) were able to read the brain waves of sleeping Oberlin residents and come to some very significant conclusions. They published a report outlining their findings, also written in Standard Galatic. A dead sexy Review staff member was able to decode the language using an ingenious computer program specifically designed for the project. He claimed that he had spent the past five years developing it because “he knew they were coming.” With his help, we were able to determine that the scientists have theorized the following:

1. Thursday nights and Friday mornings experience inversely proportionate levels of terribleness. In the event that on a Thursday night, the Commentary section has to fit 13 letters and a comic on one page, the fire alarm in Burton goes off and the building is evacuated for two hours and Safety and Security get called to chastise staff members, Friday morning’s proceedings will go with no problems whatsoever. However, if the computers function beautifully, all the Arts writers have turned in their articles and the layout is done by 10 p.m., and staff members feel a deep love for one another (although the probability of this has been calculated to be 100,000,000,046 to one), then Friday morning will descend into the eighth circle of Dante’s Inferno.

2. The cause of Spongiform Encephalitis previously attributed to the transferal of Mad Cow Disease to humans is actually caused by Quark. Blood donation centers may now officially change their policies preventing those who have visited England between 1980 and 1996 to stop anyone who has ever used Quark from donating instead. This will most definitely keep the spread of human variations of Mad Cow Disease from overtaking the United States.

3. Italicized commas are worthy of much more attention on Friday mornings than the fact that a sports headline still reads “Volleyball team spikes heads.” Review copy-editors have powers as yet unknown to man — and many other species in the universe. They scan pages of newsprint with amazing oversight after hours of reading, but can still see the fact that a period is italicized in the sentence on page eight.

4. The laws of entropy apply differently in the Review office than anywhere else in the universe. No matter how many times someone cleans and organizes the office, in the next hour, matter will expand to ten times its previous mass. The fussers always disappear even if someone had been holding them five minutes before. And similarly, nobody is ever able to find a copy of the last issue of the Review.

5. The words “food” and “coffee” mean much more to harried journalists than any other group of beings. Whether it’s Downtown Pizza, Cookies on Call or a run to DeCafé or Fourth Meal, the words “Does anybody want something to eat?” causes a stampede. Review staff members seem to become hungrier and hungrier with every word they write or edit. For an 800 word article, an editor can consume a minimum of five slices of pizza.

Our staff members’ ability to translate the remaining three theorems proposed by the Board of Scientific Research failed at this point. The phrase “blue balloons become rubber duckies” did not seem to mean anything in the context of journalism or, in fact, the English language in general. However, Review staff members agreed that the first five conclusions were absolutely correct and wondered if anyone had a copy of last week’s issue. Oh, and did anyone fix that italicized comma in the article on page five?