January 19, 2007 - Ed Scarfs Out

Yesterday morning was not as cold as recent mornings, but it was still cold. It only got down to 35 degrees on Wednesday night. By 8:30 in the morning, the mercury was already up to 46. That was the time and the degrees when the dedicated staff of edhat.com turned on the heater in the green car to prowl the streets of downtown Santa Barbara. Our goal was to find women who were wearing scarves around their necks. On a cold winter's day, scarves are as fashionable as Ugg boots.

In popular usage, the plural of scarf is scarves, and the plural of wharf is wharves. But, according the American Heritage Dictionary, both scarfs and wharfs are acceptable. However, the name of our wharf is Stearns Wharf, but the "s" at the end of Stearn is neither plural nor possessive. It's just that "Stearns" was the guy's name.

In our study yesterday, we didn't find that the scarved and scarfless women were divided into equal halves (or halfs). In fact, non-bare necks were barely less than a quarter of the sample – 23.4% to be precise. Most of these scarves were worn with a classic flip. But, as we learned yesterday, there are many ways to skin a scarf – and of course there is a website giving you the options.

In yesterday's contest, Edhat veteran MTBSkiGuy-SB was the closest guesser with a guess of 23.5%. Today is t-shirt delivery day, formerly called PPF. The way that works is that winners like MTB Guy tell us their size, address, and color choice, and the dedicated staff leaves (or leafs) a t-shirt on their doorstep.

We want to hear from you ... read/post comments on this article

Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today's contest