Most rational thinkers would agree that despite the wondrous immediately recent advances in civilisation - the internet, laser surgery and Lydia Ko - there remains one unsolved conundrum that has broken the back of every scientist: the spoon that drips.
I'm no scientist.
Heavens above, I have admitted this many times, science doesn't make a whit of sense to me.
But I can only suspect that somewhere in science there lies an answer why a spoon is filled with liquid - custard, soup, you name it - carefully loaded with no overflow and lifted to the mouth, then drips the aforementioned liquid on to the chest or table.
How does the liquid permeate the spoon to the bottom underneath?
There will be a scientific answer.
Perhaps liquid turns briefly into an astonishingly powerful acid when operating as one of a three-headed molecular equation involving spoon mass and tooth fillings.
Could fluoride be involved?
Crazy I know, but this is how scientists talk.
Personally, I've had it with the spoon that drips.
A man with a snatch of tertiary education like myself should surely be able to employ a method that works, but I have found no such thing.
The most obvious tactic is just to swoop the spoon up from the bowl and into the mouth before any chemical reaction, like a drip, can occur.
But a drip can occur in a nanosecond.
Plus, the overly quick swoop to the mouth sees the yoghurt or melted ice cream, you name it, spray over at least two of your fellow diners, one of whom will think you did it on purpose because, in small towns, so many people carry grudges.
Or you can pause forever, waiting for the drop of liquid - yak juice, Bonnington's Irish Moss, you name it - to drop.
Only it never does.
I suspect Murphy joins the game in these cases, Murphy after all relishing The Man Who Thinks He Has Worked Out A Counter.
Just men? Oh yes.
I asked nearly 300 women during coffee at inner-city cafes last week, and none of them have ever suffered from a spoon that drips.
So Murphy watches and waits.
The man watches and waits. Hell, man has all day!
He never works!
But eventually he comes to the conclusion there IS no drip under the spoon.
And up goes the spoon to the mouth.
Murphy moves.
Two adjoining diners swear loudly, wiping their cheeks, the man goes to the boy's room to clean himself up.
Is there an answer?
Logic suggests all spoons should have a smaller spoon attached underneath to catch that drip.
This means a little bit of extra expense at the manufacturing end, but there would be phenomenal aesthetic pleasure.
Two levels! Imagine what dull children's bedrooms we would have if Lego was only allowed to be made on one level. We would be parenting a nation of deadbeats.
And anyone who thinks the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is superior in viewing to the Wright Flyer biplane is just mad in the head.
But yes, a spoon is a spoon, liquid will always drop from the bottom level.
Oh - I must say this, because it has been teetering on the edge of my mind all week and I really want to push it off - did you see what Kim Kardashian said when she found out she would be on the cover of next month's Vogue?
No?
She said ''OMGGGGGG, I can't even breath!''
Yes, breath. No typo.
She said she couldn't breath. And she is going to be on the cover of Vogue.
Where was I? Yes, spoon-feeding tactics.
There is no answer, fast or slow, either will result in splotter and mess.
Men suffer from it constantly, women probably got the whole thing going by playing that stupid here-comes-the-train-choo-choo game when feeding high-chaired babies with vegie slop - that's when you first associate spoons with splotter and mess - but whatever, this thing has to be sorted.
One hopes it is at the top of the agenda for the upcoming co-operative work in medical science between the universities of Otago and Jiao Tong in Shanghai.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
