The Musical Fruit

Peas and Beans Ltd, a British research firm, cannot get grants to study their founder’s field of expertise: flatulence. To get something going, P&B has teamed up with M-scan, a company that makes “highly efficient chemical sniffing equipment,” says P&B’s Dr. Colin Leakey. Dr. Leakey thus used a “flatometer” to discover that “there is about a 10:1 difference in the flatus gas of acetone and 2-propanol.” His research helped him develop a new variety of bean that appears “to have higher digestibility and lower flatulence.” (Reuters) ...Maybe we can adapt the flatometer to help size up politicians.