by hannay2 » Sat May 10, 2008 3:02 pm
Yes ... and it's pretty interesting ...
There was a research program in to the conflict between the requirements of sperm-banks and the shortage of donors. The outcome underlined the serious shortfall of donations compared with clinical/social demand for viable sperm, and the study concluded there should be an initiative to raise awareness and hopefully build stocks up.
A committee was formed to try and mobilise this, and one of the thoughts to come along was the idea that if the stigma could somehow be removed from the act of masturbation everyone would be more open, more comfortable, and a major problem would be out of the way.
So they decided maybe a way to do this would be to set a Masturbation Day some time ahead, and in the meantime arrange various support-activities in the runup, like advertising, short educational fillers on the TV, coverage in the press, all that kind of thing to get people aware of how important the issue is and how natural the act of masturbating is ...
But they thought that as well they needed to have something to focus things. After thinking about it they decided the best way of making their point - whether good or bad - would be to set an actual target for the event that matched the for-real clinical requirements, and see if they could get that many donations on Masturbation Day.
Problem was, they didn't know when to hold the event, and more importantly they really needed the target to be hit regardless as that would let them push forward with the program and roll it out nationwide with some hope of reversing the problem.
So they worked out from historic data that they'd need 58,500 donations in order to be able to say they had a workable program. But then the sheer size of that number hit home and there was some concern that they wouldn't make it in just a day after all ...
Someone said double it to 2 days and that would do it, others said it should last a week to stand any chance ...
Then someone had the bright idea of looking back at the records from before the shortage developed, to see what rate donations were getting made at then, whether there were better times of the year, things like that, and go with that pattern. So that task was given to the nerdiest guy on the committee because he'd clearly be better with figures and statistics and derivations and all that academic analytical stuff.
But in fact this was the first thing he'd ever been given responsibility over, and he just didn't have a clue how to set about analysing the information in thousands of donor-files.
In fact he was surprised at first at just how low the rate of donations really was, because he'd expected guys would have been happy to get paid for doing something they do for free all the time anyway!
But the more he got buried in files, the more it became such a daunting task for him that he just couldn't get it together and pretty much winged it for the next short while but then simply gave up completely, getting more and more nervous all the time about having to stand up and put forward some solid and reliable data on which all the hard work so far would hinge.
But he really wasn't looking forward to that at all, and towards the time of the next meeting he hardly slept, was getting anxiety atacks, had to increase his blood-pressure pills ... he was really getting himself in to quite a state!
So anyway, the Committee-meeting rolled around and he was expected to present his findings, explain the background a little, then make a recommendation about time and timing for their program which everyone really wanted to get along with before the momentum was lost ...
So he sat with rapidly escalating nervousness and a racing heartbeat as the Committee went through the agenda til they reached the matter at hand, at which point the Chairman asked "So, when do we need to hold this event, and what does it need to be? Does it need to be a day? Does it need to be a couple of days? Does it need to be a week? What?!?"
And the guy, heart pounding and as nervous as hell because he knew already that it was going to take way more than the one-week limit and so he was about to kill the program right here with his very next words, replied hesitatingly "M-m-may-b-b-be a month" and promptly dropped dead from all the pent-up stress he had been carrying which was simply too much for him.
So they mistakenly went with his recommendation believing it to have been be well-researched and considered, and that's why they made it for a month and in May.
So don't let his loss have been in vain - head to your nearest centre now and donate! Then move to the next one .... and the next ... and the next ... and ......