PROFESSOR THRUPIECE
current research
Professor Thrupiece's death in a Swiss hotel room in 2005 seriously curtailed his research output which up to that point had been significant in both its quality and quantity. As an early practitioner in - some would say founder of - the field of Culinary Bio-ethics he established through both practical research and conceptual conjecture many of the fundamental principles of a discipline now recognised worldwide as a pillar of modern thought. It is hard to believe that the question What is Culinary Bio-ethics? could once have been thought trivial, even harder to imagine a university campus in which students of culinary bio-ethics are not amongst the most gifted and intellectually curious of their cohort. Before Professor Thrupiece (and perhaps his Cambridge mentor Dr Kenwood Cheffe) the field was a barren one. Through assiduous planting he populated it and watched it blossom. Now a source of rich harvest (thrupiecediet turnover $[Zimbabwe] 3 trillion per annum) it attracts both the finest and the most disturbed minds: an outcome which Professor Thrupiece, though modest to the point of arrogance, would surely have relished.
Starting with his early Ph D research - later published as Household fluff: a viable dietary staple in times of conflict, Cambridge (1967) (and the basis of the hugely successful thrupiecediet) - Professor Thrupiece established a reputation for solid empirical science allied to a strong sense of ontological adventure. With him little questions always became larger ones, whilst great issues became reductible to a state of the utmost triviality.
Rooted as he was in the present and the ever-insistent impact of culinary bio-ethical matters on the world at large, he was not neglectful of historical context an intellectual habit signalled as early as 1971 with the arrival of his second major work Pre-Columbian Bio-ethics (Polytechnic Institute of Yazd Press (1971); revised edition Threadbone Press (2009)). It was based on detailed forensic and iconographic analysis of fragments of the Dorset (Dewlish) Deadbone Scrolls; in particular the so-called "indecipherable" Fragment 2765..
LEFT: Professor Thrupiece's populist Introduction to Everyday Culinary Bio-ethics which made culinary bio-ethics the property of "everyman"; CENTRE: Fragment 2765 of the Dorset (Dewlish) Deadbone Scrolls. RIGHT: Professor Thrupiece’s early sketch of the Graviton mitochondrial Hodge Boneson neutrino (aka "The Thrupiece Conjecture"). The existence of GmHBnI would be confirmed only after Professor Thrupiece’s death.
Much would follow in the same vein: detailed and pioneering conference papers (for example “The Cuban Defence: Scruples, Qualms, Methods and Anxieties in Methods of Opening Round and Flat Tins with Special Reference to Oily Fish” RSCBE Conference Proceedings (1967) Vol II) being followed by major treatments summarising current knowledge and advancing suggestions for future bio-ethical and small appliance ecumenical pathways. One such was Culinary Bio-ethics: issues Practices and Concern (Instititute for Advanced Research Toormakeady (Tuar Mhic Éadaigh) Press (1998)), another An Introduction to Everyday Culinary Bio-ethics (RSCBE Special Editions, Threadbone Press (2001)); both works of such startling vacuity that almost anyone might have written them.
Much more could be said of the 120 papers and 13 books published by the Professor in his lifetime, but it is surely for the Thrupiece Table [TT] (1967 revised 1972, 1986, 1994 and 203) that he will be chiefly remembered by the general public. Here, for the first time the Holy Grail of bio-ethics - a fully portable “flat-pack” periodic table of bio-ethical ambiguity - was offered to the public. Key was the establishment of the scrupular weight of coleslaw at 1.02thru [CLw = 1.02]; the elucidation of all succeeding semi-ambivalent equivalences under normal pressure and at room temperature following as a matter of course. With it a new and wholly inexact science was born. Professor Thrupiece was its midwife. Rights in Professor Thrupiece and his work are held exclusively by Mrs Amanda J Threadbone and his ongoing research is published only by The Threadbone Press in association with the RSCBE.
