T-Shirt Ghetto

* The decline in standardized test scores ­ SAT, ACT, GRE, as well as high school achievement ­ coincided with the increasing prevalence of the ball cap as a fashion accessory.

* Merely wearing a ball cap while taking the Stanford Benet IQ test reduced analytical ability by 10 points. (Scores were even worse if the cap in question sported a plastic adjusting strap.)

* Turning the cap backwards while taking such a test dropped analytical ability another 20 points.

* Adults wearing ball caps with the bills askew, like 10-year-olds returning from a Little League Game, registered no discernible intelligence at all. (This may account for the intellectual vacuity of most hip-hop ''lyrics.'')

* There was no apparent loss of intelligence when the caps were worn for utilitarian purposes: to shade the eyes of ball players, golfers and farmers; to block solar ultraviolet radiation; to make female joggers look cute.