Howard [to Leonard]: Are you familiar with the Drake Equation?
Sheldon: The one that estimates the odds of making contact with extraterrestrials by calculating the product of an increasingly restrictive series of fractional values such as those stars with planets, and those planets likely to develop life? N equals R times FP times NE times FL times FI times FC times L?
[pause]
Howard: Yeah, that one.
There's an economic concept known as a positional good in which an object is only valued by the possessor because it's not possessed by others. The term was coined in 1976 by economist Fred Hirsch to replace the more colloquial, but less precise "neener-neener".
