Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

Here are the results of yesterday's breast poll:

	left larger	right larger	asymmetric (sum of left & right larger)	neither larger
left-handed	0	0	0	6
right-handed	8	9	17	2
ambidextrous	1	1	2	1

Conclusions:

• Breasts are dynamic. I've collected anecdotes (and I'm sure others have collected data) suggesting that plenty of events, hormonal and otherwise, can affect breast symmetry: puberty, childbirth, even asymmetric exercise. If this was a duh to you, it wasn't to me.


• That said, I was struck not by any correlation of hand preference to either breast's being larger, but to more general asymmetry. Clearly this merits further study.


• randomdreams, morthael, and ionan are sillyheads.

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In other news, we had a FiOS outage here at the Abbey for about 16 hours. Nibs & m'boy were Displeased. It wasn't the fiber that had trouble, though; it was the crufty cabling on the outside of the house.

ETA: More data points!

ETAA: Even more data points!

I just finished Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner. Before I get on my soapbox, I must pass on the best non-fiction quote ever:

What Chen had seen wasn't altruism at all, but rather the first instance of monkey prostitution in the recorded history of science.

I didn't really want to post about monkeys, though. (I can hear all the MOOers go "Awww!")

I wanted to post about global warming - and no, I'm not going to call it climate change. The authors of Superfreakonomics write approvingly of a few mooted "geoengineering" schemes to combat global warming, especially the one for putting sulfur dioxide particles in the stratosphere. If I had to bet money on whether anybody ends up trying something like that, I would joylessly bet that they do, out of necessity. Remember, this is coming from a generally optimistic enthusiast for renewable energy.

However, I have two words for would-be geoengineers: cane toads.

In 1935, cane toads were introduced from Latin America into Australia to control pests in sugar cane fields. Not only didn't they control the pests. Their population exploded and they became pests themselves, out-competing native species, making lots of noise, and getting squished by the thousand on roads.

How sure are the geoengineers that their plans won't have undesirable, unintended consequences? If they ever do put their plans into action, they need to start small and observe the hell out of the results, in every wavelength and from every angle.

Background: while I was in Spain, Nibs had the downstairs bathroom renovated. It now has a tile floor & granite counter to replace wooden ones that the Wendling damaged with various fluids. As part of the renovation, though, we had the mirror taken out. I had to hang up a new one. This bathroom has halogen lamps.

As I'm driving the nails into the wall a couple of feet below the lights, I notice the lights getting stepwise brighter with each blow of the hammer until pop! One of them goes out. I finished the job using the CFL in the hall.

The shock & vibration could have progressively shorted out parts of the coiled filament, and then what, the current exceeded a threshold and melted it? Faskinating.

Oh yeah: the mirror is level because that's how I roll. The light fixture, however, is not and can't easily be made so.

After many postponements we finally made it to the Pacific Science Center with the Wendling. Not surprisingly, it was a big hit with him. More surprisingly, the noise level didn't bother him. His favorite section: space. That place has so many exhibits that there's plenty of fodder for return trips, which is A-OK with me. (I can't believe he missed the robot playing tic tac toe.) If there's anything this town can't have enough of, it's places to take kids on a rainy day.

Imagine my relief when I discovered that when I pried the plastic ball valve off my bathroom sink, I could snap it back on. Imagine my joy at how quickly it drained after I cleaned out over five years' worth of gunk.