Simultaneity

This thought requires agreeing that, in an equilateral arrangement of three points, every vertex is able to detect simultaneous events occurring at the other two vertexes, also the following:   If you had a tool--let's say, compass and ruler--and you had been able to "square the circle," would you not have shown that it were possible to do so? If you agree, please proceed.

Imagine two points in space A and B. They are any distance apart but stationary with respect to themselves and point C. Each has an identical length of fiber optic cable the ends of which are as close as possible to an event occurring at C. If those cables had an identical shape (both semi-circles, for instance; although a spiral may be more accommodating  in most situations where, for instance, A is closer to C than B is), would A and B not be able to detect an event occurring at C regardless of how far apart they (A and B) are to each other and to C? Also, more traditionally, would C not be able to detect if an event occurred simultaneously at A and B?

What if one point were in motion relative to the others? The speed of light is constant and the distance that information has to travel is the same for CA as it is for CB (following the equidistant path of the fiber optic cable and assuming symmetry can be maintained (in at least one dimension?).

Mosquito Control

This tells of a serendipitous discovery of an invention that may have applicability as a mosquito control.

I dabble in green tech, and as such I was led to collect rain water in a barrel. Now, knowing that mosquitoes like stagnant water, I placed a screen over the barrel. Miracle of miracles, the mosquitoes continued to lay their eggs right through the screen.

If these traps are placed in heavily infested areas, I can see the female laying eggs only to have their little darlings jailed at the nursery!

The trap may even require zero maintenance especially if the screen is made of nylon or other long-lasting material.

Water, I think, ought not to reach the screen. A drain placed immediately below the screen may suffice in this regard. However, the exact distance to the screen may have to be adjusted for particular mosquito species.

Of course, the height can be much lower than that of a normal barrel--perhaps just inches high.

Mothers with son's DNA in their Brains?

In this NYT article, the phenomena of chimeric and mosaic genomes are discussed. Mention was made of autopsy results on the brains of about 60 women where they found that more than half had the Y chromosome in their neurons. The article goes on to say that "They most likely came from the sons they all gave birth to."

I don't see how this is likely b/c immune tolerance during pregnancy is a local temporary phenomenon. In addition, you would have to ask yourself how did a male cell find it's way into its mother's brain and start functioning as a neuron. This is not inconceivable but goes against Occam's Razor more than a chimera created during gestation.

I believe it's more likely that the mother obtained the Y chromosome while she herself was in HER mother's womb, and the source of the DNA was a male fraternal twin that only lived long enough to populate his sibling's embryo/fetus. The foreign DNA would have been tolerated because immunity only kicks in after all differentiated cells have come into being.
I wonder how hard it would have been for researchers to determine double-X in male brains? Did they do it? I can't afford the darn journals to find out.

Also, I would need to ask if there was a quantitative estimate of the Y chromosome content. This is important because more than one or two cells would indicate an origin during development whereas a few cells would support DNA coming from a gestation where a male was being carried.

I'm off Twitter. This time for good. If I'm going to say something, I want to know that I've had an effect. My followers hardly ever commented on anything I said, and for those who know me, for some issues, I like to rock the boat. So, I can only surmise that no one is reading my tweets. But that's OK, Twitter was consuming too much of my time and I have so many more things that I've promised myself to do.

However, Twitter has served me well in other ways. After some 5000 tweets, I found that my spelling and grammar had improved enormously. How did I know this? I wrote a long paper w/o spelling assist, head down typing, and the MS Word spell checker only found one problem--an extra space between two words.

I assure you, spell/grammar checking on that size paper would have taken me at least 20 minutes. I attribute my skills entirely to my twittering. I strongly urge those with poor typing/proofreading skills to crank out those 140 characters grammatically correct and not misspelled.