inkbluesky

Mirror, Mirror: Who’s the Most Symmetrical?

Body symmetry has a major effect on perceived attractiveness, and that symmetry can show itself in features ranging from body size and facial attractiveness to dancing ability, the study concludes. Over time, humans may have evolved in ways to figure out who we choose to pursue as a partner.

[  ]…”In animals with two sides that were designed by natural selection to be symmetrical, subtle departures from perfect symmetry may reflect poor development or exposure to stress,” he said. “In many species, the degree of departure from perfect symmetry is related to poor health, lower survival and fewer offspring.”

This human bilateral symmetry means that one side of the body is a relative mirror image of the other – you can see thie relative aspect of the symmetry of your face by taking a photo of both profiles and comparing them. The symmetry or aspect of human beauty literally only goes skin deep as human organs are not arranged in mirror image fashion. You know you’re on bad date if they want to check out your liver. Is it odd that sense we judge other humans this way we don’t apply the same standards to flowers. The ideal rose is radially symmetrical. A line super imposed from any direction through the center shows that both halves are the same. A feat obviously not possible with humans. They might be considered a romantic cliche, but most people find roses attractive and while there are rose perfectionists most of us also find roses attractive that are not perfectly radial.

2 blue

I might have posted part of this essay by security expert Bruce Schneier before, The Eternal Value of Privacy

“If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”

Some clever answers: “If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.” “Because the government gets to define what’s wrong, and they keep changing the definition.” “Because you might do something wrong with my information.” My problem with quips like these — as right as they are — is that they accept the premise that privacy is about hiding a wrong. It’s not. Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect.

The first thing, or among the first things a repressive government does is do away with much of your personal privacy and followed by the rationalization that its for your own security. Frequently echoed by people that give a lot of lip service to the word freedom and have a tendency to exaggerate the threats that  exist. History from the Roman Empire up to the former Soviet Union tells us that innfringent on individual privacy in order to protect you and the government from you doesn’t work. At least not for long.

Two Chinese citizens in their late 70s have been sentenced to re-education through labor because they complained the government didn’t compensate them enough for the property the government seized for redevelopment. 80 percent of the 6,000 factories in Wal-Mart’s worldwide database of suppliers are in China.