Q.Romantics say that love is blind. How about height-blind?
A. The short answer is no. Tall teenage girls still worry over standing head and shoulders above the boys, who no doubt dream of being tall, dark and handsome. Even if they haven't heard the old story about Alan Ladd standing on a box so his lips would meet Sophia Loren's in more manly fashion on the silver screen, they live by it in spirit.Indeed, so strong is society's male-taller norm that when researchers John Gillis and Walter Avis looked at records of married couples, they found only one couple out of 720 who dared to flout it. Going by the 4-inch average height difference between the sexes, and assuming totally random matches, there should have been closer to 20 woman-taller couples in the 720, calculated Gillis and Avis.
One theory to explain the norm is that if men and women paired off at roughly equal heights, this would leave many very short women and tall men unmatched. So by having males stand taller than their mates, and taller by about the average height difference between the sexes, society ensures that fewer individuals get left out biologically. Obviously, if height mattered not at all to anyone, there would be no need for the norm in the first place.
Another theory points to the male desire for dominance as the driving force: Taller is bigger, more powerful, better. This ancient sentiment, evident in the worlds of business and politics, may rear its head in romance as well.
Q. Just how charming and disarming can a baby get?
A. In "Reading Faces," Brandeis University psychologist Leslie Zebrowitz recounts a trip with her baby to a border town between North and South Korea at a particularly tense time: Orders were for everyone to keep hands down and refrain from talking with the guards.
"Suddenly, my son Loren waved his hand, and his high-pitched 'hi' chimed across the room. I turned toward the nearest North Korean guard, expecting to see his automatic weapon trained on us. Instead, it was a large grin that was leveled at my son. The transformation in this enemy soldier's stony face brought tears to my eyes."
Traveling through China with a group including a 6-month-old, Zebrowitz was struck by the crowds' similar reaction: Complete strangers stopped to admire little Melanie, making up-close funny faces, ooohing and aaahing, baby-talking themselves silly in a universal language.
A candid camera study of 4,000 pedestrians in Germany and Italy showed many smiling when passing a baby, stopping to baby talk and chatting with Mom.
Even young children share the aura: The Masai of Africa and the Aboriginals of Australia, as a peacekeeping sign, will approach outsiders with their hand on the shoulder of a child, who walks just in front of them.
Q. What is it about a full moon that drives everybody crazy?
A. Ask any bartender, police officer or teacher and they'll tell you looney lunar tales. But in studies tracking the incidence of 911 calls, crisis hotline calls, mental hospital admissions or homicides, no correlation with moon phase showed up, says Exploring magazine of the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco.
But people want to find a lunar effect, so it's easy to spot one. It's the old story of looking for confirming evidence when something strange happens but asking no questions when a full moon passes uneventfully.
Another factor, says Case Western Reserve University physicist John D. McGervey, is that few people really know a full moon when they see one. Most extend a full moon to include a day or two before and after the actual one, thus dramatically widening the window for weird happenings.
On the other hand, the solar effect is real, stresses Hope College psychologist David G. Myers. Sunshine is about 450,000 times brighter than full-moonlight and generally lifts people's spirits to the point where there is more smiling, more good Samaritanism and bigger tips for restaurant servers on sunny days.
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com)