[Rhodes22-list] Coping with sailing season/boat show interruptus

[Jay Friedland]

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_392.html

  "Some months ago, Straight Dope fiends will recall, this column struck 
a mighty blow for truth and freedom by attacking the belief that no two 
snowflakes are alike, a superstition that has blighted the lives of 
millions. Not having time to inspect all the world's snowflakes 
(besides, I lost the tweezers), Cecil relied instead on the crushing 
logic of mathematics, arguing that so many flakes had fallen since the 
dawn of time that there were bound to be a few duplicates.

  Naturally, many scoffed. One peanut-brain called to say he knew for 
sure no two snowflakes were alike because he had heard it on Nova. 
There was also the unfortunate business with the googols, which we 
won't go into here. My defense in all cases was couched strictly in 
theoretical terms, since I did not expect any actual cases of twin 
flakes to turn up (although I must say the cast of characters in those 
Doublemint commercials certainly came close).

  I was therefore pleasantly surprised to read in the bulletin of the 
American Meteorological Society that matching snow crystals were 
recently discovered by Nancy Knight of the National Center for 
Atmospheric Research. The crystals in question admittedly aren't flakes 
in the usual sense but rather hollow hexagonal prisms. They are also 
not absolutely identical, but come on, if you insist on getting down to 
the molecular level, nothing's identical. They're close enough for me. 
Just shows you, not only is this column at the cutting edge of science, 
sometimes we have to wait for the cutting edge to catch up.

  --CECIL ADAMS"

Any comments from the list?
Jay