Hong’s Cave

(I guess this would be one of many “unproven” theories of Hong’s…)

Quite a few of my friends, by now, are married and most of them have children. One thing I noticed was that a lot of those children were girls. One would think that the ratio of the sexes should be about equal in nature, but what I saw among my friends weren’t even close to being equal statistically. And since the sex of a baby is genetically determined by the father, I wanted to figure out what made this group of men deviate from the “norm”.

They all work in computer-related businesses or at least in an environment where they have to spend the better part of their day in front of a computer. So, I tried a wild hypothesis that the radiation from the CRT monitors might be the cause (probably it’s from something I read long time ago from an advertisement for screen protectors). It seemed to me (not very scientifically provable, though) like those who “work harder” or rather seem to spend more time in front of computers were likely to have girls than boys.

Then, it was combined with the (seemingly unrelated) fact that men’s life expectancy is shorter than women on average. From just the life expectancy data, it seems to me that men are built “weaker” than women (for whatever the reasons). So, what’s “inherently” (or biologically) different about men and women? It must be the “XY” and “XX” chromosome combinations.

It seems the XY is “weaker” or less “stable”. Maybe, the radiation is killing or making the sperms with the XY less competitive even if the exposure is within the regulated “safe” limits. That can explain why those men working long hours in front of CRT monitors tend to have more girls. (I later began to think that this may also be from deteriorated health conditions from work or other reasons.)

Anyway, then came a weird logic… XX >= XY, so it must be that X >= Y. (Yeah, yeah, I am not considering the possible mutual interactions. :p)

Interesting… Then a logical leap… Two Xs seem to make the species more “stable”. But if one gets too stable, it will become stale and eventually lose its adaptability and perish. So, I am guessing that the Y is an agent that injects “mutation” (or dynamics) into the system. Of course, these changes cannot be all beneficial, but it should throw off the system a bit so that it can re-adjust itself to the changing/new environment. And this seems to fit an observation that for most “living” systems there seem to be cycles of changes/growth and stability.

So my current theory is that the X chromosome is what makes us stable and helps us survive through the minor external changes and that the Y chromosome is what throws off the balance a bit so that the species won’t become stale.

Absurd, you think? I don’t blame you. :p