Cleaning

In between the pages of my new copy of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House are two pistachio shells which I'm using as bookmarks while I look up what a "backsplash" is on the web. From the context, I'm fairly sure that it is not the type of thing that happens while swimming toward the edge of a pool. It is some type of furniture.
Last night I was variously described as an "animal", a "dog", and a "monkey" due to some other events involving pistachio shells and whatnot. So the natural reasoning might be that I'm reading this because the book was thrown at me.
Instead I ordered it, after reading about it on Cool Tools. My hopes were that after understanding the science of keeping house, I might be more willing to do it. At the least it is always interesting to be introduced to a new world.

This is probably a subject for another time...
The subtitle of the book irks me because besides being a cliche the phrase "art and science" is based on a poor conception of science. It suggets that science is rigid list of steps that needs to be tempered with art.
Nearly every area of science is declared more "art than science". "Up until now visualizing gene transcripts has been more art than science,(link)" "Scientists might add one foreign gene to an organism to produce a drug like insulin. The technique is more art than science given the brute trial-and-error...(link)." But this is what practicing science is, it has to grapple with uncertainty.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050829/pf/nbt0905-1037_pf.html