At a guess, your plasma sphere is producing the same sort of radio noise that the cordless phone above is producing, thereby reducing two questions to one question. But I’m not sure we’ve really answered that question: Saying “the radio noise did it” is a bit of a cop-out. See, the radio noise can travel effortlessly through the house, and since it’s always around, the upper-class folks never notice it, and… Oh, wait, that’s a different column.