My favorite trait, and the one I’m quite thankful to have, is what’s know as the photic sneeze reflex. Sometimes called the Peroutka Sneeze Gene or even ACHOO syndrome (how droll), this reflex causes one to sneeze when exposed to bright light. I had always assumed everyone had this ability, but scientists estimate it affects 18 to 35 percent of the population. Try it out: the next time you need to sneeze but are not quite there, look out the window at the sun or at a light-bulb and if it pushes you over the edge then you have the phenotype! The photic sneeze reflex has intrigued great thinkers as far back as Aristotle. We still don’t know which gene is responsible for it, but we do know only one copy is needed, and it isn’t on either the X nor Y chromosome. How it works is still unexplained by science, but many experts now agree that crossed wires in the brain are the cause.

Here’s one you may have tested back in high school biology: The gene that detects the odor of cyanide. Do you remember your teacher passing around a vial and asking if you could detect a sweet almond smell? That’s what cyanide smells like to around 20 to 40 percent of the population. Studies have also found that men are less likely to smell cyanide than woman. About 18%-20% of men are not able to smell cyanide at all, whereas only 5%-10% of woman cannot. The rest of the population is able to detect the smell in significant quantities, but only 40% can smell it in trace amounts.

Quick, clasp your hands together! Now look down at your thumbs. Most people place their left thumb on top of their right one. Try clasping your hands so that the opposite thumb is on top and you’ll notice it doesn’t feel quite right. As random as it may seem, hand clasping with the left thumb on top is a dominant phenotype.

Do you have caveman fingers? Some people have hair on the second (middle) joint of one or more of their fingers. If you have hair on any of these middle joints then you posses the dominant phenotype. I was just kidding about the caveman thing–it doesn’t mean you’re less evolved, the absence of this hair is just based on a recessive allele.

Speaking of digits, next time you’re barefoot or in sandals, look at your second toe. If it’s longer than your big toe you have what is called morton’s toe (or sometimes “Greek foot”). Although this is a dominant genetic trait, it’s part of the genotype of only 10% of the world’s population (and can be a real hassle when sizing Five Fingers)!

There are many other common and observable phenotypes, but these are some of my favorites. To learn more about genetics check out Wikipedia’s series on the subject (be sure to scroll down to Related information at the very bottom).

Sources:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-bright-light-cau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex

http://www.helium.com/items/1532959-human-genetic-traits-with-complete-dominance?page=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton%27s_toe

“Sneeze” by wise.adam
“Green Poison” by ohsoabnormal
“sparkle Toes” by Robert S. Donovan
“Gravestone Sculpture 2″ by fallingribbons
“tiiiiiiiiiny camera, maaaassif lens” by Abulic Monkey

I came across this via Make:, but the source, and a great gallery of examples, is over at Noise Addicts.

It’s strange how well it works out, especially some they have posted. Here are three I did this morning (I could seriously make these all day):

Go try it out!

I had a great Christmas this year as usual. I really feel blessed this time of year when the family comes together and the cards all come in from relatives across the country. Mom flew up to see the baby and have Christmas with us, and I got to play and bond with baby Parker for a whole week. I was really glad to be able to see both Mom and Dad this year, and Amme and I had an all around great week with our families. I got some fantastic new toys this year, but I’m not the bragging type, so I’ll just say I am humbled by the generosity of all in my family (which includes Amme’s family).

We’ve been getting inundated with snow this winter. Something I was afraid I’d not see again after the terrible winter we had last year. I believe we’re up to 4 or 5 major snow storms this year. And today we’re getting another 5-8 inches on top of the 8 we got two days ago! I can’t wait to go to the mountain for some serious powder carving on my snowboard!

Trevor came up again this year and spent Christmas with his mother before heading up north to visit with us. Alyssa got Guitar Hero 3 for Christmas and got Amme and all of us guys hooked on it. After arriving back in Bangor I borrowed GH 2 from my friend Carl, then rented GH 3 and We Love Katamari, so we’ve pretty much been playing PS2 non stop for the past few days. We’ve beat both Guitar Hero games on easy mode and are half way through both on medium difficulty.

Trevor is a minor scrabble deity (he has to do EVERYTHING to an extreme) so I’ve been getting coaching from him on becoming a better player. I was fairly dreadful before (I had no strategy to speak of) so I’m excited to play more. Theres a great free program by http://www.ISC.ro that lets you play scrabble with other people or computers, and they’re all rated so you know everyone’s relative skill level. I was playing earlier today and almost got trounced by Trevor came to my rescue during the last few seconds of play to win by a scant 12 points.

Every year I hold a New Years Eve party for the Caribou gang, and we usually have some fun idea or gimmick. This year Trevor brought up the idea of building a Rube Goldberg Machine, and though neither of us were sure that we’d have the drive to see it through to completion, it ended up being a great success. Trevor and I did the preliminary setup on the 29th and 30th, and Doody and Jason helped bring it all together on the 31st. Though our engineers Zach and Jesse couldn’t make it home, they were definitely there in spirit, and mentioned them a few times while trying to solve various problems. We also missed Jalbey, Johnny, Evan, Justin, and everyone else that couldn’t make it up. We hope they all had great times anyway.

Our original intent was to set it off and have it finish its task exactly as the ball dropped in times square (our task was to have a “Happy New Years” sign be raised on a string), but we were sure it would fail in some way at the crucial moment so we set it to record on the DVR just in case. That ended up being unnecessary, however, when it not only worked perfectly when the moment arrived, but also was timed to the second! We took a video of it with Doody’s camcorder and threw it on YouTube, you can check it out below or see it on my http://www.youtube.com/euicho page.

Again its been a fantastic holiday season and thank you to everyone in my life for making this past year great. I can’t wait to see what 2008 brings for us all.

According to SPACE.com, a small Orionid meteor shower will hit its peak this Sunday morning (October 21st).

This will be a small (a couple dozen an hour) shower, but could be fun to watch if you bring some warm clothing and a thermos.

I’m definately going to set my cam up and see if I can snag a shot or two. I only got 1 Lyrid earlier this year and it was so faint it wasn’t worth posting. Perhaps I’ll have better luck this time, though my chances will be less.

At any rate, get the full details from the space.com article.

via space.com

moonset is around 1:30 a.m. local daylight time on Sunday, and that’s a good time to begin preparing for your meteor vigil. At its best several hours later, at around 5:00 a.m. when Orion is highest in the sky toward the south, Orionids typically produce around 20 to 25 meteors per hour under a clear, dark sky.

“Orionid meteors are normally dim and not well seen from urban locations,” said meteor expert Robert Lunsford, adding, “. . . it is highly suggested that you find a safe rural location to see the best Orionid activity.”

Its a Bike Messenger race in NYC, and there are some insane squeezes and close calls. Notice the “skitching” (grabbing onto a moving car so they can pull you along) at about 3:10. And here I used to think motorcyclists had a death wish!

J: Well, you should develop your skills.

A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .

A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?

J: No.

A: Are you serious?

J: Very serious.

Read the full article at discovermagazine.com

The fact of the matter is creating a profile of the “School Shooter” type is impossible. Find out why at livescience.com:

a la livescience.com:

But again, most mentally-disturbed individuals don’t pick up a gun and use it. “You can’t say they have isolated themselves and they are depressed, so they are going to turn into a mass murderer,” Nelson told LiveScience. “The problem is now you’ve labeled literally tens of thousands of people incorrectly, because most people who are depressed, isolated and can’t talk, don’t become mass murderers.”

When I took my first Telecom class in college, I learned about the 8 RBOCs or Regional Bell Operating Companies being set up after the AT&T monopoly was ended.

My teacher said although they were all former “Bells”, they had no joint interest. However, I wasn’t so sure. At that time, they had already begun to buy each other and were down from 8 to 4:

1. SBC (Ameritech and Southwestern Bell and Pacific Telesis)
2. Verizon (GTE and Bell Atlantic and NYNEX)
3. BellSouth
4. Qwest (US West)

I had a scary premonition that day that this would keep up until there was again 1 company, or at least 2 companies with a joint interest…

And wouldn’t you know it, SBC aquired and changed its own name to AT&T, which then bought BellSouth (down to 3), and Verizon bought MCI for good measure.

Thats scary enough, but it I never even thought about cellular. You see, if we back up to before the SBC merger:

1. Cingular (owned by Bell South and SBC {no joint interest???}) bought AT&T wireless, changing it all to Cingular and creating the largest cellular network in the USA
2. Then SBC bought Bell South and AT&T, and that whole mess becomes AT&T Inc
3. Finally AT&T bought Cingular back!

Confused yet? Thats ok. On top of all that mess, AT&T sold its unprofitable Rural New England operations to Fairpoint (pending approval).

The bottom line: I’m scared about when this will end, and if my premonition about the 1 or 2 final Telecom giants ruling the USA will come to pass, leaving us all with crappy service and soaring rates due to a lack of competition. Of some comfort is the fact that I can switch to VoIP for land-line service, use small-company DSL or cable from the big evil Time-Warner, and have a little choice in cellular too.

The whole thing that brought this up is the fact that I was telling B about how AT&T bought Cingular back, and he pointed out that the Colbert Report had just done an explanation that both out-does mine, and is funny as hell (as usual). So if my explanation confuses you (hell it confuses me), See the slightly less in-depth video here.

UPDATE:  Sadly the video has been taken down by Viacom.  I can’t seem to find a replacement anywhere…

I was on twitter and read the following on the public timeline (a list of all public updates):

“the song ‘so much’ by spill canvas is amazing”

I thought to myself, “I wonder what that song sounds like.”

Now, when I was younger I’d have to go to the record store and buy it to find out if I even liked the band. Today, instead, I went here, which brought me here, which gave me the song.

Three hops to sample the full song. And if I like it, I can buy the album on iTunes.

Don’t ever take this wonderful thing for granted, because it could be destroyed as fast as it came into being.

PS: Its a very good song. You can tell when a person feels real love. I know, because I feel it too.

The URI string could get very large very fast, however, so the converter limits you to 51200 bytes. It also takes a little finagling once the converter spits it out, as you have to take out the single-quotes, tabs, plus signs, and carriage returns. This is done pretty easily with a RegExp search-and-replace for: ‘*’ (replacing it with nothing). once you do that, you have to strip off some bits from the beginning and end, so it looks like this: Me.

Fun stuff!

This is a little old, but I found it quite interesting:
An amusing exercise

It is a discussion thread over at Typophile about what chat shorthand (lol, wtf, rofl) might look like as symbols, much as ‘at’ has ‘@’, or ‘and’ has ‘&’. Though most chat shorthands are acronyms instead of single words, it is still a very neat topic with some great ideas. I prefer the one pictured to the right of this post for LOL, submitted by gmckenzi.

I also have been pondering a discussion I had with someone at work about how we do not *usually* laugh literally “out loud” when we type lol, or actually fall out of our chairs when we type rofl (how would we type it if we were?), although there have been times when it has happened. Instead, maybe we should use an alternative, and leave LOL for more hilarious outbursts. You could just take the acronym of out, producing LIL (Laughing In Loud) but that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, plus it looks like an abbreviation of little.

Perhaps LI or LIW, for Laughing InWardly, would work. Or we could spark a whole new term like TVF (Thats Very Funny) as in “That’s very funny, a fly marrying a bumble bee… I TOLD YOU I’D SHOOT! BUT YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE ME! WHYYYYYYYY DIDN’T YOU BELIEVE ME?!?!“. God I love that show.

In lieu of LOL, I tend to use “heh” when I find something funny, and “heheheheh” when it is funnier still. Note that I mean this as “heh heh heh”, as in a chuckle, as opposed to “he he he”, a feminine giggle…

So what do you all think? Do you like LIL, LIW, TVF? Create your own and post them here. I would love to hear your input on this!

PS: *bonus points for a symbolic for “OMG WTF BBQ” that is not just letters run together.