From: Steven Brust <skzb at dreamcafe.com> >At 04:56 AM 12/2/2002 -0800, David Goldfarb wrote: >> >>2) Paarfi is a photic sneezer and doesn't realize that not everyone >>is. (This seems a trifle unlikely if Brust himself isn't a photic >>sneezer, but you never know.) > >This is the one I was aiming at, and it came about when I realized that 1) >wasn't the case. I thought it would be fun to put in. Nice work. So, >yes: I am, and, like you, was surprised to discover that everyone >isn't. And I figured, "Hey, how would Paarfi know?" One of the web sites mentions this as a hazard of doing studies on the phenomenon: non-sneezers tend not to have heard of photic sneezing and wonder why the question should be asked; sneezers tend to assume that everyone is. >I love it when someone catches stuff like this. Happy to oblige. :-) Fromm: Julie Alipaz <jalipaz at stanford.edu> >Even if it is as low as 10% the explanations still hold, however the >probability changes, if it has such varring levels of expression, it >is likely that 1) that it is recesive rather than dominant, meaning >both your parents have to carry one recessive allel and that the you >had to have inherited two copies and 2) that it is a multi-gen trait. One problem with making such estimates is where you set the bar -- for instance, if there's someone who doesn't normally sneeze at light, but who can set off a "hanging sneeze" by looking at the sky, do you count them? The web site I mentioned earlier has some discussion of this. -- David Goldfarb <*>|"I see more than you, child. I see an end to hell. goldfarb at ocf.berkeley.edu | What do you see?" | "I see a man in a lot of pain." goldfarb at csua.berkeley.edu |"Pain? Yes. Consider it a preview." -- _Zot!_ #18