Dragaera

Paarfi and the photic sneeze reflex

Mon Dec 2 19:37:39 PST 2002

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