Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Have Blue Peepers? Howdy, Cousin!


 A few years ago a bunch of scientists made the discovery that the gene for blue eyes had been isolated. You all heard about this, right? It's old news but I'm trying to go green so I'm recycling.


When I first read the article I cringed, thinking this was another step toward designer babies. That scares me; I've seen Gattaca. My interest in this topic probably would've stopped right there, had I stopped reading right there. But I didn't.



See, not only was the gene isolated, it was dertermined that blue eyes could be traced back about six-thousand years to...*drumroll*....one common ancestor that had a gene go  bonkners.



Should we be suprised? I mean, isn't is always one guy breaking the rules that screws it up for everyone? And can you imagine that first baby born with that new-fangled color? Depending on the village, town or tribe where he lived, he mightve been tossed headlong off a cliff to rid the evil from the midst of his people. Or maybe he was hailed as a God incarnate and given a harem of women to seed so he could pass along his divine eyeballs. Personally, I'm liking option B for the sake of the baby and if this story is factual, it also makes sense. Old Blue Eyes (not talking Frank Sinatra here) was a busy guy; he changed the landscape forever, especially in Hollywood.


So my blue eyed friends, apparently we're all kinfolk on a genetic level. You, me, Mel Gibson, the guy that delivers my mail, the crazy lady with fifty cats on the next block and darn near everyone in the Scandanavian Kingdoms. I personally decided against expanding my Christmas Card list, but to each his own.



So what does it mean? Does it even mean
 anything? Probably not, but it's still fun to speculate and I rather like the idea of an Almighty sitting back in an easy chair, swirling a glass of wine and instructing his marketing division to start thinking outside of the box.  Maybe he even fanned out the various options and instructed Saint Michael to pick a card, any card! Who knows? The next option might have been orange and I think we can all agree that should be reserved for Vampire flicks.

Blue eyes are just one of those quirks, a little benign glitch that means absolutely nothing. It doesn't increase life expectancy, doesn't insure success, or even dates in high school (dammit)  It's a thing that happened about 6000 years ago when someone played the genetic game of "hey y'all, watch this!"


Wonder what might be next?

Peace!
     ~Dawn