Tuesday, November 08, 2005

It's called a chromosome

Today's topic of discussion on the Preston and Steve Morning show was whether all embryos are female when conceived. Yeah, it was a pretty erudite topic for a morning show to debate over, whose usual topics of discussion include matters of extreme pertinence such as what is the flimsiest excuse you've ever been fired for, or whether deer have any sphincters or not (they supposedly have one, an inner one, while everyone else has two, yes even you). But actually it wasn't so surprising. It all started out with people calling in, reporting they have two scrotal sacs and some woman who claimed to have four nipples and some guy calling in to inform us that his son possessed two peeholes. From that point onward, discussion somehow veered into scientific territory.

And then the hosts started talking about X and Y chromosomes. But here's the thing. Kathy Romano, the show newswoman, kept referring to it as a Y "chromosone". And the funniest thing was that the discussion started out with everybody except Kathy calling them "chromosomes", but gradually, under Kathy's influence, they all began to call it "chromosone".

I have two rules of thumb : One, I may not run for president unless I can pronounce "nuclear" correctly and two, I may not engage in a discussion on genetics unless I can spell "chromosome" correctly.

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