The Endemic Part 2

Different endemic though. Achromotopsia. A rare color blindness that is a form of monchromacy, or the inability to distinguish between all colors, not just red/green (which is just one of many different color blindnesses). Without getting into too much detail, inside the eyes there are rods, which are responsible for low light vision, and cones, which are responsible for daylight and color vision. There are a few "cone systems" in the eye that are each responsible for different colors. In normal monochromacy, there is only one cone system in the eye, so distinguishing between different colors is impossible. In Achromotopsia, there are no cone systems. So not only is color impossible to see, but normal intensity light can be painful. Fortunately, achromotopsia is extremely rare. Except for the Pingelap in The Federated States of Micronesia. It is an edemic there, which means that the infection (in the sense that it is commonly used) or disorder is maintained with no external inputs. Such as chicken pox in the U.S. or malaria in Africa. Apparently the island was devastated by a storm in the 18th century and one of the surviving men had the condition. Now, 1/12 of the population of the island has the disorder that they call maskun, and 30% of the population carries the genes for it.

1 out of 33,000 people in the U.S. suffer from maskun. Many lead normal lives with the aid of darkened lenses.

Kind of random

Spike Lee's master's thesis at NYU was called Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, which I think is a great title. His classmate, Ang Lee (of Brokeback fame), helped him on the project. Lee also directed the movie Clockers, which I am sad to say Wikipedia doesn't have much of an entry for. Sad times.... Nonetheless, the movie is based on a novel by Richard Price. No, not the 18th century British philosopher, Richard Price, as I'm sure you were all thinking. Richard Price the American author/screenwriter who has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Clockers and The Color of Money, starring our favorite Scientologist, Tom Cruise (actually, that's a lie. Wiki Karmel's favorite scientologist is actually Beck. Thank you loyal reader FGS for telling me that). Richard Price was a 1967 graduate of Bronx Science. As was your humble Wiki Karmel's dad. Had Price or my dad graduated only one year earlier, they would have graduated with Russell A. Hulse and H. David Politzer (Wiki Karmel is thinking of going by M. Scott. thoughts/questions/comments/concerns). Who are they? Nobel Prize winners. Both of them. Graduated from the same high school in the same year. Both in physics. Hulse for "the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation" and Politzer for his discovery of asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics. Politzer also has a cameo in the movie Fat Man and Little Boy as a scientist working on the Manhattan Project. The star of that movie? The other star of The Color of Money, Paul Newman. Weird.

If Bronx Science were a country, it would be tied for 21st in the world in most Nobel Prize winners with 7.