At 03:22 AM 11/1/96 -0600, Thomas R Jefferys wrote:

Speaking of X's and Y's, in birds XY is female and XX is male.  Any ideas on
how this affects Mousse?

Female duck? :>

"I know how you feel, Saotome... I also 'change' in that way when hit with
cold water. Fortunately, the fact that I change into a DUCK distracts from
that fact. Except during the mating season, which is a pain in the rear,
literally."

or

"Why Mousse sit on eggs?"

"Cuz they're mine."

Heheheheeeee! Don't touch that one. _I_ want it. (Yeah, yeah, Yet Another

Don't worry, it's yours!

In the above situation, a certain emzyme which turns testosterone into
dyhydrotestosterone is faulty. DHT causes the formation of the lower part
of the urethra rather than a vagina and a penis rather than a clitoris,
among other things. During adolecence, the DHT is still absent, but
garden-veriety testosterone causes the former clitoris to turn into a
penis. Ie, although the Big Gene is the first link, there are things that
might go wrong.

In fact, I read somewhere that this was attempted on purpose.

Back in World War II, some Allied saboteurs decided that Hitler might be too 
distracted to fight a war if he turned female or at least "had his moustache 
fall off and turned soprano".  The plan was to make his gardener inject lots 
of estrogen, progestin, etc., into the food.

procedure gender;
 begin
   IF ((c[43,1]=X) AND (c[43,2]=X)) THEN (g:=F)
   ELSE
   IF ((c[43,1]=X) AND (c[43,2]=Y)) THEN (g:=M);
 end;

Anyone else here remember Pascal?

Erm, no. A cell's not smart enough to recognize that X and Y chromasomes
are intrinsically different except during meitosis when they bundle up. To

Good point.

a cell, DNA is DNA; it's the genes that are on it that counts. The Big Gene
makes a protien that turns ovaries into testes, so:

procedure gender;
 begin
    IF (bigGenePresent=True) THEN (makeTestis)
    ELSE
    makeOvary;
 end;

Cool - maybe Pascal isn't a dead language after all!

Forming the testes, which produce androgens, is the first step into
becomming male.

This makes sense too.

There are no specifically female sex-linked traits, except when activated
by hormones. Even if a woman gets two goofy X's for gene for MPbaldness,
she will not go bald because it's ultimately triggered by DHT, which women
don't produce.

I thought that if a girl got the goofy X instead of the good X from her mom, 
and her dad gave her a goofy X (assuming this goof doesn't kill him before 
adulthood) then she would display the goof as well (assuming this goof, 
unlike M.P.B., doesn't rely on hormones she doesn't have).  But do any goofs 
like that exist?

Another good point.  A lot of standards can apply to both genders equally.
Remember last spring when Marisa posted her list of what she wanted in a
boyfriend and Kun-chan answered almost all the questions?

Heh! :)

Who knows, it might even be IC for Ranma to have standards like that (i.e. 
"knows martial arts", "cooks well", etc.).