#371 Mars and Venous

The blood that comes back to the heart through the veins is called venous blood. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that it’s pronounced like Venus the Roman goddess of love. Mars and Venus figure heavily into today’s pop psychology of relationships. Supposedly men and women just see things different ways—one or the other more emotional about some things, one or the other more rational, or possibly practical. Evolutionary scientists will tell us that monogamous pair bonding helps facilitate the development of the dependent child and ultimately helps to promulgate both the pair’s gene packet and the species as a whole. All well and good. What they can’t seem to explain is why the toilet seat left up or down is such a big deal. Once, when chastised about my male proclivity for leaving the toilet seat up, I queried my accuser about what she thought. She maintained that in her world, the toilet seat down was the default setting. I returned, well in my world the default setting is up, and since when you are about to use the facility you’re on your way down anyhow you might as well just sweep the seat on with you in kind of a drop and plop swooping butt pirouette sort of thing. So when you’re done, I added, please put the toilet seat back up. Us menfolk could then remain standing. In my next relationship, I arrived at a different compromise. Put the whole furry lid down. That way neither one of us had the convenience of our respective default positions. Relationships that suffer together stay together. The bathroom looked a lot nicer too.
Well science comes to the rescue once again. No, there’s not a foot-activated button that raises or lowers the seat like a kitchen trash bucket (although that would be a good idea). I’m talking science not technology anyway. The word from science is, essentially, give up. Researchers recently discovered that there are over 12,000 genes in mice that are expressed differently because of maleness or femaleness. Like their eponymous planets, Mars and Venus won’t be entering each other’s orbit anytime soon. Human DNA is loaded with all kinds of genes, many of which only turn on and off at different times of our life, usually because of some chemical trigger. Sex hormones, for instance, when they kick in at adolescence, trigger the genes for breasts and facial hair and suchlike. That’s why we don’t see too many bearded babies. Well apparently, male and female hormones cause different expressions of over 12,000 genes in brain, liver, fat and muscle tissues. Conclusion: Being male or female is even different in your liver. When your wife has a gut feeling, it’s probably different than your gut feeling. Her fat genes are expressed differently than your fat genes. And if you’ve ever been talking to your wife and used the words fat and genes in the same sentence you know what I mean.
America, ya gotta love it.