Ask an editor: What's in those male genes? By Tom Brooker News-Chronicle Many of our problems are new, others are age-old. We have some of both today. Let's dig in with a classic. ... Grace J. of Seymour says: "After my second marriage failed even more miserably than my first, I decided to be really, REALLY picky and play the field. Now that I've been dating for the better part of three years, I have 'sampled' a wide array of mankind. So, I have an observation and a question. Men can be kind, men can be generous, men can be good-looking and caring. But how come, regardless of all their other great qualities, men are so universally STUPID? And they run the world! I just don't get it." Answer: We run the world because we got first dibs on making the rules. Take, for example, the male-made concept of "span of control." Loosely, this is MBA-speak for the number of people one person can supervise effectively. In practice, it means that a road crew needs five people to pound in a pole: two to hold it, one to whap it, a guy to run for coffee and, of course, a supervisor. However, Grace, it really isn't our fault. A team of genetic experts at the University of Halifax culminated seven years of research with the discovery of a nest of "disconnect genes" unique to male Homo Sapiens. In hunting down the "I'm not lost" gene, researchers fell upon a host of similar chromosomal defects. Gene x-864, for example, keeps a male from stopping before he hopelessly knots up his shoestrings. In test after test, the team witnessed a parade of blank-faced men gaze at the bow knot as it got tighter and tighter until they could pull no more. Remarkably, the men blamed this on the shoestrings, not the pullers. Gene x-902 is another shocker. It seems this causes otherwise normal men to beg little children to pull their finger so they can rip off loud bwaaps of gas. When researchers removed this gene, not only did the men no longer offer their digits for flatulent purposes, but they didn't even think the practice was funny. In this regard, they became just like women. Gene x-581 mysteriously dupes men into thinking they can repair things way beyond their ken. This accounts for 1,358 electrocutions per year, scientists say. A little further down the double-helix is gene x-697. Men who possess this read the words "Danger: Thin Ice" as "Ignore the Ice, You Walk on Water Anyway." The most amazing gene of all, though, is x-1004. This is the gene which causes "mature" men to look in the mirror and see themselves as Cary Grant when the rest of the world sees them as Harry Carray. Men with the x-1004 gene talk about getting "trophy wives" and genuinely feel they could have played professional sports or starred in movies if only they had gotten the right breaks. Such as talent. Kevin B. of Leeman has a new problem: "I heard on the radio that it took Noah Webster 30 years to produce his 'American Dictionary of the English Language' and it sold out in one year - in England! Is that true?" Answer: Amazingly, Kevin, it IS true. Webster's biggest challenge was taking English English and adding to it American English, complete with our unique way of spelling. Webster turned "plough" into "plow," but "cough" wasn't translated as "cow." He had a dickens of a time with such things. But Webster's dictionary was popular in England for reasons other than Dickens. By the time it was published in 1828, the United States and England had finally kissed and made up after two wars, and vigorous trade between the two countries ensued. Britons by the thousands were forced to buy Webster's dictionary in order to discover what their American cousins meant when they called English merchants "vultures" and "chuckleheads" and "dumber than a deer-lick." As a form of revenge, the Brits eventually bombarded our airwaves with psuedo-English from "Monty Phython's Flying Circus" and the songs of Billy Idol. Tom Brooker is editor of The Green Bay News-Chronicle. You can ask him anything through regular mail (P.O. Box 2467, Green Bay, WI 54306) or e-mail, [email protected].