You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But…do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? If not, please extricate yourself from the rock you’ve been living under. Everyone knows Rudolph.
From humble beginnings in Robert May’s children’s book in 1939, Rudolph and his glowing red schnoz have spawned an empire. Rounding out his rich mythos are the all too familiar Christmas song and the stop motion TV tale of an elf with dental aspirations, a portly prospector and our lovable, outcast young buck.
Of course, as with most myths and legends, there is some grain of truth hiding somewhere. This Christmas, science tackled the origin of Rudolph and his shiny nose. A research team, led by Can Ince of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, published a study just last week in the British Medical Journal explaining this Christmas mystery.
I’ve come to realize recently that it’s been quite a while since I’ve been able to update miGENE. My apologies. What, with this whole running experiments, working on a thesis, and generally trying to graduate and move to the next phase in life, I’ve been a bit busy. It’s really enough to give someone a headache. I promise, I’ll keep up as much as I’m able, but as I near the end, the posts may necessarily come a bit less regularly.
