Anybody else old enough to remember the Paul Simon song by that name?  I never did understand all the words, but it was fun to sing.

Now I’ve come across some info that says some people don’t have fingerprints, and the people at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have found out what causes it.   Apparently it’s caused by the defect of a protien known as karetin 14, and is a rare genetic disorder. 

Now, if I were a slightly paranoid science fiction writer I’d say this new info has ‘exploitation’ written all over it.  Can’t you just see the mad scientist working X-men style to manipulate some poor sot’s DNA?

But then again, if it’s extremly rare in the first place, it would be easy enough (in the case of a crime clean of fingerprints) to just check on the whereabouts of those people known to have no fingerprints.  And since anyone can slip on a pair of gloves, it mightn’t be worth the trouble of any wanna-be master-of-the-universe to develop a way to impose this condition on a previously fingerprinted individual.

Still, it has all kinds of connotations of invisibility in society just begging to be written about . . . if I were a slightly paranoid science fiction writer.