Finger Art

Even after 4 1/2 years of marraige, you learn something new. Today, I learned that Becca doesn't like her fingerprints. "They're boring and not pretty." I didn't know that people had opinions about their fingerprints. What constitutes a good looking fingerprint? I mean, it's not really art.

This came up because the FBI is proposing a database of people's characteristics, like eye patterns and palm prints. Before fingerprints, they used your measurements and other factors to determine identities (mostly among criminals). Then they developed fingerprinting and now we also have DNA testing. Maybe it'll be like the movies - they just scan your eye and advertise to you and you can pay for stuff with your eye rather than carry a wallet. Ok, nevermind, it does seem a little weird.

Today I just picked up some fingerprinting merit badges for a few young men that earned it a couple of months ago. I learned a couple things when I got ready to teach it. For instance, identical twins have different fingerprints. They are similar, with similar whorls and loops and such, but there are noticable differences because there is some random part of your fingerprint that depends on the mother's nutrition, position in the womb, etc. The DNA is the same (for identical twins), but not the fingerprints. There actually was a famous case in England where an identical twin was charged for his twin's crime and was finally released by fingerprint evidence.

Well, enough of fingerprints. If your finger art doesn't satisfy you, there's always sandpaper.