Through a Glass Lightly

And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
Spike Milligan

At least one in four of us normal personages respond to bright lights by sneezing. This is called the photic sneeze reflex (from photos, the Greek word for light) or ACHOO syndrome - is true! (Autosomal-dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst). It was first medically described in 1978 but people have been known to sneeze after looking at the sun since Aristotle pulled his pants down; he blamed the effect of heat on the nose as the cause for sneezing.
In fact, the disorder is caused by confused signalling from the trigeminal nerve. This trigeminal nerve is responsible for sensation in the face. Somewhere along its passage to the brain the nerve impulses from around the eye and inside the nose become scrambled. This phenomen is the reason I can smell with my eyes and see through my nose. The brain is tricked into thinking that a visual stimulus is a nasal one. The result is that the body tries to "expel" the light by sneezing. This surprisingly common trait is actually inherited - make sure you change your will. Both men and women can get it and they have a 50:50 chance of passing it on to their children.

This is quite exciting and I have begun building an iPhone Photographic App that is activated by a sneeze and allows you to control aperture, ISO, and shutter speeds with winks. Downloadable from a nasal cavity near you soon!

Several sneezes were used in creating todays blip and as can be seen NasalLight 1 doesn't work to well. Apologies for that and I am working right now on an updated version of NasalLight 1.1 for iPhone which will be available as a free upgrade with the first sneeze at first light in the morning.