It's funny that most of the jokes tend to revolve around becoming some sort of super hero. The stranger thing is that no one has pondered the potential cons having the ability to see beyond the spectrum. Or maybe I don't read enough comic books?
From Slashdot: "Seriously though, as someone who has a hearing range beyond the standard I sympathise with people forced to endure irritating stimuli that noone else notices and hence cares about. I remember having to leave a bar once because the tube was going on their old television; the high pitched screech was like nails down a blackboard. My girlfriend thought I was mad."
A CRT TV will generally make a 15.7kHz squeal because of the flyback transformer. Not everyone can hear this high: between ages 20 and 40 most people lose hearing down from 20kHz to 10kHz.
In that topic I found the following quote to resonate strongly with me:
"I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to — I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body. And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way."
“HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.”
I read something on imgur or here some days ago from a guy who could "see" some UV. He had to wear polarizing glasses because of headaches and had developed a fascination for violet objects.
Apparently the human retina can detect some UV wavelengths, but the UV light is normally blocked by the lens and does not reach the retina.
Some patients who have had replacement artificial lenses develop the ability to see some portion of the UV spectrum. My mum now has this - she had lens replacement last year and following that she mentioned that a lot of things appeared more purple in some circumstances - my brother did some research and found out about the UV detection.
Older people who get operations for synthetic lens replacements often get to see in UV.
Younger patients get given lenses with coatings that block the UV as over time the UV can damage the retina, but they don't tend to bother with the elderly so as a bonus they get fatter rainbows.
> I have 20/11 vision with a mutation that causes me to see a lower-band of UV. It overstimulates my ocular processing and causes migraines. I wear amber glass eye glasses with +.02 diopiter lenses to help reduce this problem. Because of this, I have an absolute obsession and facination with purple objects.
I remember the original poster participated in the comment section but (sigh) I don't know how to get there.
