Friday, March 9, 2012

Hypothesis: Red hair is a Neanderthal trait

They've constructed a Neanderthal model based on DNA. One finding: red hair.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1058538/Meet-Wilma-The-face-Neanderthal-woman-revealed-time.html

They have found that modern humans share 1 to 4% of their DNA with Neanderthals. Present-day Africans do not have Neanderthal DNA. This suggests to me that breeding with Neanderthals is responsible for a fair amount of the diversity of human morphology, including red hair and fair skin.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1987568,00.html

Another recent discovery : redheads have different pain pathways. They are less sensitive to pain, and less susceptible to pain blockers. There's something genetic there, and my hypothesis is that it's in those Neanderthal-introduced genes.
http://gizmodo.com/5890532/redheads-feel-pain-differently-to-the-rest-of-us

Also, the redhead at the top of the Gizmodo article bears a passing resemblance to Wilma, the Neanderthal model.

Monday, March 5, 2012

You can read this in milliseconds

This is the second article I've seen lately that talks about how quickly something happens, and specifying the time in milliseconds. Yes, a millisecond is a short time. 400 milliseconds, though, is more appropriately referred to as four tenths of a second. 250 milliseconds is a quarter second.

Is it a matter of precision? I doubt it. I don't think that 400 milliseconds is exactly the amount of time that caused people to get exasperated with a page load. 390 was ok, but 400 wasn't? Not buying it.