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.

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.

Hysteria!

One of my friends on Facebook posted this link:

Do we need to have a full investigation when a woman miscarries to ensure she did not actually purposefully induce an abortion? If you're Bobby Franklin, a Georgia Representative, your answer would be "yes."

Well, if you read the bill, it doens't actually call for investigations. I pointed this out. The response from my friend:

Roy, I absolutely disagree. Read lines 118 through 120 of the bill. Determination of whether there was "no human involvement whatsoever" can only be made through investigation; it is implicit in the bill.

So apparently it's more dog-whistle hysteria. If reality isn't sufficient to gin up your outrage, find a way to read it as code for something more sinister. I said:

I think that is a possible reading, but an incorrect one, and one that would be impossible to implement. You don't investigate without probable cause.

yielding this response:

If a bill is that open to interpretation, it is insufficiently specific and therefore poorly crafted.

and, from another person:

Bills like this don't get written until they've been analyzed, strategized, etc., to a fine point. The fact that two people can look at it and find room enough to interpret it so differently is no accident. And history has shown that, when this is the case with legislation, the true intent of the legislation is usually closer to the more extreme, dire interpretation.

You see? It's all a conspiracy! They intentionally wrote it to be interpreted (though only by its opponents) as calling for investigations, although the bill itself never says "shall be investigated" or any such thing. My final reply:

I didn't say the bill is open to interpretation, I said it could be read incorrectly. The bill does not call for investigations. It simply doesn't. To say that it does, which your source claims, is a lie. If it's a lie you want to believe strongly enough that you find a way to believe it, that's your call to make.

I'm not saying it's a good bill. I don't know what it purports to address -- whether there's a legitimate problem of some kind, and whether this bill would address it. It doesn't appear that this thread is the place to discuss the bill, but just a jumping-off point for people to vent their political spleens.

I thought it might be fun to occasionally post pieces like this to my blog, as a reminder not to get so caught up in wanting to be outraged by the political opposition that I set aside all critical thinking. I will try to include similar pieces from the conservative side, for I know they happen, too, and that I'm more likely to be caught up in them.

Caroling

I'll be caroling with Master Chords at Bayou Bend on Dec 2, 9, and 10.
Details on the flier.

70 pushups!

I've been doing my push-ups* in sets: 20 push-ups, hop up, rest 10 seconds, down and do 20 more, etc., for a total of 80 push-ups (my third rest period is 15 or 20 seconds). I think I've done them that way for two weeks now. The hope is, of course, that it will increase the number I can do all in a row.

This morning, I did a progress test, and there was definite improvement. There's always some variability in how many I can do, so it might range from 63 to 67, but today I did 70. I have never, ever, done 70 at a stretch. So yay. I'll keep doing the sets, and probably slowly increase the number per set.

*Hmmm...no hyphen in the title, but hyphen here. There doesn't seem to be a consistent version in Google.

Can't Go Bach Again

At the end of the Bach choral season in the spring, we have re-auditions. This allows Albert (the conductor) to review what he's got, and compare it to any potential new members auditioning. This year, I didn't hear back from Albert in a timely fashion. Around mid-summer, I got a phone message from him asking me to call back. I did, and left him a message. Then later, another.

I took the fact that I got a phone call rather than an email as a negative sign. Not hearing back was another. Finally, I got the email that confirms that I'm not in the core group for this season.

Sigh.

We All Deal Feet

We went to Ideal Feet today. As you may know, Shelly has been plagued with foot and back pain for years. I heard Ideal Feet's commercials on 740 KTRH (which, I have to say, is not the best place to find things to try) and I thought it would be worth looking into.

The first thing to say about them is we do not like the way they do business. Most notably (and you'll find this complaint if you web search) is that they have no money-back guarantee. No refunds. Their policy on this is

"Since our products are personal items we do not offer refunds. But should you have any difficulty wearing the supports we will adjust them for FREE!"

What? I should point out that an "adjustment" means you bring them back and they re-measure and give you a different size. And you can do that at any time, as often as needed. The point being, they don't mind taking them back, they just don't want to give you your money back over your dissatisfaction. So it might help to think of this as a service contract, and not merely paying $400 for a couple of pairs of insoles.

On to our experience: we were helped by Brandon, who is a nice guy, and when he's not in the process of delivering the company-mandated spiel, seemed to be inclined to be honest with us. He is a salesman, and was up-front about having no medical expertise.

The spiel, on the other hand, is unadulterated hucksterism. It consists of mentioning "aligning 26 bones and 33 joints" any number of times; a "balance test" that doesn't test balance, but purports to show that the insoles provide stability (but is really just a bit of trickery worthy of the Church of Scientology); and taking impressions of your foot without and with the insoles to show how the pressure distribution changes, which is the most honest (and relevant) bit.

Then came the fitting. He measured Shelly's feet— the significant measurement being the arch length— and took "2 seconds" (yes, part of the script) to go to the back and pick out the insoles for her. Shelly asked whether this was a one-size-fits all solution, and he said that, no, there are some 40+ sizes back there, very precisely sized by arch length (not arch height). As your feet adapt, your arch length can change, and you would then need to come in for a re-fit (i.e., exchange them for a different size).

The insoles are noticeable: there's a big lump right under the middle of your arch, which requires you to gradually work up to wearing them for extended periods. Shelly required that I go through the fitting, as well. I actually like the main insoles; the secondary ones (that you wear when you're not wearing your primary ones, to keep your feet from reverting) I did not like.

In the end, in spite of all the red flags, we got a set for Shelly. Desperation makes you try things that you would otherwise consider stupid. Maybe the company is counting on that. There is a chance that this is a worthwhile product, and that the company is just horrible about how they do their marketing.

We'll let you know. So in the meantime, feel free to go in for a fitting. Enjoy the spiel. But don't buy anything. Tell them you're waiting to hear how they work out for us.