Study: Blondes Are an Endangered Species

[sjeantet]

Dye Changes Genes?

How does girls dying their hair blonde, brunette, blue or green have any effect on their genes? The story seems to insuate that somehow the fact that non-natural blonds dye their hair is going to result in fewer natural blonds. How does that make any sense at all?!?

 

[Vector]

Re: Fusion is a reality today, well almost...

Originally posted by ktlx


Scientists have been able to achieve fusion for quite some time. They just cannot figure out how to control it to make anything other than a bomb.

The earlier claims of cold fusion are suspect. Some skeptical scientists have claimed that the tiny amount of energy generated could have come from larger chemical reactions.

In my opinion, fossil fuels will be extinct before we can gather energy from any fusion reaction besides our sun. The only evidence we have for sustained fusion reactions require masses and pressures on a scale that are unthinkable for a earth-bound environment.

I said they have not been able to do it on a large enough scale or consistently enough to be used as an energy source, so for that discussion it was irrelevant. The type of fusion that scientists have achieved is used in the H-bomb, but it is not quite the same as fusion which occurs in the sun. While it does combine hydrogen ions (deuterium) to create helium and give off energy, it has to use nuclear fission in order to do it and gives off great deals of radiation.

Cold fusion is highly suspect, and after scientists actually looked over the results of the first claim most of them decided the results were false. In a report by the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy it was shown that the results thought to be cold fusion did not produce near enough energy to have actually been fusion.

In order to achieve fusion we would need large sources of deuterium, hig pressures, and extremely high temperatures. The surface waters of the earth contain more than 10 million million tons of deuterium, an essentially inexhaustible supply. Scientists have been able to achieve temperatures that are 20 times that required for fusion and high pressures can be produced. It making high temperatures and pressures at the same time that makes fusion harder. Department of Energy and several sponsored programs are making progress in fusion and have produced, in some cases, tens of millions of watts of energy.

 

[madamimadam]

Re: Finally somebody gets it...

Originally posted by sjeantet


Honestly, ultimately, does it matter if natural blonde hair as a recessive gene gets left at the wayside? Did any of you see the "25 Hottest Blondes" ranking on E! TV? Of the 25, maybe 5 of them were natural blondes. It doesn't matter even a little if a girl is a natural blonde or bottle blonde. No guy that I know cares! That's like asking if her chest is natural or "enhanced". Most guys just simply do not care!

WOOOOOH there tiger.... I think that last statement is a bit bold. Most people I know like their women to be natural but I would not use the people I know as a basis to say most guys care.

 

[xyzzy]

Originally posted by madamimadam
All I have to say is that who ever wrote that article had NO idea what they were on about.

Agreed.

There are more than four gene loci that control human hair color. It's not as simple as 'two recessive blond genes = blond appearance'.

Also, how the hell could the blonde population be declining because men are more attracted to bottle blondes????

The 'blonde' gene frequency depends on how often blondes reproduce. If men find blonde women more attractive (and/or if women find blond men more attractive), they will mate with them in preference to brunettes: blondes will have more children and the 'blonde' gene frequency will increase. If, on the other hand, genetic brunettes remove this 'sexual selection' by using hair dye that attracts those who would otherwise seek out real blondes, thus 'fooling' them into mating with a genetic brunette, real blondes will have fewer children and the frequency of the blonde gene in the general population will decrease.

Not that most of the stories get this right...

 

[topicolo]

Re: Dye Changes Genes?

Originally posted by sjeantet
How does girls dying their hair blonde, brunette, blue or green have any effect on their genes? The story seems to insuate that somehow the fact that non-natural blonds dye their hair is going to result in fewer natural blonds. How does that make any sense at all?!?

In high-school biology you get taught that that the reason a recessive allele can be dispropotionately high in a population is because it is selected for in breeding (men dig blonde chicks). If everybody dyes their hair blonde, natural blonds wouldn't be especially favored because us guys can't tell the difference between a bottled blonde and a real one. Therefore the number of blondes alleles in the population will decrease. I find it hard to believe that they'll all be wiped out though. If the breeding is random (or close to it), the hardy-weinberg equilibrium will come into effect and the proportion of blonde alleles in the gene pool will stay constant at some level.
Jeez, I didn't think I even knew that much about genetics until I started typing

 

[Sun Baked]

There probably should be a blonde joke lurking in the possiblity of the blonde going the way dodo bird.