Vikings "party[ing] in the city where the heat is on", Birds, and Esperanza Spalding's hair.

What I think is a Greater bird of Paradise (stolen from http://dickeybirds.com/Bird_of_Paradise.htm)

Day2

Well. It seems I'm showing some degree of commitment, or at least more than I'm used to. I guess this is a step in the right direction then. If I can commit to writing down my thoughts then maybe they'll be more inclined to commit to themselves.

I thought of human phenotypic plasticity today.
As humans we usually don't immediately apply the laws of biology that we've discovered to ourselves. But, we're no different and thus are subject to the same principles that underlie all of life. So, I wonder if somewhere in our physiology there is some type of developmental crossroads whereat (is that a word, I don't care) the human body can chose to become suited for climate x or climate y. Maybe in the physiological processes that involve sensitivity to cold or heat. Is a humans tolerance for temperature (or at least their tendency to complain) a reflection of their genetics, or their environment. That is to say, is one's ability to deal with the cold or heat permanent and fixed at birth by my parents contributions to my genome or can it be modulated so as to deal with a person of Nordic descent born in Miami.
I'll have to research this...

I also thought of hair quality as an honest indicator of potential mate health.
In other animals it is common for some elaborate structure to develop almost entirely just to entice a female to engage. (sword tails, birds of paradise) one of the theories is that these structures serve as honest indicators of the overall health of the organism in question.
Is human hair one of these indicators? What other possible significance could hair have possibly served for the past... ~10,000 years?

The lovely Esperanza Spalding complete with intensely righteous hair.

Beginning and smiles

So, I've made a blog. Mainly to alleviate the building sense of urgency to record my thoughts in some way. I hope that upon exposure to the universe my thoughts will at least curdle or become intellectually oxidized as opposed to withering to memory husks in my mind like they are wont to do on a normal basis. (By the way I have only a primitive understanding of how to actually use that construction there (wont to do) so if anyone has better grammar/english skills than I, don't hesitate to tell me what a blundering blithering fool I sound. But don't do it too much because I probably won't care most of the time)
At any rate, I'm calling myself Thinker; clearly a pretty pretentious title to give myself but I hope to live up to its name because I have noticed that I think an awful lot. That's not to say that most people don't think a lot (I'm sure threes some kind of physiological constraint to how many thoughts are actually passed through neurons/unit time) but I feel like some of the ideas that find themselves spawned of the primordial conditions of my mind need to be thrown into the world (or at least in front of a digital firing squad).

What have I thought today....

why do so many people smile like they're in pain?
heres one!

This is the apparently lovely  Robin Meade which, to be entirely honest with you I had no idea existed until I typed in "news anchor smiles" searching for some of the fakest smiles I could think of five seconds ago. (Ironically it was on another blog entirely dedicated to pictures of this woman. (Is that irony? I never can tell))

So clearly smiles-- their shape, their duration, their ease of arousal--must be a function of the person employing them. I think we can assume that they are a learned behavior as well (all too easily seen in high school cliques where all the girls with eyebrows one hair thick smile the same way). So what the hell influenced this girl to smile this way? anyway...At any rate it would be interesting to conduct a comparative facial expression study and see if different cultures express their emotions with slightly different mannerisms and accompanying facial cues...



Maybe some more poignant things another day.