I knew from the very beginning of my life, when I was a baby, that I wanted to grow my hair out. My father had long, flowing, curly, black hair from the time he was very young and I was always fascinated by it growing up. As I became older, I wanted my hair to be as long as possible because, of course, my idols were rock stars. They were Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and many more famous scientists who had long, extravagant hair. These men were champions for science and rebelled against societal norms in their respective times. By the time I reached my freshman year of college, I knew having long hair was more than a symbol of beauty and rebellion, it was a statement of who I am as a person. My hair is a part of my cultural identity that tells a lot about my personality. I’m not just that professor that has long, flowing hair. I am a quirky, goofy, funny, and groovy dude, but I am also very intellectual, analytical and introspective. As I continued to learn about the powers of hair from studying indigenous peoples, I discovered I have ancestral roots of the Mayan people from my father’s side. In the Mayan culture, hair is sacred and promotes self-esteem, self-respect, a sense of belonging, and a healthy sense of pride because hair is an extension of yourself. So moral of the story is don’t cut your hair short or else you’ll lose your powers!
Lemmy Del Cid, M.S., LFFFHCfSS
Anthropology Instructor
Department of Social Sciences
Long Beach City College
Long Beach, California, USA
posted by Marc Abrahams in LFHCfS (Hair Clubs) | Comments Off on Lemmy Del Cid joins the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Social Scientists
The authors, at Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Pennsylvania, report:
“People tend to fall asleep when gently rocked or vibrated. Experimental studies have shown that rocking promotes sleep in humans and mice. However, the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon are not well understood. A habituation model proposes that habituation, a form of non-associative learning, mediates sleep induction by monotonous stimulation. Here, we show that gentle vibration promotes sleep in Drosophila in part through habituation.”
(Thanks to Mark Benecke for bringing this to our attention.)
posted by Marc Abrahams in Research News | Comments Off on Gently Rocking Fruit Flies to Sleep
Ants were in use as miniaturized characters in Brazilian nativity scenes until at least the 1960s.
“Present in Brazil since the beginning of Portuguese colonization, crèche nativity scenes were soon adapted to local reality, a propitious circumstance for the appearance of heterodox conceptions and the use of exotic elements of the fauna and flora peculiar to each region. As records about insects are very uncommon, it is noteworthy that females of leaf-cutting ants, Atta sp. (Hymenoptera, Formicidae), were used to compose crèche nativity scenes in São Paulo State.”
The authors of a research paper on the subject, which was published in Anais do Museu Paulista: História e Cultura Material, 16(2), 105-127, suggest that the custom of Nativity-scene ant-dressing may have links with the work of Jules-Victor-André Martin (1832 – 1906) the painter, teacher, architect, lithographer, cartographer, draftsman, builder and Brazilian businessman of French origin, who had a penchant for depicting dressed-up ants in his artworks.
