Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 1, 1993 TAG: 9309010270
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A: They've done experiments in which they've transferred arm hair to someone's scalp. Guess what happens. Right. People walk up to you and say, ``Excuse me, but you appear to have arm hair growing on your head.''
Head hair and arm hair are the same thing. Both are types of ``terminal hair,'' as opposed to ``lanugo hair,'' also known as ``vellus hair,'' which is the almost invisible, pigmentless hair that covers most of your body and is left over from the days when we dragged our knuckles on the ground except for the odd moment when we reached up and scratched our underarms.
There's no major difference between head hair and arm hair, except that arm hair has a shorter growing cycle (called the ``anagen'' of the hair). It'll grow a few weeks or months and then stop growing. The hair will sit in the follicle for a while, then fall out. Head hair, on the other hand, can grow for years and years. At any given moment, 80 percent to 85 percent of the hair on your head is in the growing phase, while the rest is just sitting there waiting to fall out.
All this is genetically determined, and varies from person to person - some people have hair that will grow until it reaches the ground, while others can't grow it longer than about shoulder length.
We should note that hair is, in fact, skin. Same thing. Hair is made out of keratin.
``Keratin is the major structural protein of the skin,'' says Alan Moshell, a dermatologist at the National Institutes of Health. ``Hair is a modification of skin. So is nail. So is whiskers in dogs and cats and feathers in chicken. They're all skin modification.''
We had always assumed hair was something totally different. Thread, maybe.
\ The Mailbag:
Charlene M. of Depew, N.Y., was just one of several readers who referred us to Genesis 3:16 for a biblical explanation of why childbirth is so painful: ``Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. ... ''
Dear Charlene: Yep, and that's not the end of the sentence, because God then tells Eve that her husband ``shall rule over thee.''
So let's tabulate the results of the apple episode: Eve has to obey the man and do the laundry and cook the dinner and make 59 cents, or whatever, for every dollar the man makes, f+bandf-b scream in agony during childbirth, but Adam is merely told that he's going to have to be a farmer. It hardly seems fair. But then again maybe she should have told that serpent (who was not yet condemned to a life of slithering) to take a hike.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB