Redhead

I had heard Mary Roach was a good science writer, but after reading The Roots of Desire I'm not so sure. Much of the book is devoted to religion rather than science as Roach explores her Judeo-Christian fascination with her own hair color. Even in the section nominally called "Science" she devotes more time to describing her emotions while meeting scientists than the science they happened to be doing. I don't really care that Mary Roach had lots of boyfriends and a pentagram necklace in high school - tell me more about the MC1R gene! Alas, this book does not. It's more personal memoir than science writing.

As an interesting aside, I posted a question on the StackExchange biology site to perhaps gain some more information. Cara's been playing there, so I thought I'd give it a try. Egad, the answers are worse than what one gets on StackOverflow! One answerer entoned that "Melanin is formed through evolution due to Darwinism" and followed this up by claiming "If you are whiter you required more Electromagnetic energy absorbtion for other processes so you gained characteristics that would enable that flow of energy." Special stuph! But not as special as the editors of that site, who could care less about crappy content as they police possible offense. Somehow "redhead" has become "insulting language" and therefore must be edited out. Never one to stand for censorship, especially when it's based on emotion, I'll just keep putting "redhead" back in. In fact I feel a whole series of questions on people with mutated MC1R genes coming on...