Sexin' up the Bio Blog Just a Bit

I used to be a very regular poster over on the Usenet group talk.origins. Talk.origins is known not only for the highly intelligent and enlightening discussions vis a vis evolution, creationism, and biology in general, but also its huge numbers of puns, in-jokes, and variously interesting (and completely off-topic) posts.

This is one of mine from June 14, 2004, that I am actually particularly proud of.

As Matt Silberstein said immediately after I posted it:

I nominate this for a new category, Off Topic Post of the Month.

It was inventive, thorough, "scientific", humorous, and just plain
pointless.

I give to you: my analysis of the 2004 "VH1's Hottest Hotties" list, with analysis of racial-and-hair color data. Today I could write this up in a much more "scientific" way, but I've already wasted too much time with it and I'd rather just post the old one as-is.

Actually, _my_ opinion was that most "sex symbols" were non-white. I think here you're referring to the original poster.



And, just to prove that I have way too much time on my hands, I did a little informal survey of VH1's "100 Hottest Hotties" list (available at VH1.com). First I removed all the men from the hundred (because, dammit, it's my survey and I'll do what I want to) leaving fifty-eight of the
hotties to survey. I looked at the list and determined what the skin/hair color of the hotties was. For those whose assets were unfamiliar to me, I spent a bit of time looking up the names on the IMDB -- I went with the main image on the actress's main page. For simplicity, I merely went with white/not-white and blonde/not-blonde. The abbreviations should be obvious. Many of these actresses have changed their hair color at times; I went with whatever the most recent look I could remember was. Disagreements on that matter should go to /dev/null. Here's the list:

100 Amy Smart (w/b)
98 Jessica Biel (w/nb)
96 Vivica A. Fox (nw/nb)
95 Heather Graham (w/b)
93 Lucy Lui (nw/nb)
91 Keira Knightley (w/b)
90 Courteney Cox (w/b)
88 Olsen Twins (w/b)*
86 Serena Williams (nw/nb)
85 Ashley Judd (w/nb)
83 Shakira (nw/b)
81 Charlize Theron (w/b)
80 Adrianna Lima (nw/nb)**
79 Alyssa Milano (w/nb)
77 Christina Aguilera (w/b)***
75 Kylie Minogue (w/nb)
73 Brittany Murphy (w/b)
71 Eva Mendes (nw/nb)
69 Sarah Michelle Gellar (w/b)
67 Gabrielle Union (nw/nb)
66 Scarlett Johannsen (w/b)
64 Penelope Cruz (nw/nb)
63 Ashanti (nw/nb)
62 Jenna Jameson (w/b)
60 Rebecca Romijn Stamos (w/b)
58 Kate Bosworth (w/b)
56 Laura Prepon (w/nb)
54 Tyra Banks (nw/nb)
52 Naomi Watts (w/b)
50 Catherine Zeta-Jones (w/nb)
48 Julia Roberts (w/nb)
46 Jessica Alba (w/nb)
44 Heather Locklear (w/b)
43 Mandy Moore (w/nb)
41 Katie Holmes (w/nb)
42 Brooke Burns (nw/nb)
38 Kate Hudson (w/b)
36 Gisele (w/nb)
35 Kate Beckinsale (w/nb)
33 Gwen Stefani (w/b)
31 Nicole Kidman (w/nb) ****
30 Denise Richards (w/nb)
28 Diane Lane (w/nb)
26 Anna Kournikova (w/b)
25 Salma Hayek (nw/nb)
23 Carmen Electra (w/nb)
22 Demi Moore (w/nb)
20 Jessica Simpson (w/b)
19 Jennifer Aniston (w/nb)
17 Cameron Diaz (w/b)
15 Mischa Barton (w/nb)
13 Jennifer Garner (w/nb)
11 J. Lo's Ass (nw/nb)*****
9 Pam Anderson (w/b)
7 Halle Berry (nw/nb)
4 Britney Spears (w/b)
2 Angelina Jolie (w/nb)
1 Beyonce (nw/nb)

*The Olsen Twins were counted as one on the VH1 list, and who am I to argue?

**No pics on main page of IMDB -- I found an image gallery and went with the flow.

***I know that Christina Aguilera is supposedly "ethnic". Whatever.

****Nicole Kidman's been changing her hair a lot lately. In her most recent movie she has dark hair. Good enough for me.

*****Yes, she is really listed as "J. Lo's Ass" on the list. And no, I'm not making any jokes about the hair color on J. Lo's Ass. Not a one.

Of this list, thirty-five of the fifty-eight are non-blonde, and fifteen of the fifty-eight are non-white. (There is one who is both non-white and blonde, the singer Shakira.) Of the non-whites, seven are generic "ethnic", seven are black, and one is Asian (Lucy Liu). So that while
non-whites do not dominate the list numerically, non-blondes do. Also note that the top of the list is more non-white, non-blonde than the list as a whole; the top four positions are all non-blonde, and only one of those is white. The top white is that annoyingly artificial Pam Anderson.

If one takes Amy Smart as 1 and Beyonce as 58, and average all the scores, then whites have a total score of 1322, and an average score of 30.74. Non-whites have a total score of 399, and an averaage score of 26.60. Blondes have a total score of 570 and an average score of 25.90.
Non-blondes have a total score of 1124 and an average score of 32.11.

All of which proves conclusively that I have way too much time on my hands. And probably watch too much TV. And since I've probably made an arithmetic error somewhere above, that I was just wasting my time to begin with. But then again, I knew that anyway.

--
Finding a scientific theory of creation is a bit like parsing /dev/null.

--Daniel Harper

(change terra to earth for email)