LOST Theories For S6E9 Ab Aeterno March 23rd, 2010

I will attempt to tie the following pop culture themes together in summarizing last night’s episode of LOST. A Bar, Bugs Bunny, The Whedonverse, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars, Star Trek, Wargames, The Brady Bunch, Jim Croce, current events involving India and Bangladesh, and Myst.

Do not try this at home. Ok, give me lots of room.

First off, love the show. LOST continues to be a drug that I cannot kick. It’s also a lot like golf. I suck at it. It drives me nuts. However, all it takes is one good drive or putt, or one chip shot out of a bunker and onto green and I am willing to keep coming back. It is the junkie that promises me some real high quality stuff as a sample (Pilot) that hooks me deep only make me pay for more, which turns out to be crap (Nikki and Paulo) and then when I threaten to go somewhere else starts to give me some really quality stuff again (Season 5 and 6.)

Ok, now that the ridiculously thin analogous connections are out of the way, let’s hug it out.

RICHARD ALPERT
"Ab Aeterno" or “from the beginning” is the title and that conjures up all sorts of ideas about struggles that last an eternity. But more importantly, it is about the struggle for the audience to check off their Richard Alpert bingo cards for correct theories. “B-7: He’s a slave” “BINGO!”

So, that brings us to our first theory that gets partially blown out of the water. Back in Sundown, I proposed that Alpert was,

7. Richard Alpert on the black rock as an Egyptian Slave. Something causes the ship to wreck into the middle of the island and the MiB frees him. He was given long life by the MiB as a wish fulfillment but somehow caused MiB’s non corporeal state when he realizes that he’s on the wrong side and takes the role of PR man for Jacob. “It’s nice to see you out of those chains.”

Ok, it’s only slightly wrong. Richard is not Egyptian, he is Spanish or at least a resident of the Canary Islands. He rides home like he’s Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans to see his sick wife, Isabella. She needs medicine and gives him her cross as payment to the doctor who turns out to be a dick. If only healthcare reform would have existed in the 19th century. Anyway, Ricardo as he is called accidentally kills the doctor to get the medicine but is too late to save his wife who dies. He is then imprisoned and about to be executed. He asks for absolution of his sins but is told that he does not have the time to make up for it….. Yarrr, there be foreshadowing ahead. Because he can speak a little English he is sold to Magnus Hanso as a slave and bound for the New World, just not the one he thinks.

The weather started getting rough, the Black Rock ship was tossed… right through the head of the statue of Taweret, smashing it into pieces save a foot. It comes to rest in the middle of the island where it is today. That answers one of the fundamental head scratchers since Season One. How the Eff did that ship get so far inland? Now, we have Jonas Whitfield taking out slaves in order to keep himself from a prisoner uprising but he gets yanked through the hold by Smokey the Bad Guy. After attempts to escape, a boar visit, and a wife visit, Ricardo is visited on by one of the residents of Fantasy Island who lo and behold is Smokey, maybe.

The MiB gives him some water and food and tells him he is dead and in hell but there is a way to escape, kill the devil aka Jacob who oddly enough plays Satan in another kick ass show, Supernatural. MiB gives him a knife and tells him to seek out the statue and kill him but remember, earmuffs.

Ricardo heads to the foot and gets disarmed by Jacob who says, “What, me, the devil? Pfft.” Soon we have a reversal of the truth and Jacob tells Ricardo and the audience exactly what is going on. This island is a cork in a bottle. “If I could save time in a bottle…” Inside the bottle is pure evil and the island is the only thing keeping the evil from getting out. The MiB believes that humanity is inherently evil because of their nature meanwhile Jacob wants to prove him wrong. In order to do that he has to keep bring more and more people to the island to put on plays of morality without the influence of himself, which sets the stage for one of the most elaborate barguments in the history of the world. He’s done it before and that’s why Ricardo’s ship crashed on the island. Apparently, Peter Brady, here, didn’t get the lecture about playing ball in the house and broke his mom’s favorite vase. In order to help Jacob stay clear of the game, Ricardo is appointed the advisor or intermediary of the island. That brings us full circle to How Richard got on the island, why he doesn’t age, and what his purpose is. But…… as much as I want to breathe easy and relax now that one huge mystery has been solved I have to cry foul a bit.

One day soon, I will sit my daughter down and have her watch all six Star Wars movies. But I will make her watch them in the order that I had seen them, starting with A New Hope. Why? Because if you start at Episode I, you ruin the “snake in the mailbox” reveal of Empire Strikes Back. Finding out that Vader is Luke’s father makes the scene all the more awesome. But if you go into A New Hope already knowing that Anakin Skywalker IS Darth Vader then you ruin the last three movies. And because George Lucas started in the middle of the story with A New Hope, he sets himself up for a big problem by using the first three movies to explain the origins of how Anakin becomes Vader. He literally wastes so much time in Episode I setting up the chess board that he is forced to cram too much information and back story into Episode II and III and ultimately truncates the best parts of what makes up the given circumstances of Episode IV. The Clone Wars. The Betrayal of The Republic. The Rise of Palpatine as Emperor of The Empire. The same thing happens with Richard Alpert, here.

Since Season 3 we have been given this mystery of who is Richard Alpert and why does he never age. We’ve theorized and speculated for three years as to the reasons behind such a great character and finally we get the brass ring, an Alpertcentric storyline including flash backs and there is so much to say and figure out that the development of that character gets truncated to this, Alpert is a tragic man who committed murder by accident and is now on the island to atone for his sin. He loves and misses his wife and wants to live forever to absolve himself of his guilt. He is simply task man for Jacob bringing people to the island like Juliet and may or may not know how to proceed from here on out. He was shortchanged in the character development because we have less than ten episodes to wrap this all up. If not for Nestor Carbonell’s heartbreaking performance this Everlasting Gobstopper from the Carlton and Cuse Chocolate Factory would have tasted pretty sour.

THE ISLAND
Now, that was the big draw for millions of LOST fans for this episode, but ah, not everything is as it seems. Richards story was merely a backdrop for a bigger mystery to be solved and that mystery was solved a few weeks ago. The Lockeness Monster told Sawyer the island is “Just a damn island.” But it’s more than that. It is the black box stage for the play within a play. It is the sandbox. It is a blank canvas on which the continual struggle to show the true nature of humanity as it is played out over centuries with different actors. Each one is a complex game of tic-tac-toe being played by Jacob and the MiB in order to prove a point. Nobody ever wins. Frankly, it is a mere distraction to pass the time with as a jailer and his prisoner sit upon an island and discuss the meaning of life and the nature of good and evil. What happens on the island is merely a product of what people want to happen. It is basically, the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. Whoever opens the case sees what they want to see, something valuable. Locke wanted to be able to do the things he could never do again, poof arise and walk. Jack wanted to resolve the issues he has with his father and leadership, poof lead the Losties and somehow, hopefully soon, resolve those daddy issues. Sawyer wanted to find the man responsible for the death of his parents, poof here is Anthony Cooper bound and waiting for you to kill. It is as Ben put it, “The island is a magic box. Inside that box is everything you want or need to fulfill your wishes at a price. It’s the holodeck.

The fate of the island in the sideways flashes is that it sank. Perhaps it sinks because no conclusion came to the argument between Jacob and the MiB and the island merely said, “I’m out of here.” Maybe the creators of LOST are able to turn their own donkey wheel and see the future because this actually happened just recently with New Moore Island. India and Bangladesh have argued for years over ownership of the island. Sounds just like Widmore and Ben.

JACOB AND MIB
I could on for length about the relationship of these two but I will sum it up in for words. Morning, Sam. Morning, Ralph. Ok, for those of you not old enough to remember Saturday Morning Cartoons or Bugs Bunny as a series of short films, let me ‘splain. Actually, let me sum up. Go here.

"Morning Jacob"
"Morning Man in Black"

This entire “experiment” is a bargument, as I said. A distraction to pass the eons as Jacob guards the whole from evil and in that role he keeps the MiB from escaping the island. If he were to be able to leave, the world would go to hell because he would influence that side of our human nature that is evil and we would do bad things. It sounds a lot like Christianity but I think this goes further than that. MiB is evil in the world. The island is a sort of Pandora’s box and Jacob is trying to keep people from opening it. Jacob thinks that if he can prove that humanity is more good than evil and that they can make the right decisions without influence then the MiB has no reason to escape. And he does that by crashing boats and planes into the island to prove his point. Until he does, his will keeps the MiB trapped. Also, he took his body so that he couldn’t just take a boat and leave. Think of the Season One episode of Angel called “That Vision Thing” Angel goes down into a dungeon of sorts and sees a man standing in a cage of fire. He meets Skip and the following dialogue takes place.

ANGEL: Hi.
SKIP: Hi. You know you're not supposed to be here, right?
ANGEL: Yeah. What about him?
SKIP: Oh, him? Oh, he's supposed to be here. Do you have any idea how monstrous a guy has to be before he gets sent to us? We're a *very* high-end institution.
ANGEL: And it's your job to keep him here.
SKIP: Yeah. (Offers his hand) I'm Skip.
(they shake hands)
ANGEL: Angel. So, ah, you live in here, Skip?
SKIP: No. I commute. It's not too bad - about twenty minutes.
ANGEL: Uh, what keeps him in the fire?
SKIP: My will.

That will and the fact that he’s still alive at this point. So, MiB takes measures to try and influence the visitors to the island to do the wrong thing and thereby proving not only his point but also helping MiB escape by killing Jacob. If you’ve ever played the computer game Myst you’ll recognize the struggle by visitors to discern who is good and who is evil. Two brothers are trapped in separate magical books that serve as a prison. The player retrieves pages of these books from magical locations on an island and by inserting them they get more of the story. If they choose to insert the last page in either they release one of the brothers... but it turns out that both brothers are evil and will trap you in their book after you release them. This is the core of the mystery in LOST as to who is good and who is evil and neither one gives you enough information at one time to make a decision. That’s how they recruit sides to their cause, being economical with the truth. In MiB’s case he needs to do multiple things to escape. One, kill Jacob as he keeps him trapped. Two, find a body to inhabit, so that he can leave. Three, kill or convert the remaining list of candidates to keep a new Jacob from stopping him from leaving.

In one of his earliest tries, MiB attempts to get Richard to be the loophole but fails. It took the elaborate “play” of the Oceanic 815 survivors visit to the island to give MiB his best shot, John Locke. Several times, MiB tried to recruit Locke into service. He attempted to suck Locke down into the tunnels in Season One but is thwarted by a stick of dynamite. Perhaps all of this is merely a play with a play within a play and both Jacob and MiB came to the island as part of some sort of playground or sandbox for them to argue in and they themselves are mere actors on a stage.

Ok, I’ve rambled enough. Theory time.

From Sundown the following are now moot.

1. MiB, UnLocke, Flocke, Lockeness, Esau, Nemesis, Not Lock, whatever you call him is a fallen angel, perhaps the devil.

I think the show transcends religion and iconography from religion. If you believe that all religions tell the same stories in different ways with different characters representing God or gods then you can say that the island is simply employing these because they are relatable to the people experiencing them. It draws on several myths and dogmas to create a singular mythology to tell the story. MiB and Jacob seem to predate Christianity. They seem to be flies in the primordial soup. It’s as if MiB is the First Evil from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Jacob is "The Powers That Be" unable to directly influence those champions who are trying to stop evil from getting out of the Hellmouth.

9. Hurley is the key to everything. The last episode is entitled Everybody Loves Hugo. (Highlight this with your mouse to see it.

This is not the last episode, it was just listed last in the available set of titles. The last one is still listed as “TBA” but Hurley may still be the key.

From Dr. Linus the following are now questionable.

1. The island sank after the Dharma Initiative left due to:
     a. The Incident minus the Jughead. Most DI non essential personal were off the island priorAmy, Horace, Roger, Ben)
     b. The building of The Swan by the DI which hit the pocket of energy and with no way to contain it (i.e. Jughead, button) the island sank but not before Dharma Initiative were able to escape.

I now am beginning to believe that the island sank because the MiB escaped. Everything that he has done to get off the island has created a paradox by which the Losties have not interacted with Jacob or the island and therefore the butterfly effect has resulted in MiB proving Jacob wrong and has escaped leaving the island with no purpose…. Alcatraz if you will. It’s a tourist spot for divers.

From Recon the following are now questionable.

4. Jacob and Locke Monster are actually brothers and the whole mother thing will play out a bit more in a final showdown. We already know that Alpert is the only character to have a flashback this season so it stands to reason that any explanations will be done through exposition between characters.
     a. Jacob was loved more than MiB
     b. MiB will be known as either Samuel or Esau

They may yet turn out to be brothers and in that fashion Jacob is his brother’s keeper or jailer in this case. The mommy issue might be a red herring to just get Kate to do what he wants. We know from production notes that Ab Aeterno is the only flash back we will see of these two so no back story will be shown. It will have to be done through exposition. I don’t see that happening.

New Theories

1. The season will end…
   
   
   1. With Jack and Locke sitting on the beach having the same conversation as Jacob and the MiB did with a ship off in the distance. Bringing everything full circle.
   2. The MiB will finally “get it” and Jacob/replacement will release him and the show will end like those Looney Tunes shorts where the time clock whistle blows and Jacob and MiB punch a clock and go home, “Night Sam. Night Ralph.”
   3. All of this is simply a Role Playing Game, Company Retreat type exercise for the sole purpose of a team building exercise for employees of Hurley’s businesses and he is taking part. The last scene will be them all leaving on an Oceanic jet, first class. Call it the “Snow Globe Dream Ending”

Deeb a deeb a deeb that’s all folks.

Healthcare Makes Me Sick

"After very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new healthcare system sucks."

I’m not going to get into a debate over single payer insurances, government run healthcare or any of that. Quite frankly, I have a bigger problem with how the current system is managed and quite frankly, if competition is a good thing, I hope it inspires the players to step up their game and become better proponents to reform instead of being obstacles. Currently, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and the right hand is currently underneath its own seated ass, becoming numb in order to perform The Stranger.

Back in May, my daughter caught the stomach flu. In February she had come down with it and passed it along to myself, my wife, and my wife’s parents. This time, none of us seemed to get it, which was good. However, to see this rambunctious child, who runs around constantly, lying on the floor and unresponsive to various stimuli gives a first time parent pause. We had taken her to the ER in February and they pretty much observed her and sent us home after a few hours. My insurance, at the time, had a $35 co-pay. No big deal. Fearing this was more severe a case, we made the decision to take her again and she was found to be severely dehydrated. We had tried giving her juice, Pedialyte and anything else to keep her fluids up but she refused.

We walked into the ER and she just sat there in my arms, something she hardly ever does, anymore. They took her to cubicle and pumped her with two bags of IV fluid. Her fever spiked at 103 and they administered medication to reduce it. Since she had been vomiting anything she ingested, they had to do it rectally. After a few hours of trying to bring down her fever, the ER docs made the decision to admit her. Now, this was the hospital that our daughter was delivered two years ago. Since then, the hospital was acquired by a bigger group and the Obstetric and Pediatric care was dissolved. This meant an ambulance ride to a nearby hospital. From there, she was released later in the evening.

Now, here’s the problem and let me preface this by stating that I have no issue with the care she received. I am grateful for it. She was a completely different kid when she got released as the pictures will attest to. That being said, what followed was a complete and utter breakdown of communication, administration, and severe frustration on the part of my wife and I concerning the billing of this stay.

Little One at the ER before being admitted.


Little One playing with balloons before being released.

As I said, before, my insurance in February had a $35 co-pay for ER visits. Our insurance was changed at the employer level and the new provider and coverage, which begun in April, had a $100 co-pay for ER visits. If you were admitted to the hospital, that co-pay was waived. We also had a $100 deductible per family member, which my employer opted to waive for the rest of this calendar year because of the transition. So, for those of you playing at home, with no prior medical billing experience, what was my total bill for the ER and Hospital stay*?

a) $0
b) $100
c) $236
d) $136

For those of you who chose a), you made the same mistake as me. I received two separate bills from this event. One was the co-pay for $100. The other was a bill from the ER doctor’s practice in the amount of $136. Now, before everyone flames me for being nitpicky over $236 remember, I had a $100 co-pay that was waived on admittance, and no fulfilled deductible for the remainder of 2009. I admit that if I was responsible for paying the full amount under any other circumstances, I would be glad to. My daughter’s well being is worth millions.

However, I felt that there was something rotten in the state of Pennsylvania, and I wanted it take care of one way or the other. Most adults will handle the situation in of two manners. They will call and track down the responsible parties, confirming or debunking their responsibility for paying the bill, or they will just let it sit and hope that it goes away. I prefer a more hybrid approach. I let the bills sit while I contact our internal support folks in these matters and ask them what the hell is up? Unfortunately, in this instance, no help was really available.

So, the $100 co-pay bill kind of sat in a pile, soon to be joined by a reminder and finally a letter from credit and collections in the matter. All the while, the issue was being investigate by internal associates who met with brick walls and unanswered emails. Then, the Explanation of Benefits came along and stated that the Insurance provider had fulfilled a portion of the services at the ER and that the doctor had the right to “balance bill” the member for the remainder, which was $136. If you’ve ever looked at EOBs it’s hard to understand sometimes but eventually once you sift through the medical mire of line items and coding you can find out the important stuff.

I took the reins in the matter and made several phone calls and left several messages. The billing parties were conveniently holding office hours while I and my wife worked which made it near impossible to get a hold of them in person. Finally, we called the insurance company to get some explanations.

In the matter of the $100, the insurer stated that my daughter was an outpatient observation case. I said, “Then why did they admit her?” The rep could not answer me. This was beginning to look like a case of clerical error made on the part of the hospital. After all, the patient advocate who helped in the transport of my daughter when she got admitted said that she was being admitted and that the co-pay was going to be waived. So, I started calling the hospital, the billing department and anyone else who could tell me what was going on with this thing.

Finally, I got an answer from someone totally unrelated to my daughter’s care. A doctor, who was listed as part of the practice that treated my daughter at the hospital, got on the phone after medical billing gave me her name and number. She did not remember treating my child nor did she understand how I got her information. She did, however, take the time to delve into the case and stated that my daughter was admitted as Observational as most pediatric Gastro patients are. So, I was pretty much screwed on that front. The insurance provider said that I would have to get the doctors to re-bill the visit as inpatient and this doctor was telling me that this wasn’t the protocol in my daughter’s case. So, why couldn’t anyone involved with the matter explain this to me? I would have hemmed and hawed and cursed insurance companies for a bit, but would have paid. I did pay it, though, once someone had finally explained it to me.

Now, the matter of the $136 came to my plate as it was billed in August, almost four months after the initial hospital visit. I explained to both the billing office and the insurer that we had a $100 deductible and that would negate the $36 left on the bill. Also, being that our deductible was fulfilled automatically by my employer, I should be free and clear, outright. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. It was also odd that there was no mention of amounts on my EOBs as there had been with the previous insurer. Each EOB used to come with a breakdown of your responsibility towards fulfilling deductibles, in-network and out of network amounts. The new carriers were lacking in this department. Regardless, at the bottom of the EOB for the $136, it stated that the carrier paid the maximum amount for “in-network” providers and that the provider that treated my daughter was “out of network.”

I read that statement a few more times. From what this stated, the hospital system that I visited was in my network, but the doctors working in the ER there were not. Now, how is that even a logical premise? According to what I’ve been told by people in the business, the new methodology in healthcare providers is to stop holding the hand of the member and explain to them that they need to be an informed consumer. That means that when you go to an ER and request treatment, you need to determine if the doctor assigned to your case is in your network. So, regardless of how severe the situation is, whether it be the stomach flu in a two year old or a severed limb packed in ice next to you, you need to ask for a list of participating providers before receiving care.

Another suggestion by insurance carriers today is for members to shop around for care. Ask if there are any specials or benefits to getting care there. Imagine that scenario, “Yeah, I need to have kidney transplant. What specials are you running today? Two for one? Great. Now, can I have the SSN attached to that kidney? I’d like to go online and request a donor history report.” I’m sorry, but if my daughter is listless and expelling fluid from either end of her being, I’m going to the ER and asking for care, not credentials or a menu.

So, I called the insurer and explained my disbelief over this flawed process. They offered no sympathy and continued to be the Teflon carrier pushing the matter back to everyone else but them. I called the ER and requested to speak with the doctor listed on the bill as the presiding physician. They said she was not on staff, there. I called the billing department at the hospital system and they did not even know who this practice was. Not to mention they said that this matter had taken place before the merger. I informed the person on the phone that was impossible; otherwise you would not have sent me into collections over a co-pay from that visit. You can’t have it both ways. They were completely clueless over the whole matter. They informed me to call the billing party. I had already left a message and received no response. Finally I started to formulate a theory as to what was going on here.

The ER that treated my daughter was still doing business as they had before the merger. The hospital continued to let them do so with only dotted line responsibility. This is why they had no clue as to who this physician or practice was that treated my daughter. This also gets them into a double dip area where they recognize the hospital as a part of their network but allow them to staff with people who could be considered out of network. It would make more sense for a hospital system to operate as a whole entity in terms of membership to providers. It makes for a one process system instead of bolt on processes that can bastardize the system as a whole. This was neither here nor there. I wasn’t in the business of fixing the system, just being screwed by them

After getting the run around for three days over this, I finally got a response from my internal contacts, two months after initiating the request. I was told to contact a rep from another company and explain the situation. Now, this was the original co-pay problem, not the bill. She explained what I had already found out, that the visit was, is and always shall be an observational event. However, when I mentioned the other matter with the “out of network” providers wandering the ER and treating patients, she became intrigued. She said she would put a hold on the account and investigate further.

Within an hour, the entire matter of the $136 was cleared up. The insurance carrier had an error that systematically declared the provider as an “Out of Network” group. Because of that, I got billed. The problem was fixed and I was going to receive an updated invoice for $0. She also initiated a fact finding mission to how this happened to make sure it didn’t occur in the future. Unfortunately, I see two problems with this.

1. Will they go back and investigate other claims made by this provider that were not fully reimbursed because of the glitch? Obviously, they either didn’t catch it before my case or had done so and took to remitting the balance of claims to the provider only if someone cried foul in each case.
   
2. How many other providers experienced this glitch in their system? How many other parents or patients experienced this same ridiculous event in other hospitals across the state, or even country? The level of accountability and transparency over ownership in such matters is shoddy.

I called the insurer on three separate occasions, each time being pushed back to someone else. Another call to another entity. That person pushed me back to the carrier or to another party. If they would have just confirmed with the provider whether or not they were a member of the network, this could have been resolved. Of course, if I would have called as soon as I got the bill, it might have been. But even so, the event happened at the beginning of May. The rebill to me occurred less than two weeks ago.

This is my issue with the system as it is. Yes, premiums are skyrocketing. Yes, the level of involvement by insurance companies in your care is increasing. Yes, the economy sucks, people are unemployed, and have no insurance. But inside that system that is flawed resides a bigger problem. Not the costs associated with the care, but the administration of that care and the communication between the provider and the insurer is flawed. It shouldn’t be this hard. How many elderly or individuals with reduced capacity have been bilked out of hundreds or thousands of dollars because of a fundamental lack of understanding of how medical billing works? How many actually suspect a problem and contact a patient advocate to investigate?

The other problem lies at the heart of medical insurance, coding. The process shouldn’t be that hard. If you are going to issue insurance to someone and state that they are responsible for a co-pay, unless they are admitted, then they need to stop the line right there. If you are going to say, “If they are admitted, the co-pay will be waived unless the following happens… that’s where you start to dilute the message. A or B, not A.1, B.2, B.2.3. This will solve two problems. First off, you’ll get paid quicker. If there is no debate over if A or B happened, then there is no question of ownership. That leads to the second problem being solved. If you state that either you will or won’t be billed based on a set number of actions then you don’t get people calling you up to complain, debate, or question the matter. This leads to a reduction of service requests made on the call center. That leads to a reduction in escalations and man hours spent investigating the matter. I could go on down the line to the actual cost of an employee to a company involved in any given dispute but who cares. The matter is simple. You pay or you don’t. This meeting of certain criteria revolves around a interpretation of procedure or a refusal to see outside the box. Take thinking out of the equation. Yes or no. Was that person admitted? Then the co-pay is waived. Did that person get released from the ER? Then they pay.

I said before if the matter was not up for debate, I would have gladly paid off the balances and just gone about my way. My daughter’s health is more important than a couple hundred bucks. But, I’ve learned to not accept anything at face value. I should understand the importance of my care and my dependents and seek out the best possible choice that results in proper care at the proper cost. I bet the insurance company didn’t think that meant them in this equation. I know better. I am an informed consumer. Now you are, too.


* The correct answer was b) $100. Additional costs were eight ibuprofen, a few bruises from banging my head against my desk, and the color from a few hairs.