Do You Know What Those Round Bottom Shoes Are Called?

I first saw them in an Avon catalog - they had a pair by "Curves" (which is a company that makes exercise gear for women).  I thought they were kind of weird looking, but I seem to be seeing them more and more.  Have you seen these things?  Here's an example:

Someone told me they are called "MBT shoes", and I asked what MBT stood for but they didn't know.  So I googled it.  It stands for Masai Barefoot Technology.   Yeah, Masai as in like, the famous warrior tribe in Kenya!  I'm really not particularly interested in getting these round bottom shoes, but now I HAD to find out what on earth these exercise shoes have to do with the Masai.  Well, here's what I found:

"When the designers were first coming up with the idea of MBT shoes, they looked to East African runners. Noticing that they trained barefoot for races, even marathons, the researchers began to wonder if their lack of injuries and pain was due to this lack of footwear. By watching how the foot hit the ground, they began to see that the rolling motion of the foot engaged the rest of the muscles of the body, stabilizing it and protecting it from harm. But since the researchers realized the people weren't about to run barefoot on the pavements of their cities, designing a shoe became the top priority."

So that's the whole deal with the round-bottom-shoes, in case you were wondering, like me, "what up with that"?  (Did you see the skit on Saturday Night Live this past week?  It was actually pretty funny! SNL What Up With That?)

The end.