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			And now for my answer!  (Like I said above, the act of writing up this report caused me to dig a little deeper and as a result I solved the problem)... 
 
The problem was made clear when I remembered the hack I did to make them sit (that was the last thing I added to my post).  I.e.... 
 
sit_and_freeze = vizact.animation(32, freeze = True) 
avatar.addAction(sit_and_freeze) 
avatar.speed(1000) 
 
....as you can see, I set the avatar speed to be 1000X normal.  I had forgotten this and thus did not understand why they were blinking so fast. 
 
I tested my hypothesis by setting speed back to normal and using the blink paramaters from Jeff's original post.  Sure enough, the blinking looked natural (though I had to watch the avatar move all around the place while acting out action #32).
		 
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
	
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