[ExI] Well-roundedness and character

[spike at rainier66.com]

> On Behalf Of Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] Well-roundedness and character

 

 

 

On Thu, Jun 4, 2020 at 7:46 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

Universities are trending toward de-emphasizing objective metrics for admissions.  Otherwise, their campus would be almost entirely Asian.  Some schools find this unacceptable, so they look for ways around it.

 

### This is a topic of some interest to me, sincy my daughter who was born last week is half-Polish and half-Han…

 

 

Rafal!  Best wishes to you and your bride with that baby.  I am very happy for you sir.

 

 

>… I am thinking about identifying as African-American …I'll get some tanning cream and give it a try.  Rafal

 

>From what I can tell, we are free to choose our race but not to alter our appearance.  Of all oddball things for a society to decide is the apex cardinal sin, it turns out to be darkening one’s skin.  Some of us have the DNA to prove our recent African ancestry, but I have determined to never use that for any kind of advancement purpose, anything other than an amusing bit of scientific self-knowledge.

 

When I received my results from Ancestry.com and 23&Me (both tests indicated the 3% African) one of my black 4th cousins did the hard work of tracing it back.  Her cousins (not related to me) were intrigued by seeing a white guy in their cousin’s DNA matches list (but not their own.)  Long story short, it had kind of a bitter outcome: we discovered that my 4th cousin and I are directly descended from a former slave, but that her black cousins are not (their ancestors immigrated from Africa after slavery was abolished.)

 

To avoid such heartbreak, I recommend not doing those nifty 60 dollar DNA tests from Ancestry.com.  Stop thinking about doing a DNA test.  Stop that, I say!  You are thinking of DNA tests right now, ja?  Stop!  Don’t think about DNA tests at all, I implore you, don’t think about it at all.

 

But if you decide otherwise, feel free to post me offlist and I will show you some cool stuff you can do with interpreting the results, as well as how to do that while maintaining anonymity.  That last bit is important because I discovered that one of the DNA majors left the HTML of their results page accessible to those you invite.  Details available on request.  

 

Now stop thinking about doing that nifty 60 dollar DNA test!

 

spike

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