Home » Open thread 8/11/22

Comments

Open thread 8/11/22 — 27 Comments

  1. Fascinating. It’s possible, as he says, that’s there a margin for error, and it oughtn’t to be taken entirely seriously. But many of us, if we did these tests, would find something entirely unexpected, and in some cases, unwelcome.

    Best to think of ourselves as individuals and our value as such.

  2. A good example why identifying people by race here in the USA is stupid.
    What % Native American is req’d to be “classified” as that?
    And who decides what that % should be?

    How dark must someone be to be classified as black? True, oft times it’s real obvious, but sometimes it’s not so obvious.
    And what if a black person, born and raised in Sweden decides to emigrate to the USA?
    Are they classified as Swedish or black?
    Who decides?
    And why is one definition based upon nationality and the other purely on skin color?
    If black Africans emigrate to the USA how come they are not identified by nationality?
    Hutu, Tutsi, Maasai, Ibo, Zulu, San, Yoruba, Xhosa, Chaga, Shona, etc.

    What about a white person born, raised in Argentina or Chile?
    Why are they classified as white and not Hispanic / Latino?
    Why is a lily-white Cuban considered Latino, but not the Argentine or Chilean?

    This notion of identifying people by “categories’ is just another example of how politicians have created another complication ordinary folks must deal with and tossed this entire mixed salad into the lap of the census bureaucrats.

    When my relative’s kids applied to college, they ID’d themselves as hispanic because their father is 1/2 Ecuadorian; the mom is 50/50 German/English.
    The kids – as well as the dad – have zero cultural connection with anything hispanic or Ecuadorian and, for all intents and purposes, are hispanic to the extent
    Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren is Apache.

    What total BS.

  3. To many axis to properly characterize someone, and even these would fall short in only describing aspects.

    sex = male
    race = human
    skin color = very light shade of tan
    ethnicity = mostly English and Dutch
    religion = Lutheran growing up, unaffiliated now
    culture = New England + Hoosier
    temperament = stoic, pragmatic

    @Kate – spot on, judge me by the content of my character.

    Of course, to those of low character that’s not acceptable.

  4. The only thing I get from this—entertaining indeed!—performance is that the larger the gene pool you derive from the funnier you may well be.

    This is a most encouraging indicator, seeing that WOKEness(TM) has pretty much embarked on an uncompromising anti-humor crusade, as John Cleese has lamented:
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/john-cleese-wokeness-disastrous-impact-comedy

    On the other hand, Cleese’s plaint was quickly followed up by this refreshing bit of wit from the New Yorker’s David Remnick, showing pretty conclusively that the rumors of humor’s “demise have been greatly exaggerated”….
    https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/new-yorker-editor-media/2022/07/19/id/1079518/

    …wherein Remnick declares—with a straight face—that “The New Yorker is deeply committed to accuracy”….

    Ha! So there you have it!!
    Clearly there’s really nothing to worry about…on this front, at least….

  5. ah david what a knee slapper, i started reading him in the post soviet era, in retrospect I don’t know if anything he wrote was true, then he delivered that mass tree slaughter the bridge, about obama, only surpassed by garrow’s brogbagdinian effort, about obama

  6. What a wonderful American story. This is why we should be happy to be Americans because we can celebrate it all and choose who and what we feel closest to while never forgetting that we are the people of the Constitution. We come in peace for all mankind.

  7. But many of us, if we did these tests, would find something entirely unexpected

    Mine was boring. Bog standard middle of England.

  8. Dr. Leaky (sp?), the anthropologist, showed that we are all “African” if one goes far enough back into the roots of the tree. Other anthropologists have found evidence of more than one migration from Asia (we are back to continents again) into North and Central America (maybe further). This tends to explain why no definitive DNA marker(s) for “native American” are found; that they descended from, or are, Asians.

    The Vikings traveled widely, spreading their seed. The British Isles, north Europe, central and east Europe via the major rivers, even North America, which leaves many of those with traditional “European” history with traces of Scandinavian DNA.

    There are studies showing that even Neanderthal shows up. in very small traces, more often than we would like.

    Remember that the ancient Greeks had narrowed things down to 4 “elements”. Time and science marches on.

  9. My DNA and other info:

    Species: Felis catus
    Breed: Domestic short-hair (DSH; vet-speak for non-pedigreed; 95% of my fellow American cats are DSH)
    Color: Grey tuxedo– by day as well as by night, when all cats are grey.
    Sex: Info. on request from da vet.
    Western zodiac sign: Virgo
    Chinese zodiac sign: Rat
    Pronouns: Cat, catself.
    Favorite song: Rossini’s Duetto buffo di due gatti:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4su9_GJNMA&ab_channel=KyleEnglish
    DNA test: Must persuade da human to shell out between $45 and $100 to find out what’s hidden in my 38 chromosomes:
    https://knowyourdna.com/dna-tests-for-cats/

    Then my momcat can sue any of several neighborhood toms for back kitten support.

  10. Chuck, Mrs. X recently learned that her family stemmed from Suffolk County “Bog standard middle of England”. We visited last month. Very interesting and wonderful time had by all – not boring in the least!. Consider yourself lucky.

  11. My daughter gave me one of those DNA things for Christmas five years ago and fun things came out of it. I was adopted into a wonderful family, four of us siblings were all adopted and our last name is a Scottish name that traces back before 1740 in Baltimore when a Scot married a lady from Baltimore. What I found out was that my DNA is 54% Scottish, 27% English, 14% Irish and 4% French but the most astounding thing was the discovery that I am half Canadian and kin to thousands of folks in Ottawa and some in North Michigan and I always identified as a good Southern ‘Good Old Boy’. Now I find out I am half Canuk and I am too old to learn the language. I have over 36,400 DNA match up things, and I did discover four wonderful half siblings and I have met them and we like each other. This DNA stuff can be fun.

  12. My brother took a DNA test and it turned pretty much as we expected – 98% or something of the ethnicity and race we are. I believe there was an ancestor from Somalia who made the trek eastward.

  13. The guy was very entertaining, but impatient me kept saying, “Cut to the chase” over and over again. I thought he was going to find out that he was much more African than that, but if he’s happy, that’s good.

    They say in much of Latin America, everybody whose ancestors weren’t recent immigrants has a male line which goes back to a Spaniard and a female line that goes back to an Indian woman. I would suppose that for many people whose ancestry is Asian (or European) the male line goes back to some marauding Mongol. Millions of men in the world today are said to be descendants of Genghis Khan, though the actual number is debatable.

  14. Somewhere on youtube is a set of identical twins that completed the DNA tests and they delivered different heritages…

  15. “ Million of men in the world today are said to be descendants of Genghis Khan…” and yet , what percent of US students ever hear of the extent and voracity of the Mongol conquest?

  16. Old Texan:

    I think I have set the DNA record for matchups – about 230,000. That’s not a typo.

  17. “This notion of identifying people by “categories’ is just another example of how politicians have created another complication ordinary folks must deal with and tossed this entire mixed salad into the lap of the census bureaucrats.” JohnTyler

    Identity Politics has a far more malevolent purpose than simply creating needless complications for census bureaucrats.

    Fomenting tribal warfare is an excellent means of creating societal dissolution.

    The left’s goal is NOT to identify and expose racism. Its goal is to create racism and exacerbate it.

  18. Vikings invaded Northern England and had their Capital at York, Danish name. The Northmen settle in Normandy and then invaded england. So he is French in a way.

  19. Your DNA only can be registered in your body for 120 years, that is 6 generations. The ethic test is rather sketchy I would take it with a grain of salt.

  20. Exactly: diversity of individuals, minority of one. Lose your Pro-Choice ethical religion that denies women and men’s dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities.

  21. Robert Shotzberger:

    The DNA testing does not profess to go back more than a few hundred years, but of course your own DNA does reflect that of your somewhat more distant ancestors as it is derived from them. It just gets less and less meaningful and less and less specific as you go back further and further. But the way it works at DNA testing sites is that your DNA is matched with a group of people from each area, on whom the tests were normed. My personal experience is that it is surprisingly accurate in most cases.

  22. It doesn’t matter that he is “Kor-tal-ir-ench” heritage (his wording) – because he is 100 percent American with his humor on the whole thing. I love it!

  23. AS PEOPLE HERE KNOW, The Declaration of Independence was manifesto in the form of a lawyers brief, or more simply, a list of complaints against the British Crown authority.

    Is anyone thinking about updating this epoch shattering document for our constitutional crisis times? Apparently one “Thomas Jefferson, Jr” has done so!

    Let the rivising and counter offering commence, say I.

    “With all of these points in mind, let the following facts about the current U.S. federal government be submitted to the world:

    It has repeatedly ignored, selectively applied, and violated the principles of the U.S. Constitution to advance its authoritarian, undemocratic, politicized agendas.

    It has assumed numerous unconstitutional powers over the lives and activities of the people, as recently highlighted during the COVID pandemic.

    It has subverted the constitutional rights and powers of the individual states, forcing federal powers and policies upon them through coercive means.

    It has stifled free speech and independent thought (in collaboration with its powerful corporate partners), through such actions as the censoring of public commentary on the Internet and the forced firings of people who disagree with its COVID policies.

    It has turned almost all of the free press into an enormous, powerful tool of government propaganda.

    It has effectively transferred government power from democratically elected representatives to unelected “Deep State” bureaucrats and officials at countless government agencies.

    It has both literally and figuratively weaponized the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service to persecute political opponents and dissidents, such as through the harassment and prosecutions of Trump and his supporters and the dramatically increased and abusive powers of tax authorities.

    It has perverted and corrupted the private business sector through such coercive anti-American methods as the ESG (environmental, social, governance) agenda.

    It has purposely sabotaged critically important sectors of the U.S. economy, such as the fossil fuel and agriculture industries.

    It has selectively enforced basic laws and refused to prosecute many violent criminals, often on the basis of political considerations, greatly jeopardizing public safety.

    It has provoked societal divisions among the people by stoking hatred and resentment based on race, religion, and other personal characteristics.

    It has corrupted the public education system, such as by forcing children to be subjected to political propaganda, lies about science and history, and sexual perversions.

    It has surrendered the sovereignty and best interests of the United States to foreign countries and global institutions, including China, the World Health Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the World Economic Forum.

    It has refused to enforce the integrity of U.S. borders, allowing an ongoing foreign invasion that endangers the people through crime, narcotics, and other threats.

    It has repeatedly provoked and waged pointless and wasteful foreign wars, sacrificing both the wealth and lives of the American people to advance the greedy interests of the military-industrial complex and to expand the powers of the ruling globalist cabal.

    And­—most devastatingly—it has deeply corrupted both the judicial and electoral systems (as demonstrated by the fraudulent 2020 presidential election and the continuing efforts to corrupt election integrity and persecute the January 6 protestors), effectively neutering the only legal options that the people have to challenge and change the corrupted system and to address their grave grievances.

    Because of all these oppressions, the United States is no longer the functioning democratic republic that was established by the U.S. Constitution. The elite authoritarians that have entrenched themselves in power have succeeded in their goal of destroying that republic.

    In every stage of these oppressions, we the people have sought corrections through the established legal methods, such as elections, protests, petitions, and court actions. However, our repeated efforts have been answered only by repeated injury. A political leader, whose character is thus marked by every act that may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    Therefore, we the people of the United States of America solemnly pronounce that we can no longer recognize the legitimacy of the corrupted, lawless United States federal government. Nor can we any longer retain allegiance to this government.

    Furthermore, we declare that—if this corrupted federal government cannot be changed, corrected, and cleansed through the established legal electoral or judicial processes—we nullify its authority and support its removal through insurrection, revolution, secession, or any other available option.

    And we support the replacement of the discarded corrupted, lawless government with a new, law-abiding, free, and independent government entity that is strictly bound by the principles of the original U.S. Constitution and its subsequent legal amendments. This new government shall have full power to carry out all activities that independent states have a right to. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the righteousness of our cause in the eyes of Nature and God, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
    https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4084903/posts

    ATTENTION. Read down. “CodeToad” has countered with a much longer and more detailed list!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>