A Short Rant on DNA "Tests"

Still confined to bed, I've been spending too much time on Facebook. Today I clicked on a high school pal's posting of this video:

My high school pal thought this had world-changing possibilities. I was disturbed by the sight of two strangers breaking down the volunteers ' identities so that they could replace them with new ones. These new identities are no longer based on family, communities, shared places, shared values or belief in God. They are based quite literally on spit and dodgy science.

It would be nice to believe that  DNA tests provide a road map to all the countries your ancestors have hailed from. But this is not how they work. They can only guess and give probabilities, not certainties like "Genetically you are 50% French and 20% Icelandic, Miss Saoirsa O'Reilly."

Even DNA tests looking for health problems---never mind a Cherokee great-grandma--may be wrong.  Ancestral search DNA tests are next to useless. Actually, they may be worse than useless, if they cost you a lot of money or an authentic identity based on faith, family, near ancestors, neighbourhood and other aspects of lived experience. 

Everybody on earth has been scientifically proven (for now) to have descended from one woman. The current scientific belief is that she was from East Africa. That did not make us all part Zulu. However, it is a nice bolstering of the Christian belief that all human beings have the same "first parents". And perhaps it is a nice reminder that all human beings are human beings, if we needed one. 

Occasionally I have been tempted to get a DNA test--and to pay for one of my brothers to get one, too--so as to find out if my mother's mother's mother (etc.) was either a Pict or a Gael, and to discover if my father's father's father (etc.) was a Gael or a Norseman of some sort (Viking or Norman).  But unfortunately, that's not how it works and, besides, there are better uses for money. 

As a matter of fact, my mother's mother's mother's mother's house is still standing in Edinburgh, and my father's father's father's father took out an ad in the Boston Pilot on August 19, 1854 to look for the brother who followed him from Ireland. Various of my female relations on my father's side have been keen genealogists, so I already know a lot about my ancestry. I also know rather a lot about migration patterns in Scotland, so if I discovered a genetic "cousin" in Poland, for example, I would put the phenomenon down to the 30,000 Scots who settled in Poland between 1400 and 1706 instead of joining the local Polish dance troupe.

The film features a rather offensive Icelandic supremacist, who seems to think he is more valuable than the British scientists, which no doubt he is to Iceland. It also features a proud working-class Englishman who, like the newspapers written for him, doesn't like Germans--presumably because of his ancestors' experience of the First and Second World Wars. (Germans of a certain generation in north-western Germany are not necessarily super-keen on Canadians, I discovered.)  The beliefs of the Icelander and Englishman may be irrational, but they are not more irrational than the idea that they are world-citizens because people in other parts of the world may share their ancestral DNA. You mean, Vikings traveled a lot? You mean, Anglo-Saxons are genetically similar to .... wait for it.... Saxons? Holy moly! My worldview is shattered!

Bad science, bad science, bad science, and all with an eye to breaking down identity based on family bonds and lived experience. I have English given names, an Irish maiden name, a Scottish surname, an anglophone Canadian family, mixed ancestry including Revolutionary War Americans, an east-coast Scottish husband, an Eastern European sister-in-law, an Edinburgh-area address, much-loved relatives in the Estrie and a Toronto upbringing. Spitting into a test tube would not change any of that. The story of me would not be in that tube.

Update: I have just thought of unpleasant or at least embarrassing reasons why the DNA of ethnic English and Scots may be shared by a lot of otherwise ethnic French, Germans, Dutch and Italians. 

Russell Square

So church friends' relations were in a cab in Russell Square when the murderous knifeman ran towards it. The cabbie locked the doors.

Every time there is sudden violent stranger attack like this, I do a quick mental assessment of who is where. The Bataclan massacre was the really frightening one, and I was so relieved when the "So and so is safe" feature appeared on Facebook.

I feel really awful for the relatives of the poor American woman who was murdered, and the others who were stabbed. Nobody expects this to happen to them on holiday in London.

Backlash

Serious outbreak of Belgianophobia in wake of arrest of Paris atrocity suspect.  Thirteen  Twenty-three, Thirty-four dead, dozens  over 150 wounded.

Have a careful day, western Europe.

The Usual Bee in Same Old Bonnet

The other day the McLeans were in Lovecrumbs, a splendid tea shop near the Grassmarket, when a loud Canadian girl contrasted what she saw as Canadian culture versus European culture. She told two other tourists, both German-speaking, that Canada had never had a culture to protect, as European countries did, and had never been interested in preserving the past, etc. Canada was just made up of immigrants and always had been.

This, of course, was garbage. However, the woman couldn't have been any older than 30 and she mentioned that her own parents were immigrants (perhaps they are from the UK, which this girl visits often), so very likely she had no idea that History As It Has Been Taught Since 1967 was not taught that way before 1967. She had also clearly forgotten about Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, to say nothing of the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Whatsitsname, the New One.

When my mother was born, English-speaking Canada (at any rate) still considered itself Canada, Faithful Daughter of the British Empire. However, the Forties, Fifties and Sixties witnessed a shift from British-derived identity to an appreciation of what made Canada unique.  A scholarly interest in English-language Canadian art, music and literature sprang up. (French-Canadian culture is so incredibly rich, and always has been, that it goes without saying.) Just off the top of my head, important Canadian writers of the 1945-1967 era included Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan, Irving Layton, Earle Birney, Morley Callaghan, Margaret Laurence,  Margaret Avison, Dorothy Livesay, Robertson Davies, the young Margaret Atwood, the young Mordecai Richler.

Of course there were important Canadian writers before them--Stephen Leacock, for example--but we're looking at the last moments in Canadian culture before the immigration experience (immediate or borrowed from ancestors) was considered the all-Canadian rite of passage. My great-grandfather's accent was unusual enough in Toronto of the early 1900s that his workmates called him "Scotty." He was indeed a Scot, but his children were Canadians, and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren were also Canadians, and this caused a deceptively small social problem when the ideological winds changed, the Two Solitudes became the Multicultural Mosaic, and immigration replaced Canada-Unties-the-Apron-Strings-to-Britain as the overarching theme of Canadian thought. What ethnic dishes were the formerly non-ethnic children to bring to school for "Multicultural Day"? White sliced bread from Miracle Mart? Mama mia, what the "Italian" kids would have said about that.

The great Canadian experiment in creating a unified English-speaking Canadian culture was arguably born in the trenches of the First World War and arguably died soon after Canada got her new, history-wiping, flag in 1965. Fortunately a Canadian obsession with the Canadian English literature still exists, and so Canadians continue to write feverishly about life in Canada in English. You can write in Bengali or Polish all you like, but if you want the rest of Canada to give two hoots for your work, you will have to write in English, too. (Or French, naturally.) There are also winter sports, although my firm belief that street hockey is the great integrator of immigrant children became terminally ill the day my eyes fell upon children in Montreal playing street cricket. Cricket. In the streets of Montreal. Sharia law, here we come.

And this is why this blog is so fascinated by European attempts to keep Europe European, let alone to keep Poland Polish, France French, Czech Czech, etc. Can they do it? And if they can't, what will happen to Canadian-style diversity? How will a German-Canadian be able to claim Germanity when she doesn't speak a word of Turkish?

Scotland is almost entirely Scottish and yet goes into fainting fits at the very thought of the migration policies of UKIP. Being 83% ethnic Scottish, Scotland is indifferent to mass migration--despite the upheaval and violence resulting from Irish mass migration in the 19th century. As you can see from the handy-dandy chart, the biggest change to the demographics of Scotland from 2001 to 2011 was the introduction of 69,000+ Asians, 61,000+ Poles and 4,000+ Gypsies. 134,000 people is not a drop in a bucket, but it is only a tenth of the number of migrants and refugees who have made it to Europe in the past twelve months, never mind in the past 10 years. (A goodly number of the 69,000+ new Asians had probably moved from England or been born in Scotland anyway.)

Anyway, it is always interesting to be a Canadian in the middle of huge, history shaking, European events, as my Canadian grandfather (WW II) and Scottish-Canadian grandfather (WW I) might have agreed. Scotland certainly hasn't been an ethnic monolith since the Second World War--we chatted happily with the maitre d' at Bar Italia (est. 1978) in Italian on Sunday--but there have been dramatic changes since Poland, for example, joined the EU. The most obvious is the rapid-fire Polish on the bus at any hour of the day or night, on which I enjoy eavesdropping. Another is the appearance of Gypsies begging on the streets. There are now at least four distinct classes of beggar in Edinburgh: Scottish, English, Polish and Gypsy. The older Gypsies sometimes have some frightful looking amputations. They render them somewhat alarming, although not as alarming as the Scottish ones when they are off their heads on smack, poor souls.

World Misogyny Day

American Sex Tourist (Osoba uprawiająca turystikę erotyczną.)

Good News! My post was obsolete even before I finally wrote it. World Misogyny Day has been cancelled. But here is the post anyway.


It is a shame that he picked Feb 6, the Feast of Saint Dorothy, patroness of brides and newlyweds, but an American Pick Up Artist blogger has "organized" meetings throughout the world for his drooling followers. He himself will be at one of the meetings, but it is unlikely to be the one in Glasgow, for Glaswegians have been threatening him with beatings in their inimitable Glaswegian style and he seems rather frightened.

The only meetings that can be said to be "organized" are the ones with emails, not meeting places, attached to them in his long post on the subject. The address list now stands as a guide for men and women who, wanting to show contempt for a rape apologist, may decide to shame his followers instead. (Update: so he has taken it down. My, my.) The blogger suggested that men who are unable to find other like-minded men conclude that their city wasn't ready for them yet. Uh huh. It's as if he grabbed some tourist books and picked the meeting places at random.

Poles will be sorry to see a few Polish cities on the list, but this may have more to do with the blogger's frequent residences in Poland--where living expenses are relatively cheap--than with the number of his Polish fans. (He may be in Poznan even now. Ew.) He writes guides for wannabe sex tourists (whom he euphemistically calls "love tourists"), and he has certainly written one about Poland. The blogger's critics have republished passages from his books in which he actually rapes his pick-ups. One can only hope the books are fictional, and he is merely writing pornos for his pimply audience.

The UK press is full of articles about this blogger, and he insists his "pro-rape" article suggesting that each and every sexual act performed in a domestic space be immune to prosecution. was satire. No. If such an article appeared in a feminist magazine like Jezebel, it would be satire. From that blogger, it was too obviously wishful thinking.

So there is quite a lot of hoopla, which is too bad, as it suggests that more people will buy his horrid books, which will be more money for him to go and live in "second tier" cities in Central and Eastern Europe to prey on virgins and other easily bamboozled women.  His fan demand of his critics why, if he's such a rapist, none of the women have gone to the police. Hmm. Yeah. That would be soooo easy for a Catholic virgin in a traditional country. "So Miss Kowalska, let me get this straight. You were walking down Ulica Piekna, and a bearded foreigner stopped you and asked for directions to the castle, and then made fun of your English. You responded angrily and he apologized, and before you understood what was going on, you were drinking in a tourist bar, and then, after three drinks, you agreed to go back to his apartment. Keep talking. We're fascinated."

The writings of this blogger veer between two points:

1. women shouldn't sleep around but marry young and have babies and take care of their husband
2. here's how to get beautiful young women to have one night stands with you*

He claims to love women and know what's best for women, but his series of books begin with the dehumanizing (and violent) "Bang", as in "Bang Kazakhistan". Ugh. Fortunately, he really hates Toronto--we Toronto girls have always despised preening American strangers who get in our faces, it's true---and also Denmark, where his techniques simply didn't work.

So why waste any thought on him at all? Well, first to put you on your guard against him and men like him. This can be very hard for nicely brought up young women with good fathers and brothers to get their minds around but

1. many men tell lies, some compulsively;
2. some men will say absolutely anything to get sex from you;
3. some men will do absolutely anything to get sex from you;
4. some men see you as nothing more than a walking vagina, no matter how much they may have in common with you on every other level, no matter how plain you think you are, no matter how intellectual and interesting you think yourself;
5. bars are not safe, fun places for a Single woman to be;
6. house parties with many male strangers are not safe, fun places for a  Single woman to be;
7. and, above all, some men practice and perfect psychological techniques to make you consent to things to which you would otherwise not consent. Salesmen have studied such techniques for years, and a knife salesman once--chortling at the stupidity of humanity--explained them to me. He was very good and selling people things they didn't want.

It would be helpful if every young woman in the world had a mobile phone and one solid friend or family member with a car, who could be trusted not to give a lecture, so that if she found herself having drunk a little too much with a guy she barely knows and the thought "What the heck am I doing" crossed her mind, she could go to the "Ladies" and just speed dial the friend.

Update: As the blogger "cancels" the "public" (i.e. largely imaginary, one suspects) meetings worldwide, one wonders if sometimes there is indeed such a thing as bad publicity, especially for alleged serial rapists. Oh, and no your love would not save him.

Update 2: Not safe for work or little brothers.

Update 3: His Middle Eastern good looks are making him a bit nervous in Poland, by the way, as nationalists patrol the streets looking for guys who look like him. WHAT an irony. The very kind of guys he respects--big, masculine, traditional--would beat the snot out of him if they knew why he was in Poland.

*Update 4: In reply to a furious email from a traditionalist reader,  it should be explained out that what is objectionable is the total disconnect between the two points. Naturally women shouldn't sleep around but marry young (if we are grown up, fall in love with a decent chap  and don't have  religious vocations), have babies and take care of our husbands. It's a beautiful, fulfilling, culture-building way of life. But this opinion is a bit rich coming from a man whose life mission is to have as much sex as possible with as many young women as possible and makes money telling other men how to do that, too. 2 rather cancels out 1, what?

Queen for a Day

Illustration by Rima Staines

It is possible to write about one's own birthday without writing about oneself? A way around it would
be to focus on the other central character in the drama of one's birth and ponder one's mother. My mother was only twenty-four when she gave birth to me, and she was terrified, but later she philosophized, "I've had a baby at twenty-four, and I've had a baby at thirty-four, and at twenty-four, it's easier." She has said this so often, her children all can repeat it exactly, right down to the punctuation, even though it is technically inaccurate. Either that or she had six babies, not five, and carelessly left one at the supermarket between the fourth (at age 32) and the sixth (at age 36).

Giving birth to me at twenty-four was quite an accomplishment in my humble opinion. None of her children went on to do anything so momentous at the tender age of twenty-four although my brother was tolerably fluent in French (as was my mother) and very handy with computers by that age. Fertility experts are given to pointing out that it is also easier to conceive babies at 24 than at 34, which is something they might wish to tell high school girls, not panicked thirty-something women who read the Telegraph.

It's all very sad that the last political leaders who were famous for hoping to shore up their nations by encouraging women to have more babies were Germany's Hitler and Romania's Ceaucescu. This makes anyone else who might suggest it feel a little shy--except Vladimir Putin, of course.

(The famous Andrew Cusack, on a flying visit to Edinburgh, asked this weekend if the mistress of the Historical House was interested in studying any new language, and Benedict Ambrose begged him not to encourage her before she admitted that she had some hankering to learn the Russian basics. Naturally, the Russians are dying out as rapidly as the rest of the Europeans--they never really recovered from the hideous massacres of the Second World War--but the thought of endless miles of  fields and cunning little dachas appeals. One imagines ending one's days as a 90 year old subsistence farmer /babushka, feeding the chickens and boiling beets. What neighbours there are to come to the funeral [if, indeed, she does not just totter to the edge of the grave she had the foresight to dig] will remark upon her strange accent and habit of singing a foreign song [i.e. Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver] whenever it snowed.)

The solution to the fertility problem may be free university tuition to all men and women who put off higher education until they are thirty.  As this is my birthday, please indulge me in my social engineering. My planned society looks like this:

Education of European Citizens

I. Babies at home/private daycare until parents go to uni at age 30.

II. State-funded university daycare for children under 6 of university students. Curriculum: family life, sharing, table manners, colours, shapes, seasons, time.

III. Elementary school from ages 6 to 12. Curriculum: arithmetic, science, divinity, reading, handwriting, music, drawing, painting, French (for English*) or English-as-a-Second-Language, history, geography, physical education with martial arts component, family life. (*Heritage language, e.g. Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, compulsory for children in applicable nation.)

IV. High school 12-18 (boys and girls in separate schools). Curriculum: maths, science, div, classical philosophy, literature studies, including composition, music, drawing, painting, modern languages, history, geography, physical ed (still with martial arts component), marriage and parenting studies. Optional but available: Classical languages, computer programming. Prerequisite to philosophy: geometry.

V. Vocational training 18-20 (men and women in separate institutions). Students may opt out of state apprenticeship programs to be apprenticed to family businesses instead, but will be required to take the state exam in the applicable trade/business. All programs to include work-family balance training. Cash bonus for graduates of Early Childhood Education. Alternative option: military.

VI. Marriage, early parenthood, work from ages 20-30. (Family allowance to parent who opts to remain home with child/ren.)

VII. University from age 30. State funding for all who apply for the first four-five years. Graduate education after 35 merit-based. Maximum full-time university education: ten years. Alternative option to soldiers: OTC.

Singles will note that the pressure on singles to marry before 30 will be greater than ever. However, this pressure will fall once again upon men, whose interest in women will be whetted by eight years of educational separation. The fact that they will be in work from the age of 20 is an added inducement to family life. And as most human beings are conventional, they will just want to do what the other men are doing, whatever they say to the contrary.

University graduates in the Arts who behaved foolishly, lazily and wickedly in our twenties, and have ruefully come to the conclusion that undergraduate education is wasted on the young, will appreciate the idea of citizens delaying higher education until the age of 30. Scientists, however, may point out that scientists tend to make their best discoveries before the age of 30. My society may have to make allowances for this.

At any rate, the option of dramatic career change is there. If a citizen dreams of being an archaeologist, that's lovely. He or she will spend two years learning some related trade (like using very fine brushes to clean paintings, statues and fossils), do something immediately practical (like museum conservation) for ten years, and only then indulge himself or herself in reading about dinosaurs or long-dead peoples.

However, if after twelve years of highly specialized dusting, the citizen wants a complete change, he or she can apply to study something completely different, meeting with a career adviser while choosing courses. The career adviser will take into consideration the citizen's hobbies. Obviously a painter-duster who studies French in her spare time is more likely to excel in French Literature--and go on to teach French--than the painting-duster who stares open-mouthed at the telly from her child/ren's bed-time until her own.

The martial arts component is to instill physical and mental courage in citizens, male and female, instill compassion and respect for enemy combatants, and give them the sand to leap upon foreigners who behave exceedingly badly in public.

Well, that's a nice surprise. Instead of focusing on my beautiful self--whose birthday it is--this blog post is almost entirely concerned with the reordering, fertility, enrichment, happiness and survival of European society via education and job training. Which is all one wants on one's birthday besides, of course, world peace and Polish cookbooks.

Update: If a family member who has not already lavished the birthday girl with gifts is wondering what might make a nice Christmas/birthday present, Geometry for Dummies has just taken my fancy.