Personal DNA testing

23andMe: I'd heard about this company a while ago, but now it's available to Canadians. Basically you:

  1. spit,
  2. send the saliva to California,
  3. pay $999 for them to sequence parts of your genome,
  4. get a report telling you:
    1. all the terrible diseases you're likely to contract,
    2. whether the computer thinks that its likely that you're an idiot, and
    3. whether or not you're likely to win the Boston marathon anytime soon, and
  5. debate the privacy implications of a company having your genetic profile on file

Step E is the one that I'm wondering about. The CBC has more details on this company.

Things people assume: Dave the English major?

Outside of the smallish group of folks with whom I hung out with regularly during my high school years, the most frequent guess of former classmates has been that I majored in English in university. Oddly enough, some of them can remember specific things I was forced to make for English class. (I survived English by taking it seriously non-seriously... submitting well-formed assignments on the most ridiculous topics that I could think of).

Given that my field of study falls in the sciences - notoriously bad at communication - I tend to take people's assumptions of Dave the English major as a compliment. However English is probably the subject that I felt least inclined to major in. In fact the only reason that I took Philosophy at university was that the only alternative was English. I hated English for overanalyzing literature and its commitment for rules, when I think that English is one of the few areas where rules are meant to be broken.

That said, titles on my shelves include: On Writing Well, The Elements of Style, Orson Scott Card on Characters and Viewpoint, a book on Plot, and a number of other books in a similar vein in addition to an increasing amount of classic fiction.

If you hear of someone speaking ill of you...

If you hear of someone speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend youself, you should say:
"He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned."

- Epictetus (Stoic Philosopher)

The future of society

According to projections by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2017 half again as many women as men will earn bachelor's degrees. In the early 1990s, six women graduated from college for every five men who did so; today, the ratio is about 4-to-3. A decade from now, it will be 3-to-2—and rising, on current trends.

- Jonathan Rauch in The Coming American Matriarchy

My primary area of study is in Computer Science, and I'll admit that this area still has relatively few women involved. Yet, both where I did my undergrad and where I'm doing graduate studies the school has invested a fair bit of time and money trying to recruit women into the program.

However, the same cannot be said for the arts and humanities as far as I can tell. As an undergrad I came relatively close to fulfilling the requirements for a history major (4 courses off). History is disproportionately female but I never heard of any attempts made by the history department, or any money spent, to recruit more men.

(HT: Albert Mohler)

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