Because I'm in a pedantic mood, I will take issue with this.

I'd expect no less from you! In fact, it was practically a challenge.

You've actually made two somewhat different statements. The first is that the amount of genetic variation between humans is tiny compared to the total number of genes - which is true - and that the differences are immaterial (we're essentially the same person) - which is not entirely true, as - at the extreme - any number of genetically based diseases makes clear.

Yes, well, the joke lies somewhere in the elision between these two. But only a trained actuary could actually parse the mathematical fallacy. Nice buzzkill, math man!

I'm related to a lot of people who worked in coal mines. And a lot of people who worked as fishermen and even more who worked on pineapple plantations.

Not so interesting nor so sexy. In fact, it made me de-register my ancestry.com account.

In gustatory news, I am eating a green chile cheeseburger and it's delicious.

Most of my family on both sides were farmers.

However, googling just my own name turns up a survivor at Andersonville, the notorious Civil War prison. Also a fighter pilot.

Plei- are you friends on LJ with mustangsally? Because she has posted her comparison of her cat to Benedict Cumberbatch!

No, but that was hilarious!

I got into tracing family history in an effort to find out my great-grandparents' names on my paternal grandfather's side. I still don't know that.

But I know a lot about everyone else!

There's definitely a lot of German there.

The young princes have a fair bit of British blood from Princess Diana.

I did some research through ancestry.com, but never found anything particularly interesting. Lots of farmers in New England and the midwest.

The CBC just interviewed a guy named Clovis Najm.

I recently inherited all my Grandmother's ancestry stuff and it's really amazing stuff. My great-great grandfather's naturalization certificate and all sorts of vital records and such. She has us back to late 1700's (I think) in Germany and about the same time to Scotland (with a lot of decades in Canada after the Revolution did not go the way of my Loyalist family members). I need to organize it and write out a comprehensive family tree. Or at the least enter it into ancestry.com.

I know that our family is listed in The Bamford Saga (which my sister totally stole and there is no other copy to have).

The thing that raised my eyebrows most about my genealogy is that every surname, EVERY one, I could find on my mother's side is Scottish. And in theory, the Scots didn't own slaves, so it would imply those surnames were acquired via blood. Which is a fuck of a lot of Scottish for a family that can only identify one white person.

Which is all aside from my father's Scottish surname, of course.

My family history can never be more interesting than the stories that my dad and aunt make up.

green chile cheeseburger

WANT.

OK, so in this neighborhood, we joke about how having a dog ties you into the whole neighborhood gossip circle. However, walking a cat means your neighbors stop by to chat as they come home from their evening's adventures.