99.4 %

I can't believe it took a Sartre to figure out that hell is other people. L'enfer, c'est les autres...qui regardent la télévision


Ranting ahead!




So I'm standing behind the bar at my coffee shop the other day, right, making drinks like you do. One of my  favorite customers -favorite because he is invariably polite, terribly attractive, and not all that bright- walks up, waiting for his extra-hot one pump vanilla two splenda extra foamy caramel macchiato, and, like he does, starts telling me about the latest science fact he's picked up on by watching television.

"So you know," he whispers, conspiratorily, as though the other customers might be listening "Gorilla DNA is like, 100% identical to ours."

I averred that I believed he meant chimpanzees, and the number was somewhere in the mid 99% range. He nodded his head, vigorously. Nobody with that kind of classic jawline and sculpted physique should have the mannerisms of a caffeinated five-year-old, but there we go.

"But yeah like basically the same," he said, with a sunny smile as he picked up his drink "seeya, Sam!"

Oh, television. Oh, thank you for dispensing these facts. As a student of physical anthropology, let me enlighten you all:

99.4 percent is a misleading number. Sure, it means that we are, genetically, close as balls - but here's the deal.

1. We share 65-80% of our DNA in common with just about every single creature on earth that has DNA, from a komodo dragon to a platypus to a single-celled cyanobacteria clinging to the side of a deep ocean vent.

2. Most DNA is gibberish. Seriously. There are less than 20,000  genes that work together to form you and everything that makes you you, and the rest of that immense strand codes something (as far as we know) completely unrelated to the formation of yourself or your functioning. In a literal sense, DNA does it's own thing, and every living thing on this planet exists merely to reproduce itself. "We" are almost completely incidental when you get down to protein chains. We're just the house they live in.

3. If we share that much in common with chimps, imagine how much must be completely identical between you and every other human being. We're talking something like probably a millionth of a percent difference genetically; and that tiny fraction accounts for human heredity and all the vast differences between human beings.

So basically, adorable customer and people everywhere, shut up about chimpanzees being "almost people" or "people". They are not people. They are chimps. Frankly, they're better off.

Some other misconceptions:

HUMAN ANCESTORS

We find some really, really old monkey bones and go "OMG IT IS OUR ANCESTOR" and, while there is certainly some truth to this, the fossil record...doesn't work that way. 99.9 percent (conservatively) of all the animals, including hominids, who have existed have never entered the fossil record, much less been discovered by sweaty graduate students in Zaire. So while you have one monkey a million years old and one monkey six million years old, it is very tempting to say "my goodness! We have found our direct ancestors!" when in fact we are (statistically speaking) more likely to be looking at our cousins many thousands of times removed.

2012 - I swear to god, if one more person asks me about this I will shiv them. Instantly. Without the slightest crumb of remorse. Some facts:

-The Maya had a ciclical creation-destruction myth, not unlike the hindus. So while 2012 might be their idea of when the world goes boom, that...doesn't mean anything? I mean, for chrissakes, every Christian from Paul of Antioch to Savonarola thought he had pinpointed the End Times. Also, one would think that people posessing such accurate prophetic powers might have, ahem, spent a bit more time watching the stars for signs of an incoming smallpox epidemic.

As for this date coinciding with some kind of planetary alignment...

Alright. Gravity. Gravity? It's the pussy of the universe. Seriously. Lift your pinky finger like a foppish epicure and you have conquered the gravity of an entire planet. Our sun, which has gravity many, many times that of every celestial body in our solar system combined, still has a gravity field so week it barely warps the passing of a radio wave, underachiever of the electromagnetic spectrum. Gravity is nothing to worry about.

Swine Flu: Alright. Not gonna lie: the flu could, potentially, be a really serious problem. This time it isn't. Influenza is a really irritating infection because it mutates, more or less annually, with gleeful abandon. How sick you get (how serious the strain) depends entirely on how dramatically the virus mutates. A minor point mutation is what we usually get - and unless you're young, elderly, or have a compromised immune system, you are unlikely to experience anything worse than a really crappy week. Because even though the virus is new, it looks similar enough (to your immune system) to something you've seen before.

However, there is always the potential for a major point shift - say a shift of ten or more. That's when we need to panic, since influenza IS incredibly contagious, fast acting, and -without the aid of inside information, speaking in immune system terms- horrendously deadly. Swine Flu is not a major mutation. It is mildly nastier, but the 3000+ people who have died in the united states were, one and all, the segment of the population who are at risk for ANY flu.

If you want to do yourself a favor, stop panicking. Swine Flu is nothing but the media attempting to distract you from a shit economy and trying to sell more vaporizers. It's also completely irresponsible, given the american attention span, since next year there very might well be a terrible influenza strain with the potential to kill millions but people will be bored. So shut about about swine flu, goddamnit.

In other words: Shut up about what you see on television, folks. It's just plain stupid.