Life in Possum Holler

Saline County, Arkansas, United States
See my website at www.cebillingsley.net

04 August 2007

The Genealogy Craze in America:

Strangled by Roots:
by Steven Pinker, in The New Republic Online
Post date 07.30.07 Issue date 08.06.07

New technologies often have unforeseeable consequences. Michael Faraday could not have anticipated the rise of the electric guitar and its effects on our culture, nor did the inventors of the laser realize they had laid the ground for a thriving industry of tattoo removal. And it is safe to say that Watson and Crick could not have foreseen a day when an analysis of Oprah Winfrey's DNA would tell her that she was descended from the Kpelle people of the Liberian rainforest. 'I feel empowered by this,' she said upon hearing the news, overcoming her disappointment that her ancestors were not Zulu warriors.... "

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