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$999 For a Complete DNA Scan, Worth it?
DoroSurfer writes "ZDNet is reporting that 23andme.com will open its doors on Monday, allowing you to send them a cheek swab and have your DNA analyzed for $999 (plus shipping, of course... ;)). So what's a thousand bucks buy you? They can tell you your ancient ancestry, They can tell you what diseases you're predisposed to, They give you a "Gene Explorer" that allows you to do a search in your genome to find out if you have a certain gene (e.g., you just heard on the news that Gene XYZ has been linked to Alzheimer's Disease)."
Yeah, it would be nice to through a "; is it" in the place of that comma.
But I find that those who abbreviate English in a space saving and understanding way are more intelligent than those who never do. Not that it isn't messy or ugly, but it's not a sign of stupidity.
There is a type of English screw-up that does indicate stupidity. For example, using "ironic" a lot, or screwing up "they're," or completely screwing up commas in a consistent manner, or most obvious are blatant misspellings all indicate an inability to learn. But this is a title (note the capitalization), and the second clause is like a colloquial subtitle. I think he's just trying to sound as informal as possible.
Like genetics, English is evolving as it moves from generation to generation. This generation is seeing the written language used colloquially in ways it never did before, because of how much content people generate in a short period of time. Face it: it hasn't made it to the textbooks yet, but this is legitimate and normal English in our world, and it's not the egregious ignorant stuff that might dillute or confuse our language
We're going to see so many changes to language as foreign speakers require simplified verbage and people make more and more content. You will be able to trace the words to the English you consider proper, but that will eventually be a totally different language, much as twelfth century English would be nearly useless today.