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In Iceland, Tap Cellphones To Avoid Incest
Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Students at the University of Iceland have written an Android app that helps you avoid dating your cousins. The app accesses the Icelandic national genealogical database that contains information on all living citizens and their ancestors going back 1,100 years. Tapping two phones together will bring up an alert if you share a common grandparent." Just one of the consequences of having a population small enough (and well documented enough) to have a well-known genetic makeup.
Not tapping that?
Or not even registering in her consciousness as existing?
Not to be creepy or anything, but from a genetic standpoint, a distant relative would probably have been fine to date.
But I know what you mean. A Playmate from the late sixties is a distant relative of mine, and I was always a little creeped out by that centerfold.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Things often get banned in response to being pervasive and problematic, and permitted where they're too infrequent to cause widespread public concern. I'm totally unsurprised that the "redneck" states found the need for lots of restrictive inbreeding laws.
Without reading TFA, this actually seems like a cool app (if you're Icelandic, that is). It would be interesting to be able to press a button and see how closely related you are to your friends -- "Hey our great-great-great grandmothers were half-sisters!" Things like that. It would be mostly meaningless, but who doesn't want to know who's in the (very) extended family?
Right.
Wrong. Marrying your cousin is unlikely to cause problems—the risk is only slightly higher than the risk in the general population. What causes problems is repeated inbreeding of close relatives over the course of several generations.
The fundamental thing you're missing is why incest is a problem in southern states. In the South, people don't move around that much. Most of the folks you meet are third, fourth, fifth generation residents of a given town. And the ones who aren't are usually from a couple of towns over. This means that there's a very high probability of being related to many of the people you meet. Left alone, this would result in significant inbreeding problems within just a few generations. Therefore, cousin marriages are problematic.
In California, most of the people you meet are transplants from somewhere else. This means that there's almost zero probability of being related to anyone you meet. Therefore, first cousin marriages are not problematic in California, not because they won't ever be problematic if they occurred, but because they're about as likely as the Cubs winning the world series, and because the probability of multigenerational inbreeding (the real problem) is basically zero.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If you're suggesting there's no escape from the friend zone, there is
Escaping from the "friend zone" requires maturing enough to realize that women aren't just vending machines you put niceness tokens into until sex comes out.
I think the friend-zone phenomena is typically a result of, or combination thereof; immature women (esp. teenagers), women who knowingly take advantage and men who have a self-image problem.
On the other hand there are men who do actually believe you can put niceness tokens in until sex comes out and women can typically spot that from a mile away.
And then from personal experience there are cases where a man genuinely loves a woman to the point he would lay down his life for hers but she continually pushes him aside; it's not a nice place to be in, it's emotionally frustrating and generally not worth putting up with so the parent comment's suggestion of separation is not a bad idea because it'll give you time to breathe, mature and maybe she'll realize what she lost.. or not but you'll be better off as a free man from such emotional tyranny.
Last but not least is a tidbit from the Bible; "The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).
Listening to ones heart often leads to irrational decisions and therefore many regrets so the Bible again councils; "thinking ability itself will keep guard over you, discernment itself will safeguard you," (Proverbs 2:11). How wise it is to think before you feel!