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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.
In high school one of the hottest girls who half the guys (including myself) had a boner for turned out to be a very distant relative of mine...only found out years later from my dad's family tree research hobby. Makes me feel a little better about not tapping that :-\
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
In Iceland AFAIK people are called "Bob son of George" or "Mary daughter of John", so there aren't any surnames to make it obvious. It makes me wonder how the database can uniquely identify you, though. (I wonder at what stage in the dating/relationship procedure the phone tapping takes place -- you don't want to leave it too late, nor be in a rush and tap too early...)
Do you really need an app to tell you who's family?
Funny you mention that. Not to put too fine a point on it, but much of my family belong to a religion that promotes large families and careful genealogical records, and I found out one day entirely by accident that one of my co-workers, a thousand miles from my home town, was a first cousin. It can happen even in the US; I imagine it's a fairly common occurrence in a tiny country like Iceland.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
from a genetic standpoint you were safe :. offspring have and average of 12 dupes :. 6 dupes :. 3 dupes
sibling share on average what 23 chromosomes
1st cousins share 12
2nd cosines share 6
add in mutation rate in humans of 175 nucleotides per generation per chromosome, and you safe as long as you don't have a family doing it for multiple generations.
socially however you would be frowned upon.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
The classic example of this is, of course, poor mentally and physically disabled Carlos II of Spain of the cousin-bonking Hapsburgs. His father was his mother's uncle, and the family tree just gets worse from there. To quote Wikipedia, "Joanna [of Castile] was two of Charles' 16 great-great-great-grandmothers, six of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers, and six of his 64 great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers." Oh, and Joanna went insane early in her life, so she wasn't exactly a genetic marvel herself. No wonder poor Chuck turned into something only a couple of steps above a wet sack of blubbering goo.
Honestly, why?
If you reproduce with a close relative, there's a higher chance of some genetic flaws showing up. But just having [protected] sex with a distant cousin won't result in anything nasty. Heck, not even your sister would be an issue (unless you get here pregnant).
This used to be shuned upon because sex = kids. This isn't true anymore nowadays, since we have pills, condoms, etc. It's just inhereted taboo.