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Thursday, March 6, 2008

To know or not to know?

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While doing my daily cardio workout I am tuned to either wifey's hand-me-down iPod or some cable-TV news program. Today it was the latter, and an interesting segment had to do with kilobuck genetic testing for personal pre-disposition to some god-awful disease you can not prevent. Why on earth would you want to know this? As the sensible MD guest on the program said: "Use the money for a gym membership instead".

A billion years ago, sexual beings traded the immortality of their asexual self-cloning antecedents for genome diversification, thereby gaining evolutionary improvement. Eventually, humanity gained the gift of creative thinking at the cost of ignorant bliss about mortality. As our technology and data mining improved, and with it all kinds of better living conditions, the cost has been an intimation of our life expectancy, a mixed blessing I think. Now some entrepreneurs are making a killing by selling you your bucket date. What's in it for you? Of what benefit is it to know when and how you might meet a certain tax companion?

I think ol' Satchel said it best: "And don't look back — something might be gaining on you".

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