Obama is a Descendant of Nefertiti and Confucius Too

[jade3000]

A Columbia University professor breaks down the hype and facts behind the Obama slave ancestry genealogical news.

http://www.dominionofnewyork.com/2012/07/31/obama-is-a-descendant-of-nefertiti-confucius-too/#.UBgSJ4l5mc0

There was breaking news yesterday in the lively world of presidential genealogy. Barack Obama–who is regarded as an inauthentic African-American by some because his late mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, was a white woman and his father’s ancestry traced to Kenya rather than Kentucky or the Carolinas–was suggested to be descended on his maternal side from John Punch, a black man.

Researchers at Ancestry.com, the online root-seeking company, derived Obama’s relationship to Punch using a combination of standard genealogical research and Y-chromosome genetic analysis. (Y-DNA is passed essentially unchanged from fathers to sons to grandsons to great-grandsons, etc.) The timing of this announcement could not be better for the Provo, Utah company that just reported booming fourth quarter profits and is rumored to be seeking a buyer.
...
We have a high threshold for political gossip and, in the digital age, genealogy is a fast fad that shows no sign of passing out of vogue. But the primary reason these ancestry stories entrance us is because they bring us face-to-face with our national fascination with and anxieties about racial miscegenation. Take, for example, the minor controversy over Rachel L. Swarns recently published American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multicultural Ancestors of Michelle Obama. ...

[Sanity Claws]

1. What about Buddha and Mohammad?

We know he can't be a direct descendant of Jesus.

[Downwinder]

2. Why, was he gay?

[Sanity Claws]

3. Jesus had no children, according to the Christian religions

[Lint Head]

4. We are star dust.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. Great write-up. What I've learned from genealogy is that we're all connected

sometimes you have to go back 3 score generations, but you can link almost anybody to anybody else.

[longship]

6. We are all connected

We are all connected,
To each other biologically,
To the Earth, chemically,
To the rest of the universe, atomically.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an Astrophysicist and Science popularizer of some note.

Look for "We are all connected" on the Symphony of Science Web site for a great Tyson auto-tuned remix (among others). You can download them, unlike YouFuckingTube. Just click Downloads and you can get them all. Great stuff.

"We Are All Connected" is amongst the best of the lot.

Here's another Tyson from the same remix:

I know that the molecules of my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people in the street and say, "Have you heard this?"

Fucking brilliant. What passion.

"The inconceivable nature of nature."
Richard Feynman

[Viva_La_Revolution]

7. nice

[jade3000]

8. It'd be cool if they worked together.

Both Olandra Nelson (author of the article) and Tyson work in NYC. I wonder of they've ever done a project or even panel together.