Originally Posted by tore

How did I single out Africans for exclusion?

Originally Posted by tore

Africa represents a wealth of humanity's genetic diversity and that should of course be represented in humanity's survivist colony. Go back far enough and we're all africans.

The close family comment may be a little hard to get for people who don't study biology, but evolution rewards the procreation of genes. You give your genes to your kids which pass them on to their kids and so, in a way, what makes you you will still exist in the future. This has implications like we tend to be nicer to people whom we share genes with. Because humans are not that genetically diverse, that may well explain in part why we are so seemingly altruistic and good at cooperating and it also means that the people going away on that ship carry with them part of what makes you you. Probably more so if a representative from your nation, ethnic minority, etc, is on that ship.

So, if they are "sufficiently diverse", I would regard the group of colonists going as someone who ensures not just the survival of themselves (which I expect is what leads to comments like "shoot them into a black hole"), but all of us.

Originally Posted by Janszoon

Because the only "bad genes" you mentioned were those that result in sickle cell disease, a condition that that primarily affects people of African decent.

Originally Posted by tore

It is more common in areas with malaria because being a (single allele) carrier for the gene helps make you malaria-resistant. But it's not something which exclusively affects black people of Africa and neither do I think it is regarded as something that makes someone typically african. And it's not like all africans carry sickle cell disease.

So I don't think excluding sickle cell disease from the ship means noone with african heritage gets to go. The imaginative length you'd have to go to in order to get that out of what I wrote is, in my opinion, very far.

Originally Posted by Janszoon

Once again, it was a joke. Relax.

Originally Posted by tore

I know. That's how Norwegians reply to jokes.

Originally Posted by Nurse Duckett

My vote would go to Will.i.am, just out of pure spite.

Originally Posted by tore

I know. That's how Norwegians reply to jokes. And long-winded posts is how I relax.

Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien

There is only one bright spot and that is the growing habit of disgruntled men of dynamiting factories and power-stations; I hope that, encouraged now as ‘patriotism’, may remain a habit! But it won’t do any good, if it is not universal.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

At least this isn't a thousand years ago. Or Janzsoon would be ****ed.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

So you would have Will.i.am live out of spite? That'll show him.

Originally Posted by rostasi

Do animals get to go?
(and I don't mean Ted Nugent)