[Dragaera] Boing!

[Philip Hart]

On Fri, 8 Sep 2006 Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote:

> Now, while this is certainly a superficial distinction, since the marbles
> are otherwise identical, I fail to see how it is an "artifical"
> distinction. It seems to me it is based on an objective observation.


For one, the standard categories often mask more than they reveal
(there's more genetic diversity in Africa than the rest of the world
combined, iirc) - and often they are based on really dumb criteria from a
genetics pov - one might as well have the curly-haired and straight-haired
races.  People have been arguing for a long time about how to define
species or taxa or clades or whatever, stuff that'll make one's head
spin, and given the problem of racism I think it's best to try to use
neutral language where possible.  That's not to say that we shouldn't
recognize that e.g. people in the US have different responses to some
medicines based on where their ancestors lived at some suitable point in
the past.

You write like one of those straight-hairs, btw.