Denyse O'Leary on dating Neanderthals

The big paper with Svante Pääbo's team on the Neanderthal genome and Neanderthal and human having sex has been blogged to smithereens in the last week. Deservedly. For a few pointers you may start with my own post.

Today one of my favorite bloggers weighed in:

Every father on this list wants his daughter to date and later marry a Neanderthal, right?

Oh, wait, This just in: Most fathers don't even want their daughters to date, let alone marry, a guy who plays the guitar in the subway for a living, let alone ...like, there was a time when one of a father’s jobs was to check out suitors for his daughters’ hands.

Girls can be unduly influenced by romantic issues, but good fathers tend to ask boring stuff like “What is your annual income?”

Put more simply: If ten years later the girl comes trudging back to her parents’ house with three kids in tow and that guy is playing folk music somewhere far away, with his hat on the pavement, well ...

But even worse. According to New Scientist, that guy’s daughter could be dating something now housed in a zoo? And Dad doesn’t care? And she shouldn’t be in therapy?

I used to wonder if the world had gone mad. Now I accept the fact and do not care.

This is so precious! Denyse O'Leary manages to turn a great scientific study into some thoughts about fathers worrying or not about who their daughters date. The shallowness is deep, so to speak, and is the staple of Post-Darwinist. I love it!