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I'm currently reading this biography published in 2020 from Diane Keaton called “Brother and Sister" A Memoir.I'm almost finished reading this book and love or fanship of a sort has nothing to do with my choice to read it.For love of peace and genuine justice does.But before I give my opinion about this biography Diane Keaton had written about herself and her family, my opinion about Diane Keaton as an actress is that I have watched some of the movies she has been in and I even recognize who she is as an actor but I do not distinctly or vividly recall any of her actual acting parts in movies and some actors are of the type who want to achieve that type of level with acting, where the actor doesn't overpower the content of the movie itself. For example, she didn't choose to act a part in each movie with all the different character roles to just present her own personal self in private as a guest appearance for you to see and follow her along later somewhere else to watch. And whether you like her and the work she does or not, she still gets paid for the work she does regardless, she's not isolated from everyone for her to do the work she does, she's got her own people who love her, appreciate her, understand her and vice versa. She knows the work she does is a public exposure job where she is more likely to be judged in all sorts of ways both good or bad. I do not think she doesn't know all this. Some of us don't even really know how to judge her. We are still thinking about it.Anyway, I have been re-reading some parts in the the biography about what Diane Keaton's brother said, wrote, or did (he's a poet and specializes in collage art) and I think her brother took life alot more seriously than people think.The problem though as an an aspiring artist and poet is that he took along alcohol with him of which he did not take as seriously and shockingly even when his health was being endangered from it.I'm thinking if he was making future predicaments about life in the future - not only his own future with himself but how humans in general will be run - along with his sense of a collective consciousness from it - his sense of how things will probably be like and with how things have come about that way, maybe he couldn't find enough optimism, enough value from it, and genuity from it for him to hang around for a much longer time.Maybe people and things did not impress him as much as he would have liked and I think in that respect his disappointment or his interpretation of whatever he had experienced or witnessed he chose to carry it with him within himself and the reaction, an inner reaction, an “inner violence” from it only surfaced or revealed itself in some of his collage art, poems, and letters.But maybe that's why he also took to alcohol.Maybe the medium he chose to express himself was not enough of an outlet for him.Another thing about him is that although self confident, he doesn't seem to possess self conceit as much other people do.If you ever get a hold of this book to read (Brother and Sister, A Memoir” by Diane Keaton), you'll right away from the first chapter and onwards get a sense of what the book is about and it is really about Diane Keaton's family based mainly around her brother/sister relationship with her brother Randy.There are also photos in the book. Personally, I really like the photos she has chosen to reveal of her family and herself. Her family photos do not seem conceited. They do not look like they are showing off, or boasting about anything. They really look healthy together with each other. Like an ideal looking family. That's the image I get from the photos; Not one of them seems to be overpowering the image of the other in the photos as if they are all at the same level of confidence even if different from each other.That's my opinion of the family photos Diane Keaton selected for the book which I think the arrangement of the photos seems to fit well, or perhaps matches accurately about herself and her family? No?Anyway, in the biography you discover that Diane Keaton's brother turned to alcohol which led to him becoming an alcoholic and he didn't choose to take his alcoholism seriously enough and so he eventually died from it.In addition to that, the way or manner which Diane Keaton's brother sometimes had been caught demonstrating how he chose not to care about his health which could cause an alarm I think really affected her in such a way where she may have overlooked from that alarm how to view him or hear him out without the life threatening alcohol problem with it. His alcohol problem seemed to hinder, overpower, and control his self image, self identity in a way one may overlook that he more than likely would have still possessed the same self identity without. It's as if only without an alcohol problem his sister could more better accomplish understanding more accurately her brother's own self identity.And you gotta keep in mind that only Diane Keaton knows things about her brother that we the readers of her biography may never know about.Here is one excerpt from the book (of 136) stated after my own NOTE before it and it's the part in the book where Diane Keaton's brother is staying at this health recovery place called Belmont Village and it's a day when she went there to visit him:NOTE: (There are comments that I added in this excerpt of which I placed in brackets and I did this to add my own definition from some of the things he said and the lowercase font that I changed to uppercase font, I did that without changing the actual words and I did that for a little emphasis with how I think her brother demurely or intellectually speaks) —So Diane Keaton writes in this excerpt from the book:“As we sat on a concrete bench under a tree, Randy began a description of an encounter with Brenda, the friendly unassuming receptionist at Belmont Village.(Her brother says to her):“Are you ready for this one, Diane? It's unbelievable. One day, Brenda and I walked into this empty room, and she did something that utterly amazed me. (utterly amazing — meaning left him speechless and from this he goes on to say): Remember, now, this was BRENDA. Anyway, she (Brenda - the Belmont Village receptionist) said, “Randy, do you wanna dance?” I said, “Sure.” So I put my arm around her and we started dancing. There was no music, so I started humming a very pretty song. For the life of (OF) me (for the life of himself), I can't THINK of it now.(..) (It wasn't an actual song with words that he hummed, and it's what he hummed he couldn't instantly recall. A song with words may be easier to recall than just a hum). Anyway, we danced for four or five minutes. When it was over, she looked at me and said, “I think I love you”. (And as if they shared a toke, a smoke, a mariguanna joint together passing it to and from each other — do not mistake this as sex - Brenda said she thinks she loves him not she thinks she wants to have sex with him). The next day, she greeted me at the from desk with, “Hi, kiddo”. The romance (most obvious to Diane Keaton's brother) was off. The following WEEK, (sort of as a time off time from him — like “Passover" religion — Passover religion involves fasting which means time off eating food) she asked me if I wanted to dance again. (She asked if HE wants to dance again, not shall they dance together again — instead she offers him to lead). I think that's why she fascinates me. She's truly a puzzle. Now here's the tricky part.. .BRENDA doesn't want me to get near MIRIAM. As MIRIAM, Brenda is more of a matter of fact. She's MIRIAM. SHE'S NOT the DREAMER like BRENDA. Can you BELIEVE IT? (!) They are exactly the SAME person(!)”Now after what Diane Keaton brother said to his sister Diane Keaton — Diane Keaton states in her book her respond to it,“Not knowing exactly how to respond, I said, (Diane Keaton said) “What a great story, Randy. So detailed.(..)”Her brother by the way, despite his alcohol problem, managed to at least get some of his written work published and what he at least managed to publish was a compilation of some of his collected poems of which he chose to title as “DREAMS of MERCURIUS” (which to me, sounds like a slur or jumble of words that could sometines easily be mistaken to mean “The Dreams of the More Curious”. (Yeah, enquiring minds would really like to know..).In another page in the book Diane Keaton writes how her brother started to answer the door of his apartment naked when anyone would knock on it. I think maybe too many people were knocking on his door too many times at unexpected times and maybe he thought the staff's behaviour as unbecoming and rude. This overdoing act of knocking on his door may have personally affected him, there was an invasion of his sense of privacy so much that he decided to be just as rude in return by answering the door naked. Maybe he thought the staff's behaviour at the place he was staying and being taken care of should know how to be more professionally hospitable and considerate instead of careless. Like, you know, aren't they trained and paid enough to do their job in the manner that you know they should?Now about what he said to his sister about the Belmont Village receptionist (Brenda/Miriam) the one with the most unusual split personality that does not actually seem so — these are my thoughts about itMiriam the name? — think Miriam Webster dictionary — and the concept about words and vocabulary“Brenda and Miriam as the same person” may just mean Brenda using what she learned from the Miriam Webster dictionary in her handsBrenda without extensive usage of vocabulary/thesaurus or Miriam (Brenda with her Miriam Webster dictionary and extensive usage with vocabulary) are the same person to him (and both of female gender with or without the dictionary/thesaurus and the select words from it) and unlike the gender difference between himself and his sister in comparison with same gender Brenda and “Miriam” which are the same personAnd this reminds me of this movie called “Too Beautiful For You” (french movie with english subtitles) which is about this married somewhat rich busuness man who gets bored of his beautiful wife who does everything perfect and well mannered but without much talk, without much use of words, despite her extent of knowledge which h she does not display outright so he (this woman's husband) has an affair with this other woman who always verbally displays her intellect and intelligence to him which becomes apparent that he has a passionate need for which his wife is insensitive to.When Diane Keaton said “I can't think of it now” maybe he calculated the word “now” to also mean the “National Women's Organization” and that a women's rights organization that is more commonly known as N.O.W. Should Diane Keaton's brother be tempted by Miriam (Brenda's other persona) and her words? Afterall, to Diane Keaton'a brother Brenda and Miriam are the same person to him still with extensive verbal output expressed to him or without. Diane Keaton'a brother says, “he can't think of it now”. (He's the same person though, if he could THINK of it NOW.. or not) - if he could aid this National Women's Organization (known as N.O.W.) or not.There's this song from this band called Sonic Youth called “Cool Thing” and part of the lyrics of the song goes like this, “Hey COOL THING --sit right beside me. Tell me, are you going to help WOMEN from being oppressed from MALE. WHITE. CORPORATE. oppresssion? Huh? You gotta let us know ..Don't be — shy…” And then you hear the voice of this black male in the background saying “Tell it like it is..feel baby FEEL” and then the singer sings cradling her microphone closer to her self (right?) “COOL.., cool.., THING”..(Although I don't really know how the singer is oppressed compared to other women who are, but the song reminds me of women's human rights organizations). Will not Randy (Diane Keaton's brother) aid? Will not Randy help his sister's dress which looks like one mixed up mess?Now means now , in the present moment, not in the past, not later but now.coincidentally, Diane Keaton is an actress and her job involves memorizing lines (words/vocabulary) to play make belief characters in movies and this creates a certain type of image on her and how different people view her from it so anyway as a brother to Diane Keaton, there’s the Diane Keaton whose an actress exposed to the public and then there's the Diane Keaton whose part of his family as her brother - does he think Diane Keaton as his sister is the same person to him as the Diane Keaton the actress? We may have to review all the types of roles she chose to play on the movie screen as an actressAlso, maybe her brother us indicating his move from past to present, past to present (like he chose to lead the dance with Brenda/Miriam for 4 to 5 minutes) and his sister is maybe present to forward, present to forward with him (5 to 6 minutes) dance step going forward I was if two steps back then present which still leads forward but as a dance on a dance floor you stay at the same spot instead of dance off the dance floor moving forwardI don't know, maybe her brother sees her movies and her that way, herself forward and the movies present at any time or something like thatIn the book on several occasions Diane Keaton mentions how her brother doesn’t like it when she dresses too masculine and on the days he witnesses her dressed in that manner he becomes unfavourably frank with her about how he feels it. Maybe he feels AS IF she is ridiculing or caricaturizing his masculinity indirectly and maybe this causes a little bit of a clash with his own self identity which maybe doesn't motivate him in return with what he chooses to wearher visits to see him are they maybe at times or always like how it is if he were to visit the movie theatre to see her on a movie screen?He says to his sister about his encounter with Brenda/Miriam and the empty room they were in that wasn't her reception work area, he said there there was no music for them to dance - so he hummed something pretty for herhe said he couldn't remember the tune of the hum (the humming he did as they danced was without lyrics or words like in a song)If it was a song he sang instead of humming, would he remember it or remember it soonerhe said he danced with Brenda for 4, 5 minutes maybe he is refering at the same time not only about duration and time but a way of meaning backward steps (past and the present /4 senses, five senses) instead of 5, 6 senses present onward to ongoing forward steps like overtimeIn any case, what I always pick up from this memoir of Diane Keaton's is that their parents loved them both very much* and that both Diane Keaton have both an audience who would be very very disappointed if she and/or her brother are not cleverly evil people however in the same existence with the audience who would be very very disappointed if she and her brother are not decent well meaning people.*pg 70 /perhaps this is coincidental, but as I've stated earlier, I have been re-reading parts of this biography and I also saved a few pages and I mean not a large amount of content just a few page that I did not read which I left to read later.I sometimes choose to read a book this way but it really depends on what the book is about when I choose to do that. Mind you, I don't get mixed up or confuse the information when I do this style of reading, and that is because I remember what I already read and am familiar with the content and I am aware of the content I have not yet read which may change a viewpoint I may have or it my viewpoint from the content that I read may remain the same (and I have experienced both experiences before from books I chose to read this way with).Anyway, “surprise, surprise” what I saved to read in the book for later ended up being a letter from Diane Keaton's brother to Diane Keaton about their dad.From what I read in the biography, there were times that Diane Keaton's brother Randy felt that their dad was too harsh on them despite that all parents back in those times were allowed (it was legal) to spank their children if they think their kids are misbehaving. Now of all the memories they had of being spanked there may have been a day or two out of very many years where the reason they got a spanking did not make much sense to them. And although maybe too late to do this now, maybe Diane Keaton, her brother, and the rest of the siblings should have kept a diary about those times from which whatever they write in it they would have had to be 100% honest with the details of the events that led to a spanking from their parents. Like what did they do that led to a spanking? Do they remember what they did? How many times did they get a spanking from something they knew they would get a spanking from because their parents warned them before what the consequences will be if they misbehave or do not follow the rules of their house? And how many times did their dad spank them without any real valid reason compared to the number of times their dad's reason was valid? On page 70 of the biography, Diane Keaton chose a letter from her brother about his feelings about their dad and in this letter he wrote about a particular day which may have traumatized his life for their dad's behaviour seemed nonsensical.Here is part of the letter Diane Keaton's brother Randy wrote to his sister about her dad's behaviour.(The bracket parts are comments from me).“I don't have a pleasant memory of Dad. (I wonder if he means pleasant looking photos with what his dad looks like). I was afraid of him the whole time. (Does he need to see really good looking photos of his dad to recall all the pleasant memories he hasn't with his dad which he cannot recall with only unpleasant looking photos of his dad's appearance? Had only seeing photos of his dad not looking good in the photos only bring about a fear about his dad? Did what the photos of his dad and what he looked like in the photos distort his perception of his dad? Did he need to see good looking photos of his dad?)“Remember when he spanked us, and we had to pull down our pants before he whacked our bottoms? I'll never forget running around clutching my butt screaming. He was sadistic. You have to admit he had a sadistic nature. And I wonder where I got mine!!!! (Here it looks like he is confessing or admitting some similarities he actually has with his father. And perhaps with a certain way he wants things to be or to be done or no way at all which leads to a sadistic nature from dissatisfaction or injustice?)“Even way back, even then I knew he didn't get me. (transiently wondering what he means by he didn't get me? Does he mean he doesn't think their dad understood him? And/or does he mean their dad must have been mistaking him with somebody else's son. Their dad didn't get him, he got somebody else?)“He would pounce on me for the weirdest reasons. Like with math. He'd ask me what one times one was. I'd say, “Two.” “Pull your head out of the sand. It's one.” “How come it's one and not two?” I asked. He actually slapped me on that one. What did I do wrong? Why was he so pissed? I didn't get it, so I didn't say it right, so what? He made me feel like I didn't know anything.”(I, too had some unusual and unexpected occurences from my childhood with being slapped. For example, my mother once did this - she slapped me across the face - but I don't really remember any other time she ever did - it was just that one time) and I think maybe I was around 10 or 11 years old and for some reason my mom and I were seated in my aunt’s and uncle's kitchen when this unexpected event occured and my une and aunt lived on the the main floor of the house while my parents, my sisters, and I occupied the second floor of a house located on Carlaw Avenue. Anyway, my mom was getting breakfast for me and she placed a glass of milk on the table with some food but what happened was that I accidentally spilled the milk on the table and my mother got upset about it for a few seconds from which she then slapped me. And it wasn't a light slap. I didn't cry about it at all. I was just in disbelief about it because my mother usually doesn't behave like that towards me. I remember her quickly cleaning up the liquid mess on the table but I don't remember anything else about it.I'm sure though, enough people I've not the majority of people have often heard the common expression “there is no use in crying over spilled milk"? Right?Another unexpected experienced with slapping occured in greek night school class in the city of Toronto. My teacher happened to be a priest and he was a greek teacher of mine for more than two years and one night something occured in this greek night class that never occured before and it was sometime before mid 1980’s. My greek priest teacher asked me to get up in front of the classroom to state out loud the constenants of the greek alphabet. I must have temporarily forgot what all the constenants were because I could not say and because I could not right away state the constenants of the greek alphabet the greek priest teacher slapped me hard across the face. I didn't cry about this however, I just returned back to my seat and thought “well, I guess I'll THINK about these constenants of the greek alphabet LATER”. Mind you, I am still not sure if this event and my reaction to it scared some of the students in my class. I must have thought it as something trivial if I was aiming towards achieving a martial arts black belt without even thinking about. Like what's a one time slap compared to that?Now about the stated event in the biography about Randy and his dad asking him what does 1 + 1 equal to, it reminds me particularly of those generations in the past who seem to use this certain type of brand of psychology towards children and I think Randy's dad may have used on him. And, I think I also have experienced something like that from my own past on numerous occasions. I think this is how they do it (and who does it by the way — could be from a parent, your grandparents, your aunt or uncle, a guardian, or even a teacher). They intentionally choose the event when you're young and I think they choose it right down to what they are going to say along with what they are going to do and they do this for their child to recall the event later on in their life at an older age. From my own life, it was not my own parents that did this sort of thing, it was: my grandmother (what she did was very unusual even though I would not mistaken as phychological abuse other people if they were to witness the event may have gotten that impression), my grandfather the event I witnessed that was a political event with him may have been calculated intentionally for me to witness, and I also suspect a greek female teacher from Greece may have also used this psychology method with me. The Greek teacher was a teacher from a greek boarding school I stayed at for while as a student in the country Greece. (Later I returned to the city of Toronto where I was born). Anyway, what they intentionally choose to say or do something so outrageous or so unusual and out of the ordinary and they intentionally do this so there would be more of a chance that their child will remember the event at a much older age. And I'm wondering if it is to distract you during a time in your life at an older age where you may or may not experience a very unpleasant event or a series of unpleasant events what may be able to help you or guide you out of it is recalling memories of your past you didn't think about before. You have something to digress with like memories and recollections of your childhood that you may have forgotten about. Especially if the people who used this psychological method on you for the most part were very many times good to you.But looking at it from an entirely different perspective, did Randy in his later years suspect that maybe his dad secretly sexuallly molested him without him knowing about it? Because some of the way with words he uses could also give that impression. But whether his dad did or not we do not really know so his dad may actually be seriously innocent or seriously guilty!And how would Randy's dad respond if he were to come up with a way to say to his dad (especially if he was aspiring to become an artist), “Dad, first you gotta tell me, exactly what kind of math are we going to be doing”?1times the oneROMAN NUMERALS I XWhen his dad said to him, “Pull your head out of the sand”! Who knows if his dad was refering to ostriches or not (ostriches are big birds that do not fly and these big birds are known to stick their heads in the sand). However, was his dad refering to exile and being ostricized? You know in Brittain their government were known to deport some of their guilty people to Australia. In Greece Queen Emily was ostricized and exiled. Greece kicked her out of their country and so she and her king husband moved to Hungary. My stomach is rumbling already..with hunger.His mom by the way, once used the word rumbling in regards about what she thinks about her son's poems and writings. That letter from his mom to her son is on pg 67 in the biography. Here is her response to a poem he just finished. It is just is a part of it:“Dear Randy,This is a completely beautiful interpretation of an observation. I'm overwhelmed at the twist of fate which made me one-half of a genetic act bringing you into life. (so..what his mom writes here got me thinking 1 the x chromosome..and 1 the y chromosome doesn't really equal to 2, it just equals to one each and one-half plus one-half equals 1, yeah…his son should have asked his dad hey dad, what kind of math are we doing anyway if one plus one does not equal 2? obviously not traditional math). I'm proud to be your parent because of what it means in terms of who you are. I feel this rumbling inside me every time I read your work. I don't like to call them “poems” because that word has a tone of frothy, mind wanderings, and I don't in any way equate that to what you write”.

You want ba-nan-a ? Apes are animals created without conscience and with only instinct. Human are created in the “Image” of God. Human kind can reason, create, love, think, make decisions…. etc…. animals are not made in the image of God but made for us….The reason for DNA similarities with other created things is because we have the same creator._______________________________________________________________________________Do Human and Chimpanzee DNA Indicate an Evolutionary Relationship?byBert Thompson, Ph.D.Brad Harrub, Ph.D.The collision occurred without warning. Prior to the impact, thoughts had revolved around dinner plans. Images of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, however, now have been replaced by an ear-piercing siren and flashing strobe lights, that dance off of street signs and store windows. Following the injured person’s six-minute ambulance ride, emergency room doctors assess the situation. There is extensive internal damage, and several organs are beginning to shut down. The prognosis is dim—unless a healthy kidney and liver are transplanted within the next 12 hours. A call is made to the National Organ Donor Registry, and the gravity of the situation is relayed to several donor officials. Within a matter of hours, a chartered air ambulance delivers the organs in a bright red Igloo™ cooler. As the anesthesiologist begins the necessary preparations for surgery, the patient notices the surgeon walk over and inspect the donated organs. The last words the patient hears as he drifts off to sleep is the surgeon saying, “Well, I guess chimp organs will have to do; after all, we share over 98% of the same genetic material.”While many evolutionists proclaim that humanDNAis 98% identical to chimpanzeeDNA, few would lie by idly and allow themselves to receive a transplant using chimpanzee organs. As a matter of fact, American doctors tried using chimp organs in the 1960s, but in all cases the organs were totally unsuitable. The claim of 98% similarity between chimpanzees and humans is not only deceptive and misleading, but also scientifically incorrect. Today, scientists are finding more and more differences inDNAfrom humans and chimps. For instance, a 2002 research study proved that humanDNAwas at least 5% different from chimpanzees—and that number probably will continue to grow as we learn all of the details about humanDNA(Britten, 2002).In 1962, James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery concerning the molecular structure ofDNA. Just nine years earlier, in 1953, these two scientists had proposed the double helical structure ofDNA—the genetic material responsible for life. By demonstrating the molecular arrangement of four nucleotide base acids (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymidine—usually designated as A, G, C, and T) and how they combine, Watson and Crick opened the door for determining the genetic makeup of humans and animals. The field of molecular biology became invigorated with scientists who wanted to compare the proteins and nucleic acids of one species with those of another. Just thirteen short years after Watson and Crick received their famed Nobel Prize, the declaration was made “that the average human polypeptide is more than 99 percent identical to its chimpanzee counterpart” (King and Wilson, 1975, pp. 114-115). This genetic similarity in the proteins and nucleic acids, however, left a great paradox—why do we not look or act like chimpanzees if our genetic material is so similar? King and Wilson recognized the legitimacy of this quandary when they remarked: “The molecular similarity between chimpanzees and humans is extraordinary because they differ far more than many other sibling species in anatomy and life” (p. 113). Nevertheless, the results were exactly what evolutionists were looking for, and as such, the claim has reverberated through the halls of science for decades as evidence that humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor.One year following Watson and Crick’s Nobel ceremony, chemist Emile Zuckerkandl observed that the protein sequence of hemoglobin in humans and the gorilla differed by only 1 out of 287 amino acids. Zuckerkandl noted: “From the point of view of hemoglobin structure, it appears that the gorilla is just an abnormal human, or man an abnormal gorilla, and the two species form actually one continuous population” (1963, p. 247). The molecular and genetic evidence only strengthened the evolutionary foundation for those who testified of our alleged primate ancestors. Professor of physiology Jared Diamond even titled one of his books The Third Chimpanzee, thereby viewing the human species as just another big mammal. From all appearances, it seemed that evolutionists had won a battle—humans were more than 98% identical to chimpanzees. However, after spending a lifetime looking for evidence of evolution within molecular structures, biochemist Christian Schwabe was forced to admit:Molecular evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist, I should be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies; so many in fact that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important message (1986, p. 280, emp. added).In 2003, the completed human genome study is scheduled to be published. Before this massive project was created, scientists estimated that humans possessed 90,000 to 100,000 genes (a gene is a section ofDNAthat is a basic unit of heredity, while the genome constitutes the total genetic composition of an organism). With preliminary data from the genome project now in hand, scientists believe that the actual number of genes is around 70,000 (Shouse, 2002, 295:1447). It appears that only about 1.5% of the human genome consists of genes, which code for proteins. These genes are clustered in small regions that contain sizable amounts of “non-coding”DNA(frequently referred to as “junk DNA”) between the clusters. The function of these non-coding regions is only now being determined. These findings indicate that even if all of the human genes were different from those of a chimpanzee, the DNA still could be 98.5 percent similar if the “junk” DNA of humans and chimpanzees were identical.Jonathan Marks, (department of anthropology, University of California, Berkeley) has pointed out the often-overlooked problem with this “similarity” line of thinking.BecauseDNAis a linear array of those four bases—A,G,C, and T—only four possibilities exist at any specific point in aDNA sequence. The laws of chance tell us that two random sequences from species that have no ancestry in common will match at about one in every four sites. Thus even two unrelatedDNA sequences will be 25 percent identical, not 0 percent identical (2000, p. B-7).Therefore a human and any earthlyDNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. Would it be correct, then, to state that daffodils are “one-quarter human”? The idea that a flower is one-quarter human is neither profound nor enlightening; it is outlandishly ridiculous! There is hardly any biological comparison that could be conducted that would make daffodils human—except perhapsDNA.Marks went on to concede:Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative differences among genomes.... Thus, even among such close relatives as human and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10 percent larger than the human’s; that one human chromosome contains a fusion of two small chimpanzee chromosomes; and that the tips of each chimpanzee chromosome contain aDNA sequence that is not present in humans (B-7, emp. added).The truth is, if we consider the absolute amount of genetic material when comparing primates and humans, the 1-2% difference in DNA represents approximately 80 million different nucleotides (compared to the 3-4 billion nucleotides that make up the entire human genome). To help make this number understandable, consider the fact that if evolutionists had to pay you one penny for every nucleotide in that 1-2% difference between the human and the chimp, you would walk away with $800,000. Given those proportions, 1-2% does not appear so small, does it?CHROMOSOMAL COUNTSIt would make sense that, if humans and chimpanzees were genetically identical, then the manner in which they store DNA also would be similar. Yet it is not.DNA, the fundamental blueprint of life, is tightly compacted into chromosomes. All cells that possess a nucleus contain a specific number of chromosomes. Common sense would seem to necessitate that organisms that share a common ancestry would possess the same number of chromosomes. However, chromosome numbers in living organisms vary from 308 in the black mulberry (Morus nigra) to six in animals such as the mosquito (Culex pipiens) or nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) [see Sinnot, et al., 1958]. Additionally, complexity does not appear to affect the chromosomal number. The radiolaria (a simple protozoon) has over 800, while humans possess 46. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, have 48 chromosomes. A strict comparison of chromosome numbers would indicate that we are more closely related to the Chinese muntjac (a small deer found in Taiwan’s mountainous regions), which also has 46 chromosomes.This hurdle of differing numbers of chromosomes may appear trivial, but we must remember that chromosomes contain genes, which themselves are composed of DNA spirals. If the blueprint of DNA locked inside the chromosomes codes for only 46 chromosomes, then how can evolution account for the loss of two entire chromosomes? The task of DNA is to continually reproduce itself. If we infer that this change in chromosome number occurred through evolution, then we are asserting that the DNA locked in the original number of chromosomes did not do its job correctly or efficiently. Considering that each chromosome carries a number of genes, losing chromosomes does not make sense physiologically, and probably would prove deadly for new species. No respectable biologist would suggest that by removing one (or more) chromosomes, a new species likely would be produced. To remove even one chromosome would potentially remove the DNA codes for millions of vital body factors. Eldon Gardner summed it up as follows: “Chromosome number is probably more constant, however, than any other single morphological characteristic that is available for species identification” (1968, p. 211). To put it another way, humans always have had 46 chromosomes, whereas chimps always have had 48.REAL GENOMIC DIFFERENCESOne of the downfalls of previous molecular genetic studies has been the limit at which chimpanzees and humans could be compared accurately. Scientists often would use only 30 or 40 known proteins or nucleic acid sequences, and then from those extrapolate their results for the entire genome. Today, however, we have the majority of the human genome sequences, practically all of which have been released and made public. This allows scientists to compare every single nucleotide base pair between humans and primates—something that was not possible prior to the human genome project. In January 2002, a study was published in which scientists had constructed and analyzed a first-generation human chimpanzee comparative genomic map. This study compared the alignments of 77,461 chimpanzee bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) end sequences to human genomic sequences. Fujiyama and colleagues “detected candidate positions, including two clusters on human chromosome 21, that suggest large, nonrandom regions of differences between the two genomes” (2002, 295:131). In other words, the comparison revealed some “large” differences between the genomes of chimps and humans.Amazingly, the authors found that only 48.6% of the whole human genome matched chimpanzee nucleotide sequences. [Only 4.8% of the human Y chromosome could be matched to chimpanzee sequences.] This study compared the alignments of 77,461 chimpanzee sequences to human genomic sequences obtained from public databases. Of these, 36,940 end sequences were unable to be mapped to the human genome (295:131). Almost 15,000 of those sequences that did not match human sequences were speculated to “correspond to unsequenced human regions or are from chimpanzee regions that have diverged substantially from humans or did not match for other unknown reasons” (295:132). While the authors noted that the quality and usefulness of the map should “increasingly improve as the finishing of the human genome sequence proceeds” (295:134), the data already support what creationists have said for years—the 98-99% figure representing DNAsimilarity is grossly misleading, as revealed in a study carried out by Roy Britten of the California Institute of Technology (see Britten, 2002).Exactly how misleading came to light in an article—“Jumbled DNA Separates Chimps and Humans”—published in the October 25, 2002 issue of Science. The first three sentences of the article, written by Elizabeth Pennisi (a staff writer for Science), represented a “that was then, this is now” type of admission of defeat. She wrote:For almost 30 years, researchers have asserted that the DNAof humans and chimps is at least 98.5% identical. Now research reported here last week at the American Society for Human Genetics meeting suggests that the two primate genomes might not be quite as similar after all. A closer look has uncovered nips and tucks of homologous sections of DNA that weren’t noticed in previous studies (298:719, emp. added).Genomicists Kelly Frazer and David Cox of Perlegen Sciences in Mountain View, California, along with geneticists Evan Eichler and Devin Locke of Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, compared human and chimp DNA, and discovered a wide range of insertions and deletions (anywhere from between 200 bases to 10,000 bases). Cox commented: “The implications could be profound, because such genetic hiccups could disable entire genes, possibly explaining why our closest cousin seems so distant” (as quoted in Pennisi, 298:721).Britten analyzed chimp and human genomes with a customized computer program. To quote Pennisi’s article:He compared 779,000 bases of chimp DNA with the sequences of the human genome, both found in the public repository GenBank. Single-base changes accounted for 1.4% of the differences between the human and chimp genomes, and insertions and deletions accounted for an additional 3.4%, he reported in the 15 October [2002] Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Locke’s and Frazer’s groups didn’t commit to any new estimates of the similarity between the species, but both agree that the previously accepted 98.5% mark is too high (298:721, emp. added).While Locke’s and Frazer’s team was unwilling to commit to any new estimate of the similarity between chimps and humans, Britten was not. In fact, he titled his article in the October 15, 2002 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Divergence between Samples of Chimpanzee and Human DNA sequences is 5%” (Britten, 99:13633-13635). In the abstract accompanying the article, he wrote: “The conclusion is that the old saw that we share 98.5% of our DNA sequence with chimpanzee is probably in error. For this sample, a better estimate would be that 95% of the base pairs are exactly shared between chimpanzee and human DNA” (99:13633, emp. added). The news service at New Scientist | Science news and science articles from New Scientist reported the event as follows:It has long been held that we share 98.5 per cent of our genetic material with our closest relatives. That now appears to be wrong. In fact, we share less than 95 per cent of our genetic material, a three-fold increase in the variation between us and chimps.The new value came to light when Roy Britten of the California Institute of Technology became suspicious about the 98.5 per cent figure. Ironically, that number was originally derived from a technique that Britten himself developed decades ago at Caltech with colleague Dave Kohne. By measuring the temperature at which matching DNA of two species comes apart, you can work out how different they are. But the technique only picks up a particular type of variation, called a single base substitution. These occur whenever a single “letter” differs in corresponding strands of DNA from the two species.But there are two other major types of variation that the previous analyses ignored. “Insertions” occur whenever a whole section of DNA appears in one species but not in the corresponding strand of the other. Likewise, “deletions” mean that a piece of DNA is missing from one species.Together, they are termed “indels,” and Britten seized his chance to evaluate the true variation between the two species when stretches of chimp DNA were recently published on the internet by teams from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and from the University of Oklahoma.When Britten compared five stretches of chimp DNAwith the corresponding pieces of human DNA, he found that single base substitutions accounted for a difference of 1.4 per cent, very close to the expected figure.But he also found that the DNA of both species was littered with indels. His comparisons revealed that they add around another 4.0 per cent to the genetic differences (see Coghlan, 2002, emp. added).It seems that, as time passes and scientific studies increase, humans appear to be less like chimps after all. In a separate study, Barbulescu and colleagues also uncovered another major difference in the genomes of primates and humans. In their article “A HERV-K Provirus in Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Gorillas, but not Humans,” the authors wrote: “These observations provide very strong evidence that, for some fraction of the genome, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas are more closely related to each other than they are to humans” (2001, 11:779, emp. added). The data from these results go squarely against what evolutionists have contended for decades—that chimpanzees are closer genetically to humans than they are to gorillas. Another study using interspecies representational difference analysis (RDA) between humans and gorillas revealed gorilla-specific DNA sequences (Toder, et al., 2001)—that is, gorillas possess sequences of DNA that are not found in humans. The authors of this study suggested that sequences found in gorillas but not humans “could represent either ancient sequences that got lost in other species, such as human and orang-utan, or, more likely, recent sequences which evolved or originated specifically in the gorilla genome” (9:431).The differences between chimpanzees and humans are not limited to genomic variances. In 1998, a structural difference between the cell surfaces of humans and apes was detected. After studying tissues and blood samples from the great apes, and sixty humans from various ethnic groups, Muchmore and colleagues discovered that human cells are missing a particular form of sialic acid (a type of sugar) found in all other mammals (1998, 107[2]:187). This sialic acid molecule is found on the surface of every cell in the body, and is thought to carry out multiple cellular tasks. This seemingly “miniscule” difference can have far-reaching effects, and might explain why surgeons were unable to transplant chimp organs into humans in the 1960s. With this in mind, we never should declare, with a simple wave of the hand, “chimps are almost identical to us” simply because of a large genetic overlap.CONCLUSIONHomology (or similarity) does not prove common ancestry. The entire genome of the tiny nematode (Caenorhabditis elegans) also has been sequenced as a tangential study to the human genome project. Of the 5,000 best-known human genes, 75% have matches in the worm (see “A Tiny Worm Challenges Evolution”). Does this mean that we are 75% identical to a nematode worm? Just because living creatures share some genes with humans does not mean there is a linear ancestry. Biologist John Randall admitted this when he wrote:The older textbooks on evolution make much of the idea of homology, pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of the limbs of different animals. Thus the “pentadactyl” [five bone—BH/BT] limb pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and flipper of a whale—and this is held to indicate their common origin. Now if these various structures were transmitted by the same gene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted upon by environmental selection, the theory would make good sense. Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down... (as quoted in Fix, 1984, p.189).Yet textbooks and teachers still continue to proclaim that humans and chimps are 98% genetically identical. The evidence clearly demonstrates vast molecular differences—differences that can be attributed to the fact that humans, unlike animals, were created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27; see Lyons and Thompson, 2002a, 2002b). Elaine Morgan commented on this difference.Considering the very close genetic relationship that has been established by comparison of biochemical properties of blood proteins, protein structure and DNA and immunological responses, the differences between a man and a chimpanzee are more astonishing than the resemblances. They include structural differences in the skeleton, the muscles, the skin, and the brain; differences in posture associated with a unique method of locomotion; differences in social organization; and finally the acquisition of speech and tool-using, together with the dramatic increase in intellectual ability which has led scientists to name their own species Homo sapiens sapiens—wise wise man. During the period when these remarkable evolutionary changes were taking place, other closely related ape-like species changed only very slowly, and with far less remarkable results. It is hard to resist the conclusion that something must have happened to the ancestors of Homo sapiens which did not happen to the ancestors of gorillas and chimpanzees (1989, pp. 17-18, emp. added).That “something” actually is “Someone”—the Creator.REFERENCESBarbulescu, Madalina, Geoffrey Turner, Mei Su, Rachel Kim, Michael I. Jensen-Seaman, Amos S. Deinard, Kenneth K. Kidd, and Jack Lentz (2001), “A HERV-K Provirus in Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Gorillas, but not Humans,” Current Biology, 11:779-783.Britten, Roy J. (2002), “Divergence between Samples of Chimpanzee and Human DNA sequences is 5%, Counting Intels,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99:13633-13635, October 15.Coghlan, Andy (2002), “Human-chimp DNA Difference Trebled,ׇ [On-line],URL: News, September 23.Fix, William R. (1984), The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (New York: Macmillan).Fujiyama, Asao, Hidemi Watanabe, et al., (2002), “Construction and Analysis of a Human-Chimpanzee Comparative Clone Map,” Science, 295:131-134, January 4.Gardner, Eldon J. (1968), Principles of Genetics (New York: John Wiley and Sons).King, Mary-Claire and A.C. Wilson (1975), “Evolution at Two Levels in Humans and Chimpanzees,” Science, 188:107-116, April 11.Lyons, Eric and Bert Thompson (2002a), “In the ‘Image and Likeness of God’ [Part I],” Reason & Revelation, 22:17-23, March.Lyons, Eric and Bert Thompson (2002b), “In the ‘Image and Likeness of God’ [Part II],” Reason & Revelation, 22:25-31, April.Marks, Jonathan (2000), “98% Alike? (What Similarity to Apes Tells Us About Our Understanding of Genetics),” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 12.Morgan, Elaine (1989), The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of Human Evolution (London: Souvenir Press).Muchmore, Elaine A., Sandra Diaz, and Ajit Varki (1998), “A Structural Difference Between the Cell Surfaces of Humans and the Great Apes,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 107[2]:187-198, October.Pennisi, Elizabeth (2002), “Jumbled DNASeparates Chimps and Humans,” Science, 298:719-721, October 25.Shouse, Ben (2002), “Revisiting the Numbers: Human Genes and Whales,” Science, 295:1457, February 22.Sinnot, E.W., L.C. Dunn, and T. Dobzhansky (1958), Principles of Genetics (Columbus, OH: McGraw Hill) fifth edition.Schwabe, Christian (1986), “On the Validity of Molecular Evolution,” Trends in Biochemical Sciences, 11:280-283, July.“A Tiny Worm Challenges Evolution” (no date), [On-line], URL: http://www.cs.unc.edu/plaisted/ce/worm.html.Toder, R. F. Grutzner, T. Haaf, and E. Bausch (2001), “Species-Specific Evolution of Repeated DNA sequences in Great Apes,” Chromosome Research, 9:431-435.Zuckerkandl, Emile (1963), “Perspectives in Molecular Anthropology,” Classification and Human Evolution, ed. S.L. Washburn (Chicago, IL: Aldine).

#1 Put on your house shoesSo, here we are then my little Ausländer. Your first day as an aspiring German. You’ll have woken up in your bed, probably because it’s gotten light outside and you don’t have curtains, because curtains are evil and suggest you have something to hide.Now, you’ll need to carefully make up your half of the bed (you should be sleeping in a double bed made up of two single mattresses and two single duvets). What it lacks in nocturnal romance, it more than makes up for in practicality, the most prized of German possessions.Now, careful! Don’t step off of the Bettvorleger yet, there is a very high chance that the floors will be ever so slightly colder than you expect! So cold you may go into some kind of morning shock. That’s why you need house shoes! They are requirements of Germanism.I would like to be able to tell you why Germans are so in love with their house shoes, I’ve asked several but still have no definitive answer. Not because they’ve not told me, but because the answer is so incredibly unromantic, so sensible, practical and boring that my happy little barefoot brain has no idea where to store information of that nature and so just gives up committing it to memory.#2 Eat a long breakfastComing from England, I was very surprised to see how important the kitchen is to the German people. The English tend to treat it purely as a room of function, like the toilet, only with a fridge. You get in, do what you’ve got to do, get out.The living room is the heart of the home.For the Germans, it’s a different story, they are happiest and spend the most time in their kitchens. It’s the most practical room in the house. You have a table, water, coffee, food, radio, serious, correct-posture-encouraging seating. They’ve correctly realised, if trouble does come calling, they’ll be best prepared for it by holing up in their kitchens.German breakfasts are not meals, but elaborate feasts. If it’s a weekend, every square inch of the table will be smothered in an assortment of meats, cheeses, fruits, jams, spreads and other condiments. It’ll look like someone broke in and while hunting for valuables just tipped the contents of all the cupboards out onto the table.The first time I experienced breakfast in a German WG it lasted so long that I drifted off into a sort of breakfast coma and they had to wake me with some eszet, which is a sort of chocolate strip you put on bread. I didn’t know you could legally combine chocolate and bread, it was quite a revelation. Now I just eat eszet with everything, and slowly I’ve learnt to eat more and also slower, during the long drawn out German breakfasts.The worst gameshow I’ve ever seen was an English one called “Touch the truck”. Its premise, if I can be so generous as to call it that, was that lots of people touch a truck and then we all wait, the last person to let go off the truck, wins the truck. It sometimes feels like German breakfasts work on a similar premise, only the truck is breakfast.* Like VentureVillage on Facebook *

#3 Planning, Preparation, ProcessSo far, so good. Look at you, you’re up early, you’ve got your radio on, no doubt some Depeche Mode is blasting out, you’re eating a slow and ponderous German breakfast, you’re acclimatising very well, young Ausländer.Now you need to enter the headspace of the Germans. If you want to be one, you need to think like one, which is a big task and we’ll cover it in more detail in later steps. But for now, start accepting the three central tenets of Germanism. The three P’s. Planning, Preparation, Process.Being a good German is about understanding the risks, insuring for what can be insured, preparing for what cannot. You are your own life’s project manager. Plan and prepare. Make spreadsheets, charts and lists. Think about what you’re doing each day and how you can make it more efficient.Is it possible you arrange your shoe storage so that the most used items are nearer the top, reducing bending time? I don’t care if you’re 17, it’s taking you nearly a full minute to get your shoes on, buy a shoe horn! Optimise your processes!Just because they call it spontaneity, doesn’t mean it can’t be scheduled. There’s a time and place for fun, and it’s to be pre-decided and marked in the calendar. All else is frivolous chaos. So sit down now and make a plan for the day, then the week, then the month. Then book your holidays until 2017. To make it easier, just go to the same place. How about Mallorca? All the other Germans go there, there must be something to it.
#4 Get some insurancesEveryone knows it’s a jungle out there. Hence why we created the phrase. So, plucky Ausländer before you go out into the jungle and start swinging from its high branches, it’s wise you be sensibly insured. Germans, being imaginative people, ran a little wild with the concept of sensibly insured.Don’t be surprised if the Germans you meet all have personal insurance advisors. My girlfriend communicates with her insurance advisor more often than I do with my mother. If someone invented insurance insurance, an insurance against not having the right insurance, we’d all be treated to the sight of 80 million people dying of happiness.#5 Dress seriouslyPlan made for the day? Insurances in place? Great. Good work! Now it’s time to change out of your Schlumperklamotten and head outside to face the day head on. You’re going to need to get appropriately dressed.*WARNING! AUSLÄNDER! WARNING!* Outside is this thing called nature, and nature is fickle and not to be trusted! It dances to its own illogical, changeable tune. Best dress on the safe side. You need – expensive outdoor clothing! After all, you’re going outdoors, it’s called outdoor clothing, therefore it must be necessary.At all times, you should be dressed for a minimum of three seasons. Get some of those funky Jack Wolfskin shrousers, the trousers that zip off into shorts. If there is even the slightest possibility you may at some point leave a pavement, be sure you are wearing high-quality hiking boots. The Germans consider anything else an act of ankle suicide.#6 Speak GermanEvery nation has done things it should be embarrassed about. Dark acts in its history. The Germans are no exception. You know of what I talk – the German language. Deutsch is mostly an incomprehensible jumble of exceptions. A dungeon designed to trap foreigners and hold them hostage, repeatedly flogging them with impenetrable and largely useless grammatical devices, whose only merit is to very, very, explicitly state who has what and what is being done to whom, by whom.The bad news is that for you to fully blend with the Germans, you’ll need to learn it. In principle, it’s not that hard. It works in two stages. Learning words and learning the grammar. Learning words is fun, most are even similar to English thanks to our shared ancestry, you’ll zip along making great progress and really enjoying wrapping your tongue around such delights as Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel, Weltschmerz and Zeitgeist.Then, confident at all the little snippets you’ve already accumulated, you’ll start learning the grammar, the putty that builds your mutterings into real, coherent German sentences. This is where you’ll start to feel cheated. German grammar is impenetrable nonsense.English, at least linguistically, has always been the biggest slut in the room. Giving and taking from other languages. Trying to make you like it. Keeping it simple. My pet theory is that the Germans, despite their committed efforts, were not as successful as the English in their world power plays and so the English language has always, historically, been forced like a bridge made of glue to ford whatever cultural divide lay between us and whoever we were conquering, sorry colonising this week, so we had to smooth down its rougher edges, which is a poetic way of saying, kick out all the hard bits.It was forced to evolve in a way that German had not been. German retained the grammatical complexity of Old English.Take genders as an example, present in Old English, still present in German, yet assigned utterly arbitrarily. Sure, there are some sort of vague guidelines about how words end or that almost everything to do with time is der. That’ll help you with maybe 30 per cent of nouns. That still leaves 70 per cent that you’ll have to learn by heart so you can decline correctly.You’ll waste so much time memorising genders (PRO TIP: never learn a noun without its article, going back later and adding them in is very time consuming and inefficient). Yet, without knowing the gender of the noun, you can’t accurately decline the endings of the sentences, nouns and adjectives or adverbs. Which is utterly pointless anyway, and does next to nothing to increase comprehension but without it you’ll say very embarrassing things like einer grosser Wasser, instead of ein grosses wasser. I know, cringeworthy.Of course there are far harder languages to learn than German, that’s not my point. English also has its stupidities, like a staunch commitment to being unphonetic. The difference is that English was kind enough to be easy in the beginning, it ramps up slowly and encouragingly. German just plonks you down in front of a steep mountain, says “viel spass” and walks off as you begin your slow ascent.When I first started learning the language, which mostly consisted of me getting nowhere and just sitting around bitching about it, I was gently reminded by a friend that some of the smartest things ever written were written in this language. First you need only respect it, later you can learn to like it.#7 Get some more qualificationsWhen I first moved here I was given the advice that “while in England, it’s he who drinks the most and doesn’t vomit on his shoes, that gets the girl, here it’s he who knows the most about philosophy that gets the girl”. That’s an exaggeration.But the Germans, on account of their excellent school system (at least in comparison to the English), and the extraordinarily long time they tend to study (now reducing as they’ve adopted the Bachelor/Masters system) are an intellectual bunch. As a result, they also tend to have a great number of qualifications.Vanity always needs an audience, it’s no different with intellectual vanity. So the Germans needed to create situations in which they could gently remind other Germans how much more qualified they are than them. An outdated idea in English culture, where everything is on a first-name basis, I am Adam, he is John, it’s what in our heads that shows our qualifications and intelligence.Here, it’s the letters before or after our full name, letters we use when addressing each other, for example Herr Dr or Frau Prof Dr.h.c Schmidt, none of this first name over-familiarity. Even the humble doorbell offers an opportunity for neighbour one-upmanship, where academic qualifications can be listed.You can expect occasional smirks and reassuring pats on the shoulder, when you tell them you only have a BA in Theatre Studies, as if they’ve a new found respect for the fact you’ve managed to dress yourself properly.#8 Obey the red manI think the often exaggerated stereotype that Germans love to follow the rules all comes down to one little illuminated red man. Guardian and God of the crossing pedestrian. To dare challenge his authority and step gingerly out into a completely empty road when he is still red, is to take great personal risk.Not of getting run over, the road is completely empty after all. Bar being struck by an invisible car, you’re safe.No, what you really risk is the scorn, the tutting and the shouts of “Halt!” from nearby Germans. Who will now consider you an irresponsible, possibly suicidal, social renegade.Halt! Await the green Ampelmännchen. Consider it an elaborate exercise in self-control. You’ll need all that self-control not to freak out and start shooting the first time you visit the Ausländerbehörde and find out they don’t speak English.9. Drink ApfelsaftschorleGermans fear any beverage that doesn’t fizz. It brings them out in a cold sweat. It’s a great comedic joy to live in a country where you can watch tourists and foreigners buying “classic” water, thinking that since for millions of years now “classic” water, you know, the kind that fallen from the sky since the dawn of time, was still, uncarbonated water, it would be the same here, right?Oh no. Millions of years of water history have been conveniently forgotten. “Classic” means carbonated, of course. You big silly. Learn to like it. If not, when visiting the homes of your new German friends, you’ll request tap water and they’ll look at you like you are some primitive savage they just found in the woods covered in a blanket of your own hair.Related to this is Apfelsaftschorle. You know in movies when people go to therapy and then the therapist asks them to create a happy place. A safe, tranquil spot they can turn to when the world gets too big and scary. Usually it’s a beach, or a rocking chair on the front porch of an idyllic childhood home?For Germans, that happy place is swimming naked in a lake of Apfelsaftschorle. Tired after a long day of stamping and form filling, confronted with a 15-page long restaurant menu, baffled by the burdens of choice, they always retreat to their happy place and order Apfelsaftschorle. It’s steady, reliable.For more than a century Germans, smug with their discovery of fizzy water, all their abundant breweries producing fine beers and ales, they didn’t believe it could get any better. Then some bright spark tried adding a little apple juice to that fizzy water. Creating something equally refreshing, but 6 per cent more fun! It was a near riot.People were not ready. It was almost too fun. An all-night discoparty for the tastebuds. Of course, it won’t taste like that to you, with your funny foreign pallet. Apfelsaftschorle will taste to you as it really is, a fractional improvement on water’s boring taste.#10 Eat German foodPicture from the awesome WurstbilderIt’s hard to discuss German cuisine without mentioning Wurst, at which point you’ll feel like I’m smacking you about the head with the stereotype stick. So I won’t. Wurst is important, but I think more for what it represents than how it tastes. Wurst is terribly boring. For a country to have elevated it so highly, shows a startling lack of imagination. Which, once you’ve experienced even more of the German cuisine, you’ll have no problem in accepting.Here, meat is the linchpin of every meal. Being a vegetarian here is probably about as much fun as being blind at the zoo. The other notable time of year is Spargel Saison, where the country goes gaga as the almightly Spargel is being waved around everywhere, like a sort of culinary magic wand, which coincidentally it does rather resemble.In conclusion, German cuisine is to the world of food, what the band Eiffel 65 are to the history of popular music: present, but largely a footnote.
You are probably wondering how I wrote an entire entry about German food without mentioning that lumpy S word – Sauerkraut. Fear not, I’m giving it an entire entry of its own…For How to be German in 20 Steps Part 2 – click here