If DNA determines our musical tastes, I’m . . . oh, nevermind

This seems a lot like racial profiling.

Ancestry, the world’s largest for-profit genealogy company (previous leader: Nazi Germany) announced recently a partnership with music service Spotify to determine your “musical DNA” based on actual DNA tests.

Yes, that’s right.

This will “encourage [Ancestry’s] audience to explore the soundtrack of their heritage,” said Danielle Lee, global head of partner solutions at Spotify, in an interview with the digital site Quartz.

Thousands of people have already opted in for the service, which – to the credit of Ancestry and Spotify – is voluntary and requires you to input your own DNA. So far, since our experience tells us that large companies are wildly reckless with our information. Do you really think your DNA information is secret? Or music playlists are secret?

An aside: My musical tastes would be humiliating if I didn’t revel in them. No one would mistake my Spotify lists of teen pop music (David Cassidy to Brittney Spears to the Jackson 5) or even hip-hop (harmless 1980s rappers) with that of a respectable music fan. And don't get me started on my “cocktail party” list that includes Glen Campbell, Herb Alpert, Andy Williams and the Carpenters.

But getting back to the earlier point. There are three big questions here:

• Do you trust Ancestry and Spotify with your information?
• Does your DNA actually determine what kind of music you like?
• Is this a bad idea?

The first question has likely already been answered. You, like me, may not really care if anyone knows your DNA history and your musical tastes. But once you asked a website to find out your ancestry or start compiling online music lists, you ran that risk.

The second question strikes me as more significant. Does our DNA determine our musical tastes? If my presumably bland, western European DNA suggests I would prefer artists like Andy Williams, Herb Alpert, Glen Campbell and the Carpenters . . .  hey, wait a minute!

The opposite argument: Should someone with my DNA like Stevie Wonder, Ray Parker Jr. and Earth, Wind and Fire? Or Wham! and Hall and Oates? Is it possible that those preferences aren’t so much a result of my DNA as when and where I grew up?

The same is probably true for you, too. Your favorite type of music may be representative of your genetic background, but I’d guess that you were raised listening to that kind of music. Or (like me and country music) you were raised with a style of music that you completely rejected.

That’s part of the magic of music. We’re not limited in what we can like. We can be Cuban and like European classical music. We can be from Russia and like American rhythm-and-blues. We can be from Canada and . . . well, Canadians are so nice they like everything.

But this move seems like a stretch for Ancestry and Spotify, although it’s one that makes sense in a brand-promoting way (it got an article in Quartz and I’m writing about it), but still a stretch.

Is this a bad idea? I don’t know, but as the Carpenters (bland, suburban western Europeans like me) once sang, we should just “sing a song.”

Oh, hey, Earth, Wind and Fire had a song by that title, too!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Cars? Electricity? Telephones? What are the biggest modern inventions?

Consider an invention-based version of the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life."

In the movie, character George Bailey gets to see what life in his town would be like had he never existed. In this column, I'm considering inventions and discoveries.

Simply put: What invention of the past 200 years (we'll make it 242 years, equaling the age of the Untied States) would affect you the most if it hadn't happened?

If, for instance, air conditioning was never invented, how big an impact would it have on your day-to-day life? In my scenario, it doesn't exist. The issue is how much worse would your life be?

Get the idea?

I asked a few colleagues and Mrs. Brad for their opinions, stole some of them and then made my own definitive list of the most important inventions of the past 242 years, based on how much they would affect our lives on a daily basis if they didn't exist.

10. The internet. This ranks high on lists of people younger than 40, obviously, while my generation remembers life without it. However, while the web has been around only since the 1990s, it's like the printing press: It changed communication and it gave a platform to those previously without one.

9. Telephones. Imagine a life where you had to see someone face to face to communicate. STOP. Or had to send a telegraph. STOP. That would be terrible. STOP.

8. Penicillin. This was discovered in 1928 and changed everything. Stuff that used to kill people – infections, pneumonia, riding BART, skydiving without a parachute – now are easily healed with penicillin. Usually.

7. Cars. This was originally higher on the list, but I realized that the biggest change is that I would just have to live closer to work and ride my bike, horse or pogo stick. However, cars made widespread travel possible and created a world of commuters – even if you live and work in the same city, imagine if you didn't have a vehicle. A hassle.

6. Chemical preservatives. Nearly everything in your cupboard and refrigerator has some sort of preservative. Without these, we would be forced to buy fresh foods every day – a development that may sound good until you realize the difficulty and expense of doing it, as well as the difficulty of getting any kind of variety of food. I don't want to live in that world.

5. Radio/TV. Radio changed the world and TV did it again. Without these inventions, we would have to see live entertainment (or movies, I guess) and would only know what we heard locally. Entertainment and information would be absolutely different. However, newspapers would thrive!

4. Refrigerator. If I had to choose between a world without chemical preservatives (No. 6) and without a refrigerator, I would go without preservatives (even though both are necessary). Being forced to either get ice for an icebox or to live without refrigerated food would be brutal. Where would you keep your ice cream?

3. Electricity. It was an absolute game-changer when we gained the ability to harness it so we could have lights and The Clapper. Electricity in homes changed sleep habits, health habits and entertainment. Imagine life without electricity. You don't want that.

2. Indoor plumbing. If I had to pick between having electricity and no indoor toilet or an indoor toilet without electricity, I'd take the toilet. But not by much. This, though, is the very definition of "your life would be different every day without it." Who would even want to live in that world?

1. Insulin. I'm a Type 1 diabetic who has used insulin since I was 14. Had I been born a century earlier – long before the 1920 discovery/invention of insulin – I would have wasted away and died at a young age, meaning the use of indoor plumbing, electricity, cars and the internet would be a moot point. This is a clear No. 1 for me (although I had to use the internet to find out when it was discovered).

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Get ready to buy your own model of a flying car

The promise of every baby boomer's childhood is finally arriving.

The Transition, a two-seat flying car, is expected to go on sale this month. It's made by Terrafugia, which seems like a weird name until you think about the fact that Chevrolet, Hyundai and Jaguar are all car names.

The Transition, according to a report from the Chinese news agency Xinhua (company slogan: Communism dies in darkness), will start sales earlier than the previous reports, that the sales would begin in 2019.

A flying car!

Here are the important details: The Transition, according to the report, can switch between flying and driving modes in less than 60 seconds. It can go up to 100 mph. It has a hybrid motor while driving on roads (and a "high-brid" motor in the air, am I right?)

All of that seems great – you can fly and then land and drive The Transition. Unless you consider what happens if you land on Interstate 80 and then take a full minute for your vehicle to turn into a car. You would likely be told in no uncertain terms what a menace you are to the driving public as rush-hour cars swerve past you to take the North Texas Street exit.

Your presumed answer: I'm in a flying car!

Terrafugia is apparently ready to reveal a second flying car soon. This is unlikely, but what if it can go on water, too? A triple-threat!

For most of my generation, the flying car is one of two big ideas that have been around since childhood. The other, that we will see people on a screen while we talk to them on the phone, is a reality (Skype! Facetime!), but the flying car has floundered.

For a while, it seemed like Moller International in Dixon, led by flying car enthusiast Paul Moller, would deliver on the promise. But Moller's Skycar never really made it and the last I saw, a model was for sale on eBay with the condition that it not be flown, which is kind of like selling a TV with the condition that it not be watched.

A flying car that you can't fly is . . . what most of us already have.

Apparently other companies, such as Aston Martin, Airbus and Rolls Royce, are also working on flying cars.

The big question for most of us is what a flying car will cost. The announcement that The Transition is going to be sold didn't mention a price.

And while I now am much closer to my job and thus don't have the one-hour commute that I had for a few years, I'm fascinated by this option and have a significant question for Terrafugia: Can I trade my 2005 Prius with more than 200,000 miles on it for a new version of The Transition?

And would you teach me how to fly it?

This is going to be great!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Time to stop calling nondairy products 'milk'

My workplace features a stocked kitchen, which is a pretty nice fringe benefit, especially for all the 20-somethings who eat cereal there each morning and gobble up the bags of chips and guzzle free sodas.

I also use the kitchen, but the most frequent use for me is to get coffee. I fill my cup, add sweetener and then open the refrigerator and search for the half-gallon of half-and-half.

I have to move the almond milk. The soy milk. That gawdawful-flavored nondairy creamer. Finally, way in the back, unused by anyone younger than 40 since I last used it, is the actual half-and-half. Half heavy cream, half milk.

A dairy product!

I have no problem with the popularity of dairy alternatives nor does it bother me that my co-workers like other types of milk (actually, it does. But only in an old-man, back-in-my-day-we-drank-what-they-gave-us way). However, I have loved milk and milk products my entire life and stand with America’s dairy farmers on one issue.

Those other items should not be called milk. Because they’re not milk.

Fortunately, the Food and Drug Administration may feel the same way. The FDA recently said it’s considering instituting federal standards that define milk as coming from the “milking of one or more healthy cows.”

Now I’m not sure the definition needs to include “one or more healthy cows,” because even “coming from a cow” would suffice. Because in a world where we embrace “alternative facts” and label anything that doesn't fit our narrative as “fake news,” there should still be some standards.

Peanut butter should come from peanuts. Coffee should come from coffee beans. Pickles should come from pickle trees. Pancakes should be cakes baked in pans.

Milk should be . . . milk.

Instead, we have soy milk, almond milk, cashew milk, coconut milk, rice milk, oak milk, hemp milk (Hemp milk? Hemp milk.), flax milk. Everything but Harvey Milk . . . and that's only because he was assassinated before he could market himself as a dairy product.

Here’s what all those items have in common: They are liquid and they are not milk.

They’re nice substitutes for milk for those who can’t or don’t want to drink milk. But they're not milk.

Listen, I put artificial sweetener in my coffee and the folks who make Sweet-N-Low, Equal and Stevia don’t claim to be sugar. Because they’re not. They’re artificial sweeteners or sugar substitutes.

Milk is milk and we’re heading down a slippery slope when we label any willy-nilly product milk. Milk comes from a lactating mammal.

“There’s no way for a nut to be lactating and giving natural milk; you can’t milk a nut,” said a farmer quoted in an article about the issue in the Lubbock, Texas, Avalanche-Journal. (A quote brings to mind a famous exchange about cats in the first “Meet the Parents” movie.)

Here’s what makes it really unfair: According to current FDA rules, if a dairy farmer adds a vitamin enhancement to milk, they can’t call it milk. It has to be a dairy drink or something similar. But a rice farmer or a hemp farmer can call a drink “milk."

I say we keep those items in the refrigerators of America’s offices. But call them “soy drink” and “almond drink” and whatever other noun you want to put before the word “drink.”

Because if they’re milk, I’m going to start calling water “hydrogen and oxygen milk” and I’m going to call orange juice “orange milk” and I’m going to call my coffee “coffee bean milk.”

Stop the madness.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.