What do I buy: a cleaning robot, an e-ink powered ebook, or a personal genetic test from 23andme.com? This is one of those terrible trilemmas facing geeks who are not willing to sacrifice financial stability for having all the coolest gadgets. I chose a 23andme test, and haven't regretted it.

The factoid that always is mentioned in the press about 23andme is that its co-founder Anne Wojcicki is married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. This of course means that the data that 23andme is collecting is going to be used to help Google's Skynet to gain the upper hand in the forthcoming war.

23andme's service works like this: you give them some money (at the time when I write this the price is $399, but it used to be over $800), they send you a test tube into which you spit, some special preservative solution, and a return envelope. You follow some simple instructions and send your spit to a processing facility. Then you wait (this is the hard part). In a month or so (it depends how long the backlog of orders is) you recieve an email telling you that you can log into 23andme.com and take a look at the results.

The processing that they do in the lab creates a data file that represents an impressive number of genetic data points called SNPs or single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The way I understand it, SNPs are known variations that happen in DNA sequences. Much of the DNA stays the same for all people, but there are some variations in a single location. Let's say there's a string of DNA in humans that goes

G-A-T-T-A-C-A
C-T-A-A-T-G-T

and 6 positions there are the same for everyone, except the seventh, which is sometimes AT and sometimes GC. So basically it's a single position on the one of the 23 chromosomes or mitochondrial DNA (I guess 23andmitochondriaandme was shot down as a possible name for the company) that statistically is different from person to person as opposed to long stretches of DNA that stay the same.

Scientists all over the world are studying the correlations that SNPs have with disease risks and traits. I guess these studies go something like this: you grab 500 programmers that use emacs editor and 500 that use vi. You have a hunch that editor preference is related to gene C4711. You sequence the dna of all your coders looking for SNPs in the gene C4711 that are one way in your vi-using alphas and another way in emacs-using sub-omegaloids. Then you find that in most of vi users SNP rs1729 is AA. Then you come out and say - AA in s1729 increases the odds of a programmer preferring vi by 47%.

The more people that a study has - the better the results. 23andme has genetics experts on staff that sift through mountains of these studies, rank them, and then tell the website people to add results to the interface. This way you can go to 23andme.com and see (as of right now) that tell you right away what your lifetime chances of getting 10 diseases. Some, like Parkinson's, they don't let you see without you agreeing to see it yourself. Sergey Brin was reported in the media to get some bad news from that particular one (mine came back "Typical Risk" which means that my chance of getting Parkinson's is about 1.6%, same as everybody else).

A lot of people that I talked to about genetic testing told me that they'd "rather not know". It's true that some of the things that you might learn will make you worry without being able to do anything about it. On the other hand, there are some that you might be able to do something about.

"24.1 out of 100 people of European ethnicity who share Michael Krakovskiy's genotype will get Prostate Cancer between the ages of 35 and 79" vs "17.8 out of 100" on average. Here I learned that I have about 1 in 4 chance of getting prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is one of the relatively treatable ones if caught early, but with unpleasant diagnostic procedures. All of a sound "digital exam" does not sound so bad, and I guess I'll have to bend over and cough a lot more often than I otherwise would. I'm not sure what coughing does, but the "digital" part has nothing to do with electronics or numbers.

There are also 10 traits that are available right now. The most interesting one for me was "Resistant to infection by the most common strain of HIV people usually encounter, though protection is not complete". I apparently have two copies of something called "Delta32 version of CCR5". "Although people with two copies of Delta32 are highly resistant to the most common type of HIV, they can be vulnerable to strains of the virus that do not use CCR5 to enter immune cells".

This makes me a little bit more at ease when I donate blood, even though I know that the chances of getting infected with AIDS at a blood donation are already less than winning that Mega jackpot. On the other hand Dr. Asimov died of AIDS that he received through a transfusion. What's more interesting, is that this is the same mutation that prominently figured in the media with the AIDS patient who was cured through a bone marrow transplant.

Then there's a section that has 79 research reports. These get a rating fоr "research confidence". I, for instance, have an elevated risk of obesity from research that has a three star rating.

Doctor House would have loved getting access to this kind of data for every one of his patients. There are risks for rare diseases mentioned on the show Ankylosing spondylitis, Hemochromatosis, Bloom's syndrome, and everybody's favorite - Lupus (which it's never).

One of the tests included in 23andme is for muscle performance, the one that was in newspapers lately because it was offered by a few companies. The news angle was that sports obsessed parents paid hundred of dollars to find out if their kids have sprinting or marathon ability. Mine says: "One working copy of alpha-actinin-3 in fast-twitch muscle fiber. Many world-class sprinters and some endurance athletes have this genotype." This sounds plausible - for a fat dude I have an uncanny ability to sprint, yet suck at long distances.

But wait, this is not all. For the same low price you also get some ancestral info. This comes in a form of maternal and paternal haplogroup. I am not sure I understand the what haplogroup is very well, and found 23andme's infographics somewhat confusing. From what I understand a haplogroup is a number that is attached to a certain mutation (a few SNPs maybe?) that arose thousands of years ago and that has been statistically crosslinked to people living in certain geographical locations.

My paternal haplogroup is E3b1c1* - "populations: Ethiopians, Jordanians, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews". My maternal haplogroup is H5a* - "populations: Lebanese, Polish, Irish". Both of my ancestral branches are supposedly Ashkenazi, and I guess haplogroups are not a high enough resolution to prove or disprove Jewish ancestry. All they do is tell you that the progeny of your very remote ancestor was likely found in certain wide geographic locales "before the era of intercontinental travel." What's interesting is that there's a small chunk of my maternal haplogroup's population in Siberia.

23andme is a true Web 2.0 service (in the good sense of that expression). There's a blog called The Spittoon. In between educational (sometimes interesting, sometimes boring) posts about genetics they have a section called "SNPwatch". There they write about new research and usually provide a link to raw data in your 23andme profile. So for instance there was an article titled "Variants in Genes for Carcinogen Transporters Linked to Lung Cancer" about a mutation that prevents lungs from clearing out cancer-causing chemicals. Then you can click on two links and see if you have that mutation (to my relief I don't).

There are some social network features: you can compare your DNA profile to your relatives. I'm not sure if hilarity might ensue because I think you can figure out possibility/impossibility of paternity and maternity, like Dr. House did in that episode. You can even compare your DNA to other users of 23andme - you have to accept a "friend" request for that. I'm not really sure what's the fun in that. You can participate in surveys that might be used for research (there isn't one yet about vi vs. emacs yet, but there are some other ones).

It does not look like the $400 fee even covers the cost of gathering the data (there no further fees as of now) or paying for staff/website maintenance, and ongoing research. I'm not really sure what the business model here is (and that makes me a little nervous. Businesses like this remind me of an old Yiddish joke:

Moyshe is selling boiled chicken eggs. He buys them for a kopek each and sells them for a kopek each. Chaim asks - "Moishe - where's the profit in this?" "What, are you stupid?" - answers Moyshe. "I get to keep the broth".

My guess is that the "broth" here is an opportunity to conduct groundbreaking research and maybe sell the anonymized data. That, and helping Google's Skynet find and assassinate John Connor.

I don't really worry too much about being denied insurance in the grim meathook future that surely is coming just because I used 23andme. There's legislation against that on the books right now, and if insurance companies will be able to deny coverage based on genetics they'll be much more likely to get this info by requiring a blood test.

I really wish I could get the data from my grandparents (none of whom are sadly alive). I will buy kits for my entire family though as soon as I'll be willing to part with another chunk of disposable income (I do want that dang Kindle first though).

I recently received an email from a reader who wanted advice about seeking a Russian bride. I decided to post my snarky, although relatively detailed reply here. After I sent the email, I realized that there's a book on the subject

that according to one review is "simply 'excellent'. It is factual without being offensive. It's helpful without being overbearing. It is instructive without being condescending." I don't think I managed any of these feats, but here's what I wrote:

Ancient Odessa, coin, erotic scene. II-III century BC.

Hey, ..... .

Your potential mailorder bride is most likely a scammer. I am about to give you and those like you some advice, which might turn out useful to some and entertaining to others (I plan on posting my reply on my blog).

Seeking a foreign bride is not a simple, risk free, or casual process. It is not impossible though: one of my female friends married an Australian, another a Briton. These two pairs are extremely happy together.

You claim that you are having problems finding a "normal chick to settle down with." I think I know what you mean by that, but I am not sure that you do. In my interpretation you blame your inability to find a mate on the quality of the pool of potential dates available to you.

By definition, "normal" means standard, usual, average. Since the majority is never "not normal" (unless you are in a psychiatric institution), there must be another explanation. It's probably a combination of your high standards in selecting a mate (model looks, high paying job, domestic excellence) and your lack of same qualities. In short you are looking for a girl out of your league.

So here you think: there are these places where the girls are super hot, live in poverty (and thus aren't spoiled) and will jump at a chance of snagging a knight in shining armor who will whisk them away to America. Your thinking is correct. Being American with some money will let you fish in the deep end of the gene pool in many a foreign land.

Russian and Ukrainian cities are teeming with ultrahotness: Slavic female beauty is world famous. There is no obesity epidemic there due to superior quality of food, so sometimes it looks like city centers are overrun by hordes of supermodels. The ubiquitous blond hair and rare eye colors are a part of the local genetic markup.

Meanwhile, widespread alcoholism in men is far from being an untrue stereotype, and there are many men wearing purses in the street and speedos at the beach. Simply not being an alcoholic and having a modicum of fashion sense are great assets there. Basic hygiene is also not really a default in men there. Boldness and fatness is not as repulsive to women in those parts of the world, and an American citizenship is an outright aphrodisiac.

So, those are all the advantages that you have there. What about disadvantages? A shared background is a cornerstone of a healthy relationship. You and your potential bride grew up speaking different languages, reading different books, eating different food, watching different tv shows. There might be some overlap in music, but the overall experiences that the two you of had were vastly different. That gap has to be bridged somehow, and it seems very likely to me that you will leave this burden to the girl. She will have to suffer the tremendous cultural shock upon arriving in the US (I know I have), she will have to speak English. Based on your spelling and grammar you do not strike me as good with learning languages, and Russian is a difficult one to learn. You also show a good level of ignorance of Russian culture, geography and history. That is a big handicap.

So, yes, there are millions of "normal chicks" there, but you are limited only to English-speaking ones, of which there aren't too many. Most "normal chicks" find it as hard to learn a second language as you are. So in practice the pool of girls that you are looking mostly consist of girls that have unrealistic expectations of life in the US, scammers (some of which are not actually girls), and those girls who can't find "normal dudes" because of one issue or another.

Even if you get through all the logistical and bureaucratic nightmares, there are some tough odds to overcome. Imagine yourself in a freshly minted mailorder bride's place: being a stranger in a strange land, feeling exploited and locked into a marriage, no old friends to lean on, having to speak English 100% of the time, homesickness etc, etc. That is some tough situation. If you are not god's gift to women where you live, your foreign bride stressed by all the changes will probably not like you much better, but will be locked into staying married to you for a good while. It'd be exploitative of you, wouldn't it?

The scammers are sometimes crude, sometimes very sophisticated. A friend of mine mentioned a girl that communicates in the way that you described with dozens of men, with the intent of scamming them. "She doesn't ask me to send money, to go visit, or anything else like that." That is a good sign, but this usually does not last: a good scammer does not want to set the hook too early. The fact that she does not own a tv or a computer and uses a friend's computer at work seems suspicious to me. Her story - too smooth. You can't be too careful in these situations.

Remember I mentioned my two friends who made their relationships work? The guys they married are very good looking, hard working, and have outstanding personalities. One pair met in an online game (true story), another at a university. Both girls spoke near-flawless English (the men did not learn more than a few phrases in Russian, very typically).

So here's my final bit of advice: if you do want yourself a beauty from the former USSR -- learn Russian, at the very least read everything you'll find in Wikipedia about the places where you'll be looking, but better thoroughly educate yourself about Russian and Ukrainian history, politics, current affairs. Then do some traveling. Then you might be ready for something like what you are attempting. If you will learn enough Russian and will travel there, you can get laid with impunity without having to go through with the whole marriage thing, unless the "sex tourist" label bothers you.

I did not get to go fishing as much as I wanted to lately, and a recent winter flounder trip that despite amazing weather resulted in only one keeper fish is not a highlight of my fishing career. But the flounder sashimi that I made out of it was absolutely awesome.

Here's a picture of striped bass sashimi that I made a few years back. I'm told that the dark brown (looks red in the picture for some reason) meat should be removed from fillets. It was very tasty anyway.

Food safety is not something to be taken lightly, of course. A lot of people gasp - homemade sashimi? That's suicide! But if you ask me, food police, fear of lawsuits and American germophobia goes a little too far.

Over the years I ate a lot of potentially deadly stuff. Street vendor food, for example. Did you ever wonder how those guys go to the bathroom? Cafeteria food. Oh, and not only American street vendor food and cafeteria food. Soviet too. I ate a lot of sushi and sashimi. I've had raw Korean beef. A lot of oysters, some rare steaks (usually I order medium-rare). In Ukraine I liked to snack on raw chicken eggs. I ate fish that I caught in the uber-polluted Black Sea. I even ate raw mussels (and they concentrate all the bad sea crap) there.

And you know what? While long term health effects of my omnivorous eating are not known yet, I had a very mild case of food poisoning only once. From a reportedly unexpired can of Alaskan salmon.

Alleged time traveler John Titor wrote this about American food:

"What are people thinking? You willfully eat poisoned food. It's very hard for me to find food here. It all scares the Hell out of me. I am amazed at the risks people here are willing to take with processed food. All of the food I eat here is grown and prepared by my family or myself."

I am scared myself. Food here for the most part does not taste right. The large scale growing and processing does something to it. I highly suspect that it's one of the major contributing factors in the obesity epidemic.

In any case, I remember watching Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" where he sat in a French bistro and pointed out half a dozen things that would be completely illegal in an American restaurant, but actually make a eating in that bistro amazing.

As far as homemade sashimi is concerned, I hear a lot of talk about freezing fish overnight in a freezer to kill parasites before eating it. I've tried this, and it makes the texture of the fish mushy. I am not sure about this, but it seems to me that the only fish that gets that treatment is tuna - I've seen huge frozen carcasses in the Tsukiji fish market. In any case, raw fish that I caught myself if probably the freshest that it can be. The only way this sashimi could be any fresher is if I cut and eat the still alive fish right on the boat.