The Afrikaners' greatest accomplishment

The Findlays, my Scottish ancestors who settled in Wisconsin in the late 1800s, were a resourceful group of people. They had a little log cabin and, if the pictures are any indication, spent a lot of time sitting outside with sour looks on their faces. According to my great-uncle Joe, my great-great-great grandmother Jane, the one my mom's descended from, was intelligent and long lived. Still, let's not mince words here: the Findlays were ugly. Don't analyze that too much; after all, this is fairly recent history, and my mom sort of looks like Jane... and people tell me I look like my mom... if a = b and b = c-- ugh! Moving on.

The Dutch people who moved to South Africa in the 17th century, as I understand it, kind of came here because they didn't have any economic prospects back in the old country. They figured that starting over in a completely foreign place at least gave them an opportunity to live the American Dream. I get it. But as we all know, poor people are ugly, so I'm beginning to think there was another reason they migrated: they couldn't get any action back home. Even generations later, in the Boer War (Afrikaners vs. the British!), despite hopefully some genetic variation over time, it appears the Afrikaners were still ugmos.

That's kind of terrifying. And believe you me, if I saw that going to class every day, you can bet I'd be back in Houston's Bush International faster than you can say "was Rasputin part of the Boer army?"

And though people might rag on Rice for having unattractive people (nerds = unattractive), and this may have skewed my view of things, I highly doubt it. I read a lot of celebrity news. I watch a lot of TV. I'm bombarded with pretty faces constantly. The point is, I know what's hot and what's not. And the Afrikaners of today are hot. When I'm not drooling over the sweater-clad-and-brainy hottie in my modernism class or that sensitive-looking dude who plays guitar Sundays at the Irish pub, I'm amazed by how skinny, blond and pretty the girls are. Most of the guys, if you're into the surfer look/Abercrombie model sans pout, aren't too bad looking, either. So, I'm not sure what happened in that gene pool between the second Boer War (1879-1915) and now (2009), but miraculously, the Afrikaners of today bear absolutely no resemblance to their hirsute predecessors. I feel like there definitely needs to be some serious scientific research about this. Was everyone just ug back then? And how can you go from fugly to f-me in just a few generations?

And let me just say, I know Nelson Mandela is famous and basically universally liked; he seems he can do no wrong (let's ignore his "endorsement" of Zuma and blame it on senility), but I'm pretty sure South Africa's main point of pride, more than the aging Xhosa ex-pres, is the face I've seen on just about every tabloid here. Apparently, South Africa has just one celebrity (the tabloids also seem fascinated with the American "Ange and Brad"):

Charlize is from Benoni, a trashy area near Jo'burg. Yes. This is what South African white trash looks like.

America, we've got a lot of catching up to do. I'm pushing for Beauty Superpower by 2030.

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Jan. 2009 Dollar-to-Rand exchange rate:
$1 = R9.98

Feb.-Mar. 2009 DtR exchange rate:
More of the same (hello, $3 dinners)
High: 3/9. $1 = R10.64

Apr. 2009 DtR exchange rate:
4/6. $1 = R8.98
4/17. $1 = R8.96
4/20. $1 = R9.08

Ouch.