Happy Hanukkah! My main qualm with wishing you a happy holiday is that I’m a thorough assimilator and I don’t want to be disemboweled.
For the context, listen to the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode on the Maccabean Revolt. As a Jewish friend of mine once observed, the Maccabees were kind of the Al-Qaeda of their day (today she would have said ISIS).
With that out of the way, I want to give you a heads up that Helix has a sale going until December 26 at 2:59am EST where the $80 kit cost for purchase of any app is waived if you haven’t purchased at app before. Just enter the promotion code HOLIDAY at checkout.
That means presales of Insitome’s Regional Ancestry is no more than $19.99, while Neanderthal is $29.99 and Metabolism is $39.99 (this applies to all of Helix’s products except embodyDNA by Lose It! and Geno 2.0 by National Geographic).
Why does it matter? Again, Helix banks a high quality exome+ (the + is for non-exonic positions) when you purchase any of their apps. If you want subsequent apps you don’t have to sent another kit in, you just buy the app and get the results. Also, I do have to say that from what I’ve seen and heard Helix’s laboratory facilities are top-notch in terms of getting results turned around rapidly.
I’d rather a good explanation what the Helix is rather than a price discount.
When it comes to promotions, I usually find free samples more convincing than price discounts.
Actually Hanukkah was more like the Iranian revolution. A corrupt client state (in this case of the Seluecid empire) screws up leading to a massive conservative revolt which ends up installing a corrupt theocracy (see the book of Tobit for a description of life under the Maccabees).
If I am not mistaken the Insitome kit is not available outside of the US
@Larry — I like the Iranian Revolution analogy and think it is better than the ISIS / Al-Qaeda one, but both analogies miss the religious repression bit that is present in the Hanukkah story.
I will admit that it is somewhat satisfying to disabuse non-Jews of the notion that the “Hanukkah message” is about peace, friendship, etc., but context is key.