I would stick with caucasian.

It's an interesting approach, too bad they decide to ignore data that doesn't match their theory. And even then it's perfectly possible that life evolved/got more complex faster in the beginning before the growth of complexity got to the current model, a kind of biological inflation, akin to the cosmological inflation.

Yet Kirk would be dumpfounded with a flat screen.

You can also have to opposite problem I had a professor giving a test so easy that the worse grade was 17 out of 20. I would prefer an almost impossible test and then be graded against my classmates, you just have to provide some rules against gaming (minimum requirements for example).

The future as arrived, in some aspects we have far surpassed the wildest dreams of many sci-fi writers. Some technologies of Star Trek, for example, seem quaint in comparison we some things we got now.