It's cold here (for my area). 12F (-11C) twice this week, and another week of that to come. That is close to record lows here and even then, it is usually just a night or tho. Extended cold like that is very unusual.
Trump made a joke about "Global Warming" being (therefore) obviously a hoax. Does he remember that this day last year, it reached 70F here? Probably not. I think "last week" is a vague concept to him.
I watched a retrospective of 2017 on MSNBC yesterday. 2017 was more depressing than I realized!
I am beginning to hate the hawk that took up residence in my neighborhood. My birdfeeder is becoming a deadly attraction to the birds. Yeah, yeah, "nature", etc, etc... But I want my small birds more than I want a hawk around. I've seen it pick off 2 male cardinals, and it's not like I'm staring out the window all day. I had 12 male cardinals around last Christmas. The most I counted the past few days was 4. I'm researching anti-raptor netting.
New food thing I discovered! Raw large deshelled shrimp tossed with garlic and cherry tomatoes, and olive oil. Raw broccoli florets tossed with olive oil and lemon zest. Set on a baking pan at 400F for 15 minutes. Served with fried potato wedges with minced shallots and garlic...
The neighbors have those new star shower lights. Nice fir the first hour. Then boring. I like my stationary strings better.
The garden catalogs are arriving. Time to take out my seed tray and see what I need for the new season. I want to buy a few grafted heirloom tomatoes to see if they are worth it, but companies that self them a few at a time have bad ratings and the good places sell them 100 at a time. So I'll try grafting my own again.
Saw the movie 'Interstellar' last night. It made no sense at the end. I understood what they tried to do, but "FAIL"...
Am still trying to design a mailbox notifier. Something that let's me know when the mailbox has been opened. I could buy one, but that's not the point. I want to figure one out myself.
Can't seem to win at Scrabble online. I win until my opponent suddenly gets a 7 letter 50 point bonus near the end.
Waiting for Spring...
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Friday, December 22, 2017
Ancestry
I got one of those DNA testing kits in November and sent the cheek swab off. I learned the results today.
Before I mention the results, let me say I only did it on a lark to see if something really odd showed up. My mother's side of the family is French, through Quebecois Canada for a couple centuries at least. Her dad's side was from Southern France and her Mom's was Parisian (family lore). No formal genealogy, but I had great-Aunts who only spoke Canadian French, so that seems solid.
Dad's side of the family is claimed English and German. His dad's side supposedly was traced back to England in the 1600s (by last name only), but all I can find is back to the mid-1700s in the US. His moms's side was Pennsylvannia Dutch (German), records fading out in the mid 1800s (looking back though time). The family name seems to have come from a Norman word for "pantry server" (dispenser). That would have been a castle position of English kitchen-workers, possibly a high point in the lineage of general serfs. (I think that meant the equivalent of controlling the office supply cabinet).
Dad and then I did some research a decade ago, and all that seemed solid. So, I thought maybe some Canadian Indian (not all that uncommon in Canada, all those French Trappers wandering the wilds). And possibly Dad's English ancestors included some Norman French (Vikings who settled in NW France) and/or even direct Vikings who settled in England. It's not like my ancestors seemed to be world travelers. Indeed, our family history seemed to be a rather boring line of farmers and small-time merchants.
And I look so much like Dad that his friends used to wave at me as they drove by while I was mowing the lawn as a young adult, thinking I was him. And Dad was similarly like HIS dad. No concerns there.
I should also mention that I am self-taught knowledgeable in evolution and genetics. I know basically how DNA works. I also know that (like in cats and dogs) a variety of genetic mixing makes for a healthy individual. And I haven't caught the flu since I was 12, never catch a cold, and I am a cash cow to my health insurance company.
So I expected DNA ethnicity results something like 45%+ English, 45%+ French, and perhaps 1 or 2% of American Indian and/or Scandinavian. Guess what MyHeritage.com says I'm NOT? ENGLISH! Not a drop...
I had to laugh out loud! They say I am 43.2% French/German/Netherlands, 36.7% Irish/Scottish/Welsh, 13.5% Balkan, 5.0% Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese), and 1.6% Middle Eastern!
If I understand this correctly, it means my ancestry is 43% non-Norman French and German, 37% pre-Anglo-Saxon native groups (Celts), some wandering Balkan traders who inter-married in either France/Germany/England, some poor lost Spaniard, and maybe some Arab.
I see a family of Welsh or Scots (not Irish - no red hair in our family) living under Anglo-Saxon, then Norman viking rule in England, leaving Great Britain in the 1700s on paternal side. And some French moving to Canada in the 1700s on the maternal side and moving to the New England US to work in the textile mills around 1920. Somewhere around 1930, Dad's grandparents moved from Ohio to New Hampshire
I think this is GREAT! Maybe the most "interesting" $69 I ever spent. ASSUMING that the DNA tests are actually accurate... I may try to learn more about that.
I have to add a disclaimer though. Humans have about 30,000 genes and the ancestry tests choose which ones they think most useful in determining ethnicity. And I know from my own interest in the subject that some genes persist from VERY long times ago.
For example, I may have a gene string that randomly persisted from some Middle East ancestor 10,000 years ago. My ancestors may have lost some critical gene string that shows English ancestry.
But I'll bet not. It seems I'm not genetically English at all. WOW! I'm going to repeat the test with a different company and see if the results differ (after checking the internet to see if they do independent lab work.
Have any of you had this kind of test done? Did you think the results agreed with family history? Did you get surprises?
Before I mention the results, let me say I only did it on a lark to see if something really odd showed up. My mother's side of the family is French, through Quebecois Canada for a couple centuries at least. Her dad's side was from Southern France and her Mom's was Parisian (family lore). No formal genealogy, but I had great-Aunts who only spoke Canadian French, so that seems solid.
Dad's side of the family is claimed English and German. His dad's side supposedly was traced back to England in the 1600s (by last name only), but all I can find is back to the mid-1700s in the US. His moms's side was Pennsylvannia Dutch (German), records fading out in the mid 1800s (looking back though time). The family name seems to have come from a Norman word for "pantry server" (dispenser). That would have been a castle position of English kitchen-workers, possibly a high point in the lineage of general serfs. (I think that meant the equivalent of controlling the office supply cabinet).
Dad and then I did some research a decade ago, and all that seemed solid. So, I thought maybe some Canadian Indian (not all that uncommon in Canada, all those French Trappers wandering the wilds). And possibly Dad's English ancestors included some Norman French (Vikings who settled in NW France) and/or even direct Vikings who settled in England. It's not like my ancestors seemed to be world travelers. Indeed, our family history seemed to be a rather boring line of farmers and small-time merchants.
And I look so much like Dad that his friends used to wave at me as they drove by while I was mowing the lawn as a young adult, thinking I was him. And Dad was similarly like HIS dad. No concerns there.
I should also mention that I am self-taught knowledgeable in evolution and genetics. I know basically how DNA works. I also know that (like in cats and dogs) a variety of genetic mixing makes for a healthy individual. And I haven't caught the flu since I was 12, never catch a cold, and I am a cash cow to my health insurance company.
So I expected DNA ethnicity results something like 45%+ English, 45%+ French, and perhaps 1 or 2% of American Indian and/or Scandinavian. Guess what MyHeritage.com says I'm NOT? ENGLISH! Not a drop...
I had to laugh out loud! They say I am 43.2% French/German/Netherlands, 36.7% Irish/Scottish/Welsh, 13.5% Balkan, 5.0% Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese), and 1.6% Middle Eastern!
If I understand this correctly, it means my ancestry is 43% non-Norman French and German, 37% pre-Anglo-Saxon native groups (Celts), some wandering Balkan traders who inter-married in either France/Germany/England, some poor lost Spaniard, and maybe some Arab.
I see a family of Welsh or Scots (not Irish - no red hair in our family) living under Anglo-Saxon, then Norman viking rule in England, leaving Great Britain in the 1700s on paternal side. And some French moving to Canada in the 1700s on the maternal side and moving to the New England US to work in the textile mills around 1920. Somewhere around 1930, Dad's grandparents moved from Ohio to New Hampshire
I think this is GREAT! Maybe the most "interesting" $69 I ever spent. ASSUMING that the DNA tests are actually accurate... I may try to learn more about that.
I have to add a disclaimer though. Humans have about 30,000 genes and the ancestry tests choose which ones they think most useful in determining ethnicity. And I know from my own interest in the subject that some genes persist from VERY long times ago.
For example, I may have a gene string that randomly persisted from some Middle East ancestor 10,000 years ago. My ancestors may have lost some critical gene string that shows English ancestry.
But I'll bet not. It seems I'm not genetically English at all. WOW! I'm going to repeat the test with a different company and see if the results differ (after checking the internet to see if they do independent lab work.
Have any of you had this kind of test done? Did you think the results agreed with family history? Did you get surprises?
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