A timely warning, given the recent bankruptcy. Regrettably, everyone who has spit in those damnable plastic vials has already lost control of their past -- and their future to some extent.
I wanted to join 23 and me, in fact even ordered the kits, but two of my daughters convinced me it was a bad idea. I dumped the kits in the trash, although I gave some thought to putting dog spit in one and sending it in. There must be some kind of strong urge to know "where you came from," as it is marketed. And some kind of "tempting the fates" urge to find out if your father is really your father or if you're really related to Napoleon.
To tell the truth, my father and I both tried to research our genealogical roots via non-DNA means and were moderately successful. We were stymied on his side by the fact that his grandfather was born in Quebec Province and we could not find any trace of that grandfather's parents. We know that grandfather reported in a census form from 1870 or '80 that his parents were born in France, where records would likely have been retrievable. Alas, that link is not there and the name does not show up in any records I could find in Quebec.
Interestingly (to me at least), internet searches on sites other than 23 and me have turned up no positive links on my name except for my and my brother's children.
In the increasingly non-private world where your “private” conversations at home with your spouse are hovered up by your appliances giving access to your most intimate information such as your DNA maybe isn’t a good idea. But then because you share such information with others you may not even have control of that. My cousin convinced my father, her uncle to swab for 23nMe because her father,my dad’s brother had passed away. So half my DNA is online with that information without my consent.
My first cousin, the family genealogist, has had testing done by all of the Ancestry sites. I did the Ancestry DNA test, several years back, and it allowed me to trace my paternal grandfather back to England and determine that I picked up a significant amount of Scottish Highlander DNA from several maternal grandmothers back -- which was a shock as nobody in the immediate family progenitors came from Scotland. Then MyHeritage offered, for free, to run the DNA through their protocols. Similar, but more specific region results. So far haven't found any criminal activity in my family line. I chuckle when I watch the British crime shows which somehow seem to get instantaneous DNA results. My retired policeman friend tells me it doesn't quite work that way.
2 comments: 1) my wife and I submitted maybe ten years ago, she to settle a family tree question and I to confirm or deny the presence of Cherokee ancestry (which every family south of Kentucky suspects of itself). She settled her question -- things were as she had always been told -- and in the process found a "wild oat" half-sister who is now a good friend. I had nothing interesting other than that a son is my son, an uncle is my uncle, and four first cousins are in fact that.
2) The US Army collected a sample of my DNA ca. 1992, I think, for obvious possible later use. That database has probably been hacked too, but the DoD doesn't have to admit it.
Ok, 3) Amazon has a book on sale today about eugenics and Virginia: "Pure America" by Elizabeth Catte. $1.99, but I suspect you've read it.
I am perhaps unusually unconcerned about this. If my genome were published entirely, all 4 billions letters in 11pt Times New Roman, I can't really muster up concern. It seems as inconsequential as the fact that when I go to the gym and take a shower, half a dozen strange men and boys can see just how flabby my ass has become. I can't be bothered to care.
In part this may stem in a minor way from the fact that I already know I don't have any secret love children*, and if either of my parents did, it doesn't matter to anyone now alive.
But more so I think it roots in my failure to identify much with my physical self, despite the seeming illogic there -- as a lifelong agnostic and skeptic I have no confidence I possess any identity aside from this collection of tired old cells struggling to hold it together another third of a century (would be nice). My DNA seems like the clothes I wear, something borrowed and temporary, which grow slowly more worn and creased, in need of laundering, a clay vessel into which whatever there is of me is poured. That sounds like a natural metaphor for someone who believes in souls, and I would say it is, which is why I say it is also prima facia illogical because I don't have any confidence any such ineffable ethereality exists.
Contrariwise, though, I guard what's behind the os frontis most carefully. There are very few to whom I would confide the quiet thoughts, even in person. In print I am even more cautious. I have not used my real name on the Internet since the 1990s, I am careful not to be precise or entirely accurate in any apparently identifying information I might disclose, and periodically I check Google to verify all the hits are stale and anodyne. (In principle this might be interesting. I could be somebody you know! The guy in the tire store, or the lanky kid dropping off the DoorDash. Or at least someone much more interesting than who I really am.)
I'm mildly interested where I came from, genetically and culturally, but not all that much. Presumably the typical crowd of ambitious cunning thieves, swindlers, liars, cheats, and occasional sweet summer children that primogenitored the canonical H. sapiens.
But I do on rare occasion daydream of the possibility of knowing that someone, somewhere, some time in the past, thought things very much like I think, that questions I ponder glumly in the minus hours†, when the East wind howls through the eaves, the freezing rain rattles the thin window glass, the 4 or 5 mountain trolls (to judge by the number of heavy footfalls) who live above the upper meadow shamble down from their caves to grumble around the pitch black backyard gnawing old human shin bones, once occurred to some other human being, lying awake in his cold stone Carpathian castle room, in his thatched hut above the brooding rain-swollen Bug, huddled in a sharp angle of a cave reeking of bear piss, and that he had similar thoughts, stopped glumly before the same rockfall dead ends, past which human understanding apparently goeth not. A brother of the blood is nice, to be sure, but -- a brother of the soul‡...I suppose I'd give half my kingdom to have found that, or perhaps just to know he once existed (or will exist), even a millenium since or hence.
--------------
* Indeed, I'm old enough it would kind of please me if I did. Sort of a Not Dead Yet moment.
† Defined to be the hours between the technical start of day and the actual (dawn) start of day. ‒1 AM is one hour before sunrise, ‒2 AM is two hours, and so on.
A timely warning, given the recent bankruptcy. Regrettably, everyone who has spit in those damnable plastic vials has already lost control of their past -- and their future to some extent.
I wanted to join 23 and me, in fact even ordered the kits, but two of my daughters convinced me it was a bad idea. I dumped the kits in the trash, although I gave some thought to putting dog spit in one and sending it in. There must be some kind of strong urge to know "where you came from," as it is marketed. And some kind of "tempting the fates" urge to find out if your father is really your father or if you're really related to Napoleon.
To tell the truth, my father and I both tried to research our genealogical roots via non-DNA means and were moderately successful. We were stymied on his side by the fact that his grandfather was born in Quebec Province and we could not find any trace of that grandfather's parents. We know that grandfather reported in a census form from 1870 or '80 that his parents were born in France, where records would likely have been retrievable. Alas, that link is not there and the name does not show up in any records I could find in Quebec.
Interestingly (to me at least), internet searches on sites other than 23 and me have turned up no positive links on my name except for my and my brother's children.
In the increasingly non-private world where your “private” conversations at home with your spouse are hovered up by your appliances giving access to your most intimate information such as your DNA maybe isn’t a good idea. But then because you share such information with others you may not even have control of that. My cousin convinced my father, her uncle to swab for 23nMe because her father,my dad’s brother had passed away. So half my DNA is online with that information without my consent.
My first cousin, the family genealogist, has had testing done by all of the Ancestry sites. I did the Ancestry DNA test, several years back, and it allowed me to trace my paternal grandfather back to England and determine that I picked up a significant amount of Scottish Highlander DNA from several maternal grandmothers back -- which was a shock as nobody in the immediate family progenitors came from Scotland. Then MyHeritage offered, for free, to run the DNA through their protocols. Similar, but more specific region results. So far haven't found any criminal activity in my family line. I chuckle when I watch the British crime shows which somehow seem to get instantaneous DNA results. My retired policeman friend tells me it doesn't quite work that way.
Good one today Robert
Food for thought -- you're making my brain fat.
2 comments: 1) my wife and I submitted maybe ten years ago, she to settle a family tree question and I to confirm or deny the presence of Cherokee ancestry (which every family south of Kentucky suspects of itself). She settled her question -- things were as she had always been told -- and in the process found a "wild oat" half-sister who is now a good friend. I had nothing interesting other than that a son is my son, an uncle is my uncle, and four first cousins are in fact that.
2) The US Army collected a sample of my DNA ca. 1992, I think, for obvious possible later use. That database has probably been hacked too, but the DoD doesn't have to admit it.
Ok, 3) Amazon has a book on sale today about eugenics and Virginia: "Pure America" by Elizabeth Catte. $1.99, but I suspect you've read it.
privacy is in all likelihood a thing of the past.
Siri told me yesterday that you were going to say that. :)
I am perhaps unusually unconcerned about this. If my genome were published entirely, all 4 billions letters in 11pt Times New Roman, I can't really muster up concern. It seems as inconsequential as the fact that when I go to the gym and take a shower, half a dozen strange men and boys can see just how flabby my ass has become. I can't be bothered to care.
In part this may stem in a minor way from the fact that I already know I don't have any secret love children*, and if either of my parents did, it doesn't matter to anyone now alive.
But more so I think it roots in my failure to identify much with my physical self, despite the seeming illogic there -- as a lifelong agnostic and skeptic I have no confidence I possess any identity aside from this collection of tired old cells struggling to hold it together another third of a century (would be nice). My DNA seems like the clothes I wear, something borrowed and temporary, which grow slowly more worn and creased, in need of laundering, a clay vessel into which whatever there is of me is poured. That sounds like a natural metaphor for someone who believes in souls, and I would say it is, which is why I say it is also prima facia illogical because I don't have any confidence any such ineffable ethereality exists.
Contrariwise, though, I guard what's behind the os frontis most carefully. There are very few to whom I would confide the quiet thoughts, even in person. In print I am even more cautious. I have not used my real name on the Internet since the 1990s, I am careful not to be precise or entirely accurate in any apparently identifying information I might disclose, and periodically I check Google to verify all the hits are stale and anodyne. (In principle this might be interesting. I could be somebody you know! The guy in the tire store, or the lanky kid dropping off the DoorDash. Or at least someone much more interesting than who I really am.)
I'm mildly interested where I came from, genetically and culturally, but not all that much. Presumably the typical crowd of ambitious cunning thieves, swindlers, liars, cheats, and occasional sweet summer children that primogenitored the canonical H. sapiens.
But I do on rare occasion daydream of the possibility of knowing that someone, somewhere, some time in the past, thought things very much like I think, that questions I ponder glumly in the minus hours†, when the East wind howls through the eaves, the freezing rain rattles the thin window glass, the 4 or 5 mountain trolls (to judge by the number of heavy footfalls) who live above the upper meadow shamble down from their caves to grumble around the pitch black backyard gnawing old human shin bones, once occurred to some other human being, lying awake in his cold stone Carpathian castle room, in his thatched hut above the brooding rain-swollen Bug, huddled in a sharp angle of a cave reeking of bear piss, and that he had similar thoughts, stopped glumly before the same rockfall dead ends, past which human understanding apparently goeth not. A brother of the blood is nice, to be sure, but -- a brother of the soul‡...I suppose I'd give half my kingdom to have found that, or perhaps just to know he once existed (or will exist), even a millenium since or hence.
--------------
* Indeed, I'm old enough it would kind of please me if I did. Sort of a Not Dead Yet moment.
† Defined to be the hours between the technical start of day and the actual (dawn) start of day. ‒1 AM is one hour before sunrise, ‒2 AM is two hours, and so on.
‡ Used necessarily metaphorically, vide supra.