Day: April 29, 2018

Know Your Ancestry

There has been an up-tick in people that are in dire need to know their ancestry…..so bad that they are willing to pay companies to track down the DNA for them.

As far as I knows there is no record of my DNA and that is the way it will stay as long as I am breathing…..I do not trust these companies to keep my DNA secret……and my fears were well founded…..

A distant relative of Joseph James DeAngelo hoping to learn more about their family submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy website. They now know that they’re related to a suspected serial killer. Police say they tracked the suspected Golden State Killer by comparing DNA from one of his many crime scenes to genetic information freely available online, the Sacramento Bee reports. They traced family trees for possible suspects and singled out DeAngelo, a 72-year-old ex-cop, last Thursday. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert says DeAngelo was placed under surveillance, and DNA collected from discarded items provided “astronomical evidence” that he was the killer.

Schubert tells the Bee that when she was informed of the DNA test results, “I probably used a few words I wouldn’t put in a newspaper, but basically said, ‘You’d better not be lying to me.'” She adds: “There were a lot of holy s— moments.” DeAngelo was arrested outside his home Tuesday. The San Jose Mercury News reports that investigators used the open-source genealogy website GEDMatch.com to search for the suspect who committed 12 murders and more than 50 rapes between 1974 and 1986. Other genealogy websites, including Ancestry.com and 23andMe, say they weren’t contacted by police about the case and that they never provide customer information to law enforcement unless they’re legally compelled to

I will stick to the stories my relatives have told…father’s side….1325 France, the Champagne Region……mother’s’ side goes back to Wales about 1100….that is what I got from all the stories of the old ones so I will stick with what I learned from them……

I would never trust anything as important as my DNA to some for profit company to do what they want with it.

After I wrote this draft for a weekend posting more about this situation came out……

Investigators who used a genealogical website to find the ex-policeman they believe is a serial killer and rapist who terrified California decades ago call the technique groundbreaking. But others say it raises troubling legal and privacy concerns for the millions of people who submit their DNA to such sites to discover their heritage, reports the AP. With “fewer privacy protections than convicted offenders whose DNA is contained in regulated databanks,” these people “are unwittingly becoming genetic informants on their innocent family,” says Steve Mercer, the chief attorney for the forensic division of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender. According to STAT News, most genealogy websites say a customer’s genetic information can be shared with law enforcement as long as a warrant is provided.

But the Verge reports Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was arrested Tuesday after investigators matched crime-scene DNA with genetic material stored by a distant relative on GEDmatch, a website that publicly shares a person’s full genetic information, making a warrant unnecessary. “While the database was created for genealogical research, it is important that GEDmatch participants understand the possible uses of their DNA, including identification of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes,” the site says. The statement reflects a warning shared by the FTC in December, per Fortune. DNA data “can be very enlightening personally, but a major concern for consumers should be who else could have access to information about your heritage and your health,” it reads, noting family members can also be affected

Time for me to enjoy the garden and a beer……maybe two…..have a day my friends.  chuq

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What To Read

Another weekend and another Sunday…I will be spending time with my granddaughter doing something cool no doubt….

AS an avid reader, mostly non-fiction seldom do I read fiction, I read apiece that some classics were being removed from the must read list……

If you’ve ever found yourself struggling through a so-called “classic” book only to find yourself thinking, “How racist/sexist/boring,” you’re not alone. The editors of GQ, along with some current authors, have put together a list of 21 such books (technically 20, because one of them got two votes) that are simply outdated and should be struck from the “Great Books” canon. The list got itself mentioned on Fox & Friends over the weekend, and not in a good way—it includes the Bible, which Jesse Ball calls “repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned,” leading Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathan Morris to push back by calling its inclusion on the list “foolish,” USA Today reports. Lots of social media users also decried the choice, and evangelist Franklin Graham said the editors “couldn’t be more wrong.” As for what else made the list, here’s a sampling—along with the books the editors and the authors they spoke to think you should read instead:

  1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: This is the book that got two votes. “Mark Twain was a racist. … He was a man of his time, so let’s leave him there,” writes To Instead, he suggests reading The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis; Caity Weaver suggests Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
  2. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: André Aciman calls Salinger’s novel “totally silly” and “without any literary merit whatsoever.” Instead, try Olivia: A Novel by Dorothy Strachey.
  3. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway: “Hemingway’s novels—with their masculine bluster and clipped sentences—sometimes feel almost parodic to me,” writes Rumaan Alam, who suggests instead The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard.
  4. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: While the books are “influential as exercises in world building, as novels they are barely readable,” writes Manuel Gonzales. Instead, try Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series.
  5. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: While Heller’s novel “fails to capture the absurdities and impossible conflicts of war,” Emily Robbins writes that Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter does just that.
  6. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: “The few women in Slaughterhouse-Five die early, are porn stars, or are ‘bitchy flibbertigibbets,'” writes Nadja Spiegelman, who suggests Veronica by Mary Gaitskill instead.
  7. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: “I’m convinced that the cowboy mythos, with its rigid masculine emotional landscape, glorification of guns and destruction, and misogynistic gender roles, is a major factor in the degradation of America,” writes Lauren Groff. “The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford … acts in many ways as a strong rebuttal to all the old toxic western stereotypes we all need to explode.”

Click for the complete list, which includes another Hemingway and another Salinger.

While I may not read much fiction I feel these classics should remain on the must read list…..Hemingway is about the only way that most Americans know anything about WW1 or the Spanish Civil War…..never stop reading him!

What say you about this?

 

Secession Is Still Popular

My Sunday is going good…hoping for lots of sunshine and garden stuff to do…..

Back in the 1860’s the first Southern state to secede from the union was South Carolina and immediately decided to fire upon a Union fort…..even though the Civil War is over some state tactics never die……

South Carolina wants to have the option of seceding from the US—again—if it feels the government does anything that goes against the Second Amendment. The Hill reports three Republican legislators in South Carolina introduced a bill Thursday that would let the state debate secession specifically “if the federal government confiscates legally purchased firearms.” It is extremely unlikely the bill passes out of the House by the April 10 deadline, according to the AP.

Rep. Mike Pitts says the bill is meant to draw attention to gun rights. “I see a lot of stuff where people even talk about totally repealing the Second Amendment, which separates us from the entire rest of the world,” he says. In 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede ahead of the Civil War.

A silly pile of redneck manure……some states must do anything they can to get attention even when they know they have NO intention of doing anything like secession.  State legislatures are no longer working for the people of said state instead they spend all their time passing laws that do NOTHING to improve the loves of the citizens…..this is a prime example of the stupidity of these bodies.

If one has any idea about the Constitutional process then one will realize just how moronic this piece of manure really is……ever notice the people that hold the Constitution up at every turn have very little knowledge how it works…..

chuq is out for now……thanx for your visits and comments……enjoy your time and your day.