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Email: mike -at- mikecampbell dot net
The opinions expressed on this website are those of the author alone, and are not necessarily those of his employer or any organization with which he is affiliated.
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Mike Campbell's The Campblog
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada "Of Interest To Me" March 29, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Even Lord Goog is in darkness, all day!
Tonite, an alarmist who just bought a condo on the San Francisco waterfront is going on 60 Minutes to insult people who think it was a good investment.
I am guessing that The Flea is rattling his ghostly chains due to this month's 80,000 tonne steel order as part of the Royal Navy big carrier projects.
Yes, The Campblog has a new official airline: Porter Air. Just used them recently and was very pleased. The Q400 is roomy enough.
No, the Q400 does not have video screens on the back of the seat in front of you.
Instead, there are trays and cupholders! Cupholders for holding the complimentary beer that you are offered after your complimentary snack, prior to you being offered yet another complimentary beer. Stella, in case you are wondering.
I like being treated as someone who enjoys and appreciates complimentary beer. This touch of the civilized is enough to garner my endorsement.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Ok, a little more on genetic ancestry research. As I've said, my dna sample has been isolated and has gone to the lab for sequencing. Should have y results by the end of April.
Looking at my four grandparents, now all deceased, I believe I am able to get dna information on all four of them. From my testing, I will be able to get my father's paternal line and my mother's maternal line. I have been in touch with 2nd (or so) cousin on my mother's side who is going to get his y-test done, so this will give me info on my mother's father's paternal line. This leaves my father's mother's maternal line -- I can get either my father, or one of his siblings or one of his sister's children to get the mtDNA test to provide this information.
As I mentioned before, I am mainly interested in the deep ancestry, not just for my Campbell line but for all four grandparents' lines. Granted, there is only so far I am likely to be able to go to get this stuff. For example, there may be someone alive who would be a male descendent of my father's mother's father and who could give me this y-info (also a Campbell line), but it would be a stretch to track this person down. Something to look at, perhaps.
Remember, considering I am two generations removed from my grandparents, if you go back to 5 generations, that's 32 grandparents. If you go back 10 generations, that's 1048 grandparents. If you go back 20 generations (roughly 500 years if you assume 25 years per generation), that's over 1 million grandparents. And that number doubles with each generation. Forget about tracing ancestry all the way back, we are all cousins many many times over.
So, getting info on four is interesting, but it gives you just a small number of the millions of lines of ancestry that each of us have had. In the "60 Minutes" piece, an example is given where someone finds out their y results are Peruvian (or something), and their mtDNA results are Japanese. Wow, they say, I am of Peruvian-Japanese descent. But what they don't know and will never know is that every other line of ancestry is Swedish. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of their ancestry is Swedish, and it's information that has become unknowable to them and has been lost forever from a genetic research standpoint. (By the way, the whole dna testing thing cannot be considered any kind of 'scam' so long as the person doing the testing has the slightest clue what they're getting done.)
Still, for someone like me who is of ancestry that -- a) appears to have arrived in North America fairly recently, b) were generally 'clannish' to begin with (but then, I suppose, who wasn't?), and c) prior to that, had been residing in a fairly remote part of the world that saw relatively little new faces for a long time -- if I know that ancestor A was an indigenous Scot or if ancestor B was indigenous Irish, then it is likely that a good chunk of the others were the same. If ancestor C turns out to have been of Central European descent, for example, I would be less confident of how big that other 'chunk' of similar ancestry would be.
Post-LGM: As the ice retreated, 'wintering' populations moved north
Am I R1b? I? R1a? Something else? We shall see before too much longer. Over at the Campbell DNA Surname Project (with which I shall be participating with my y results), the administrator Kevin Campbell notes that about two-thirds of Campbells sampled show dna markers that would put them into what would be considered as the 'indigenous Scottish' haplogroup. About 18 percent is the Scots/Irish group which would relate to the migration of Irish to Argyll as the kingdom of Dal Riata was established some 1500-1700 years ago (and, also, the means by which Gaelic moved from Ireland to Scotland). Another 12 percent is in the Atlantic Modal Haplotype group. The AMH is the most common form of R1b and would represent the genetic markers for the first people to enter the British Isles following the Last Glacial Maximum coming out of the Iberian Peninsula. It would be akin to the present-day Basque haplotype; it is associated with human males along Atlantic Europe.
I don't understand it properly, but I would guess that both the Irish and Scottish indigenous haplotypes would have been split off from an AMH. Not sure, but I believe the AMH is believed to be the ancestral haplogroup for R1b.
Island studies is an interesting topic, is it not? Not that I know anything about it. I do know a few islands, however. Do check out Hans' Nissology PEI.
As Hugh MacLennan wrote: Continents are much alike, and a man can no more love a continent than he can love a hundred million people. But all the islands of the world are different. They are small enough to be known, they are vulnerable, and men come to feel about them as they do about women.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
This is my world. I like it here.
If Ewan's own personal culture had to be described, I would call it Sodorian. I had blogged in the past about his top shows when he was an infant. Now, Thomas & Friends/Thomas the Tank Engine is far and away the number one show. "Super Why" is popular, too, but Thomas is Number One. Most of my bedtime stories to him are Thomas episodes, in fact.
Much of the show's language has become part of his own vernacular. If two things come together, whatever they are, they "buffer up". If something hits into something else, it "biffs" into it. If something has is covered, it is "in the tunnel" (from a story where Duncan the narrow guage engine is trapped in a coal mine tunnel). If someone falls over, they "came off the track" or "came off". (Later: and the tub/shower/bathroom is the "washdown")
In case you are keeping score, shown above are Cranky, Bertie, Harvey, Thomas with Annie and Clarabel, James, Percy, Gordon (he's a Big Strong Steam Engine!), Emily, Henry, Edward, Toby, Neville, Salty, Jack Frost Percy, Oliver and Lady.
And, yes, that is a dinosaur over there on the pile of snow (toilet paper).
Man, do I hate iWeb. It's the website creation component of Apple's iLife. I love my iMac, I love iMovie and Garageband and iDVD and even iPhoto is pretty good. But iWeb? Pttoooie!!
Winter
It's been a winter. In Halifax, many of the winter storms turned to rain as they passed, so there hasn't been much snow on the ground. I could have raked my lawn last Sunday (I didn't, of course, but I could have done).
Ewan
He's 22 months now and is doing great. He's as strong-willed as he is good-natured and funny. Lori got me a white Turkish bath wrap for Christmas. I had it on the other day while shaving and he walked by -- "ooo, big diaper!".
Then Lori took him to the swings last week. It was sunny so she put her sunglasses on him (forgot his baby-bans). These two teenage girls came over and sat on the big swings. He looked them over for a minute and called out "Nice day to swing!" 8-)
DNA ancestry
I will write more about it in future. Should get my y-results back by the end of April. My sample has been isolated at the lab and went for sequencing on Friday. I'm all a-tingle.
The Toffees
It's been a great season. Sucks to go out of the UEFA Cup on penalty kicks to Fiorentina, but they had a great run. They absolutely hammered Fiorentina in the home leg to bring it back to 2-2 on aggregate, but Sebastien Frey stood on his head in the Fiorentina net.
Everton are currently 7 points into 5th spot with 9 games remaining and are tied with Liverpool (behind on GD) for 4th. Looking for a strong finish.
EPL Fantasy Pool
I am currently leading my own little pool and am about 6200th out of 1.65million overall. Having a good year. Christiano Ronaldo as 'captain' (getting double points) definitely helps.
Later