20 Aug Genealogist website- Are you being responsible?
All,
As successful people, one of your responsibilities is to not let your families pictures, stories, and historical documents be lost forever. You have the means to preserve those legacies forever in print and electronically.
Don’t leave your legacy as a burden to your heirs. That’s often the missing piece to your estate planning efforts. You come up with a great plan for a distribution of your tangible assets, but does nothing for your intangible assets, your character, your families legacy. When you think about your ancestors do you think about how they left money or such they left to so and so, or about the rare and valuable stories about how they lived their lives?
Dan-cestors can discover and preserve the legacy for you, and not have everything be forgotten or end up in a dumpster.
Remember a few months ago that I explained how your Native American ancestry of generations ago, stayed with a cousin, but disappeared from your DNA?
I had a personal experience in that regard that takes it from theory to an actual example. My grandfather Nelson was 100% Swedish. Therefore on average each of his grandchildren would end up with 25% Swedish ethnicity in their DNA. My dad only ended up with 34% Swedish DNA, so he got 66% of his DNA from his mother’s side (she had no Swedish ancestry). I ended up with only 8% Swedish DNA. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t end up with 50% of my father’s DNA as he and my mom had lots of shared ethnicities, just not much of the Swedish part. My kids both ended up 4% Swedish, but that likely was boosted by my wife having about 4% Swedish ancestry. It’s likely that one of my grandchildren has less than a trace amount of Swedish DNA, so in a matter of 5 generations, 100% of an ethnicity disappeared from the DNA.
Have you wondered why DNA kits keep getting cheaper?
Part of it is that the lab’s fixed cost investment is already paid for, so much of the incremental revenue goes to the bottom line, the other part is that they are also looking at the ability to package (hopefully anonymously) your DNA and health history.
23 and me asks you a substantial amount of health history questions to complement the DNA you provide and Ancestry just announced that they were going to get into health care. You can read more about both companies strategies in the attached link: https://www.businessinsider.com/ancestry-reveals-expansion-into-healthcare-2019-8
The Truth About DNA Kits
At-home DNA test kits are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget how insane the technology is. For around $100, you get a peek inside your genome—something that once required a roomful of PhDs and a supercomputer. But don’t be fooled: The big push to increase the numbers of customers isn’t entirely about revealing your ancestry, even whether you’re a descendant of Abraham Lincoln. It’s a way to get your DNA‚ then sell it to companies making everything from pharmaceuticals to face lotion. So here
Read in Men’s Journal: https://apple.news/A3Oqk9ewsRUWLCyEJefi4DA
By Anna Diamond
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE JULY 2019
Q: Why don’t people smile in old photographs?
Although we tend to think the subjects had to hold their faces still for an uncomfortably long time, exposures from the early days of commercial photography only lasted about 5 to 15 seconds. The real reason is that, in the mid-19th century, photography was so expensive and uncommon that people knew this photograph might be the only one they’d ever have made. Rather than flash a grin, they often opted to look thoughtful and serious, a carry-over from the more formal conventions of painted portraiture, explains Ann Shumard, senior curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery. When George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak, introduced hand-held cameras in 1888, it made photography more accessible and casual. Photos from around the turn of the 20th century include a lot more candids and a lot more smiles.
