"... never explain, never apologize ..." - Nellie McClung
"Never apologize; never explain." - John Wayne
"Never explain. Never apologize." - Gertrude Stein
"Never explain. Never apologize." - Benjamin Jowett
"Never apologize, never explain" - Edmund Wilson
"Never apologize. Never explain" - Agnes Mcphail
"Never explain. Never apologize." - John Arbuthnot Fisher
"Never apologize. Never explain." - Janet Fitch
"Never apologize, never explain." - Marianne Faithfull
"... never explain, never apologize ..." - Dave Hickey
"Never explain; never apologize" - Christopher Hitchens
"Never Explain, Never Apologize" - Deborah Grey
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Friday, February 9, 2018
Sunday, January 28, 2018
23andMe Part II
I've spent more time digging into the information provided by 23andMe from my DNA analysis. In the time since I've gotten the initial report, some of these have been updated demonstrating 23andMe's commitment to providing information which is as relevant as it can be. I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not that most of these updates have changed to being more correct versus my perception.
Among the things 23andMe is suggesting is:
I can smell asparagus pee: True.
Likely detatched ear lobes: Well - I'm sort of in between.
Eye color likely blue or green: Yep (and recently corrected report)
Early hair loss: I guess, but compared to many of my relatives, I'm on the low end of this.
Unibrow unlikely: True, but ugly close...
Predisposed to be more corpulent: Yeah! It isn't my fault!
Likely lactose intolerant: Ya know - I might be to a degree? It would explain some things I won't go into here.
Likely to be a similar weight based on calories consumed regardless of saturated fat intake: Yeah for ice cream (see above) and bacon!
It should be noted that many of these things are more directional than strong predictions by 23andMe. As an example, I'm likely to have light hair, but of 23andMe participants like me, over 35% have dark brown or black hair. Some of the traits are predicted by only a few percentage points.
But by far the most interesting thing I've found is 23andMe's "DNA Relatives." After agreeing to share limited information, 23andMe comes up with a list of people who share enough DNA to be considered relatives - it found nearly 1200 matches just within people who have been tested by 23andMe. At first glance, this seems like a lot, but back of the envelope calculations suggest otherwise. Assuming 5 births per couple/generation:
50 first cousins
300 second cousins
1500 third cousins
7800 fourth cousins
40,000 fifth cousins
200,000 sixth cousins
etc. (Note, this is a slightly-simplified, inclusive model)
While 5 births may be high based on present day birth rates, I come from some obnoxiously large families and these numbers will be skewed higher by larger families further back in time - so these estimates are likely low. With a few known families that are into the double digits for children, the numbers may be very low.
Browsing through the list of DNA Relatives has been fascinating - I keep seeing a few key surnames and even a few that are consistent with the little I know about my family tree. Perhaps more telling, looking through the locations some people have shared reveals a who's where for what I know about past family.
23andMe allows the option to contact these people which I haven't done. At this point, pawing through the list of people is interesting, but it feels a little creepy at the same time. I would love to find out if the actual relations could be teased out for some of the closer matches, but I'm really not sure what I would do with that information, or even what I'd do if someone contacted me for that.
But I definitely want to do some more browsing here to see if I can find matches between surnames and location that clearly look non-coincidental.
After going through much of the data provided by 23andMe I sent my siblings an email telling them about my boring genetic make-up. I was kind of hoping one of them might be interested in this as well (or had already been tested out of curiosity like me), but there were no bites. I can't blame them - it took me a long time to do this.
But it did start a conversation on what is known about our ancestry. Apparently a fairly comprehensive family tree was created at one time for my mom's side. And I found out that there was a book written about some the history of my dad's family.
Whhhhaaaaat?
How come I didn't know about this book? Actually, I may have at one point, but it slipped through the memory cracks.
Proving that absolutely everything is available on Amazon, a quick search showed this book was available used through a seller with good ratings - a signed copy no less. Add to Cart!
The book is written by my great uncle about my great grandfather and great grandmother's immigration to the United States through their deaths. It isn't a page-turning thriller, but it is far more interesting than I expected. Some of it is hard to follow since many of the European names are similar and with very large families, there are a lot of them. But the book details the immigration, life's challenges and victories, belief structures and daily life of the immigrant family.
In a way, the book is a document of European post-industrial immigration. The struggle between maintaining old world language, customs and religion in the melting pot experiment that was, and is, North America. It is the story of coming to America with almost nothing, and building a far more successful life than would have been likely in Western Europe.
My great grandfather was essentially an orphan with little prospects - his marriage to a woman from a prominent family was a bit of a scandal - their combined future would have been that of his - a common laborer likely to live a life of poverty. Moving to North America was a risk that resulted in a difficult life that, combined with hard work, resulted in a life far more successful that would have been possible for either of them.
If I add what I know about the immigration of my mom's side of the family shortly after WWII, I realize how close in time I really am to Europe, even though I'm about as "American" as it gets. I would love to find a way to do a similar documentation of that story, but it would be all-encompassing for a year or more to do it right.
Some of the pictures in my Great Uncle's book are also fascinating. Seeing my grandfather as a young child and young man. Seeing where my dad's family lived. Seeing pictures of early family reunions (138 people, which was not inclusive of everyone).
Before he died, my dad had given me a painting, done by a cousin, of my dad's grandfather's barn. It was painted on wood that was taken from that barn during a repair (or possibly when it was torn down). That barn features in the book, and a picture shows how close the painting is. That painting which has hung in the garage for a few years, feels a little more like a relic now; at the time I got it, I didn't realize the significance.
Several times I had to pause while reading the book and think that these aren't anonymous people I'm reading about in a history book, but people I'm related to. More than that, just a minor tweak to events could have resulted in me being very different from what I am - or even me not existing at all. I am statistically very unlikely.
I'm really not sure where I go from here. Part of me would love to run with the information I have and see what else can fall out of the family tree. But a more rational part of me knows that ancestral research can be an all-consuming obsession - taking time, money and energy resources that I'm not sure I want to (or can) devote to that.
What I can say for sure, is that decision to spit in a tube and send it to 23andMe pointed to toward an extremely fascinating fractal.
Among the things 23andMe is suggesting is:
I can smell asparagus pee: True.
Likely detatched ear lobes: Well - I'm sort of in between.
Eye color likely blue or green: Yep (and recently corrected report)
Early hair loss: I guess, but compared to many of my relatives, I'm on the low end of this.
Unibrow unlikely: True, but ugly close...
Predisposed to be more corpulent: Yeah! It isn't my fault!
Likely lactose intolerant: Ya know - I might be to a degree? It would explain some things I won't go into here.
Likely to be a similar weight based on calories consumed regardless of saturated fat intake: Yeah for ice cream (see above) and bacon!
It should be noted that many of these things are more directional than strong predictions by 23andMe. As an example, I'm likely to have light hair, but of 23andMe participants like me, over 35% have dark brown or black hair. Some of the traits are predicted by only a few percentage points.
But by far the most interesting thing I've found is 23andMe's "DNA Relatives." After agreeing to share limited information, 23andMe comes up with a list of people who share enough DNA to be considered relatives - it found nearly 1200 matches just within people who have been tested by 23andMe. At first glance, this seems like a lot, but back of the envelope calculations suggest otherwise. Assuming 5 births per couple/generation:
50 first cousins
300 second cousins
1500 third cousins
7800 fourth cousins
40,000 fifth cousins
200,000 sixth cousins
etc. (Note, this is a slightly-simplified, inclusive model)
While 5 births may be high based on present day birth rates, I come from some obnoxiously large families and these numbers will be skewed higher by larger families further back in time - so these estimates are likely low. With a few known families that are into the double digits for children, the numbers may be very low.
Browsing through the list of DNA Relatives has been fascinating - I keep seeing a few key surnames and even a few that are consistent with the little I know about my family tree. Perhaps more telling, looking through the locations some people have shared reveals a who's where for what I know about past family.
23andMe allows the option to contact these people which I haven't done. At this point, pawing through the list of people is interesting, but it feels a little creepy at the same time. I would love to find out if the actual relations could be teased out for some of the closer matches, but I'm really not sure what I would do with that information, or even what I'd do if someone contacted me for that.
But I definitely want to do some more browsing here to see if I can find matches between surnames and location that clearly look non-coincidental.
After going through much of the data provided by 23andMe I sent my siblings an email telling them about my boring genetic make-up. I was kind of hoping one of them might be interested in this as well (or had already been tested out of curiosity like me), but there were no bites. I can't blame them - it took me a long time to do this.
But it did start a conversation on what is known about our ancestry. Apparently a fairly comprehensive family tree was created at one time for my mom's side. And I found out that there was a book written about some the history of my dad's family.
Whhhhaaaaat?
How come I didn't know about this book? Actually, I may have at one point, but it slipped through the memory cracks.
Proving that absolutely everything is available on Amazon, a quick search showed this book was available used through a seller with good ratings - a signed copy no less. Add to Cart!
The book is written by my great uncle about my great grandfather and great grandmother's immigration to the United States through their deaths. It isn't a page-turning thriller, but it is far more interesting than I expected. Some of it is hard to follow since many of the European names are similar and with very large families, there are a lot of them. But the book details the immigration, life's challenges and victories, belief structures and daily life of the immigrant family.
In a way, the book is a document of European post-industrial immigration. The struggle between maintaining old world language, customs and religion in the melting pot experiment that was, and is, North America. It is the story of coming to America with almost nothing, and building a far more successful life than would have been likely in Western Europe.
My great grandfather was essentially an orphan with little prospects - his marriage to a woman from a prominent family was a bit of a scandal - their combined future would have been that of his - a common laborer likely to live a life of poverty. Moving to North America was a risk that resulted in a difficult life that, combined with hard work, resulted in a life far more successful that would have been possible for either of them.
If I add what I know about the immigration of my mom's side of the family shortly after WWII, I realize how close in time I really am to Europe, even though I'm about as "American" as it gets. I would love to find a way to do a similar documentation of that story, but it would be all-encompassing for a year or more to do it right.
Some of the pictures in my Great Uncle's book are also fascinating. Seeing my grandfather as a young child and young man. Seeing where my dad's family lived. Seeing pictures of early family reunions (138 people, which was not inclusive of everyone).
Before he died, my dad had given me a painting, done by a cousin, of my dad's grandfather's barn. It was painted on wood that was taken from that barn during a repair (or possibly when it was torn down). That barn features in the book, and a picture shows how close the painting is. That painting which has hung in the garage for a few years, feels a little more like a relic now; at the time I got it, I didn't realize the significance.
Several times I had to pause while reading the book and think that these aren't anonymous people I'm reading about in a history book, but people I'm related to. More than that, just a minor tweak to events could have resulted in me being very different from what I am - or even me not existing at all. I am statistically very unlikely.
I'm really not sure where I go from here. Part of me would love to run with the information I have and see what else can fall out of the family tree. But a more rational part of me knows that ancestral research can be an all-consuming obsession - taking time, money and energy resources that I'm not sure I want to (or can) devote to that.
What I can say for sure, is that decision to spit in a tube and send it to 23andMe pointed to toward an extremely fascinating fractal.
Friday, January 12, 2018
My Experience (so far) with 23andMe
It was partially due to my background in science, partially due to wondering what it would tell me, and just a whole lot of insatiable curiosity. I felt compelled to have my DNA tested for some time. But I resisted since it isn't a critical need and the cost is not negligible. But I would occasionally read up on the various companies that do this and look to see if there were any deals out there. There were really only two companies I even considered: ancestry.com and 23andme.com. From what I've read, both of these companies provide similar data from similar state of the art technology as far as ancestry is concerned. And both also work from relatively comprehensive databases. Some of the other companies have much smaller learning databases, with one little more than smoke and mirrors. 23andMe was the clear favorite since it also provides data on some known health markers - for an additional fee. There was an FDA crackdown on 23andMe about health claims and how this characterized their service, but some clarification of language that is used has allowed this to resume.
23andMe has another advantage in that it is pay-once, lifetime-data. As I understand it, ancestry.com requires annual subscriptions to continue to get updates as the technology progresses and new data is available.
Towards the end of November, I finally bit when I saw that there was a sale on Ancestry+Health kit from 23andMe. It was still more than I wanted to pay but close enough to pull the trigger. A "sale" on DNA analysis sounds a bit weird though - some kind of an amalgamation of a KMart Blue Light Special with 21st Century technology.
Within a few days my kit arrived. It came with clear instructions and return postage is prepaid. Before actually submitting the sample, I had to register on 23andMe. There are many disclaimers and agreements to terms and conditions to get through on registering. Although there is a lot of paranoia about how these companies are going to do evil things with DNA or the data collected, or that it will be stolen and used by anybody from the Federal Government to racial purity groups to rogue states, I didn't see anything in there to scare me away. They do go out of their way to make it clear that it is possible to find out information which may be disturbing.
I didn't think too much about this aspect at first, since I was mostly doing this to appease some curiosity. But as I reflected on it later, I started wondering how I would react if 23andMe showed a genetic marker for some terrible disease, or if my ancestry showed something very different from family lore. To be honest though, this really didn't feel like a roll of the dice. I was just curious. Perhaps part of me was hoping for something unexpectedly interesting.
And as far as the government or racial purity groups, if they want someone's DNA, it is not terribly difficult to get. Yes Chicken Little, the sky is falling.
The instructions with the kit warn not to eat or drink anything for at least 30 minutes prior to sampling. So on a Friday that I didn't have to work I waited for almost two hours just for good measure. No need to contaminate my results with DNA from cornbread pecan waffles. The mailing tube doesn't look very big, but it took more spitting than I would have thought to fill it to the requisite level. Not the bubbles! Then, it was all sealed up and sent off to North Carolina.
I got an email saying it was received, then a few weeks later I got another email saying my reports are ready. I immediately put down my phone and walked over to the computer that is always on at the house and logged in to 23andme.com.
And the results are...
wait for it...
disappointing.
I am absolutely and profoundly boring.
My ancestry mirrors what I've been led to believe my whole life. I am 100% European and even more boringly over 98% Northwestern European. Yes, there is more British Isles in me than I would have expected and even some Scandinavian (I knew I was part Viking!), but I'm just a slightly mixed Northern European. No Mayan. No Zulu. No lineage which can be traced back to the vicious tribes from the Steppes of Russia. No evidence of even ancient Roman conquests.
Similarly, my health results showed nothing too surprising. And even most of the physical traits were as expected.
The only thing even slightly interesting about me is that I have more than ample evidence of Neanderthal DNA. So I guess I am part knuckle dragger.
Some of the predicted physical traits don't match up with reality. I don't see this as a failure of 23andMe, but just an acknowledgement that the science behind some of these things is still in a learning phase and may be for a long time - 23andMe does say many times that not all genes are identified and how they interact is often unclear in the current state of the art. The additional information about the science behind this provided by 23andMe is fascinating as well.
There are lots of other information that I'm still going through, and if anything, this has increased my curiosity about my ancestry - even if it is boring at first glance. So was it time and money well spent? If the goal was to quell the curiosity, it failed. If the goal was to learn a little in order to think more and likely investigate more - it was definitely worth it.
23andMe has another advantage in that it is pay-once, lifetime-data. As I understand it, ancestry.com requires annual subscriptions to continue to get updates as the technology progresses and new data is available.
Towards the end of November, I finally bit when I saw that there was a sale on Ancestry+Health kit from 23andMe. It was still more than I wanted to pay but close enough to pull the trigger. A "sale" on DNA analysis sounds a bit weird though - some kind of an amalgamation of a KMart Blue Light Special with 21st Century technology.
Within a few days my kit arrived. It came with clear instructions and return postage is prepaid. Before actually submitting the sample, I had to register on 23andMe. There are many disclaimers and agreements to terms and conditions to get through on registering. Although there is a lot of paranoia about how these companies are going to do evil things with DNA or the data collected, or that it will be stolen and used by anybody from the Federal Government to racial purity groups to rogue states, I didn't see anything in there to scare me away. They do go out of their way to make it clear that it is possible to find out information which may be disturbing.
I didn't think too much about this aspect at first, since I was mostly doing this to appease some curiosity. But as I reflected on it later, I started wondering how I would react if 23andMe showed a genetic marker for some terrible disease, or if my ancestry showed something very different from family lore. To be honest though, this really didn't feel like a roll of the dice. I was just curious. Perhaps part of me was hoping for something unexpectedly interesting.
And as far as the government or racial purity groups, if they want someone's DNA, it is not terribly difficult to get. Yes Chicken Little, the sky is falling.
The instructions with the kit warn not to eat or drink anything for at least 30 minutes prior to sampling. So on a Friday that I didn't have to work I waited for almost two hours just for good measure. No need to contaminate my results with DNA from cornbread pecan waffles. The mailing tube doesn't look very big, but it took more spitting than I would have thought to fill it to the requisite level. Not the bubbles! Then, it was all sealed up and sent off to North Carolina.
I got an email saying it was received, then a few weeks later I got another email saying my reports are ready. I immediately put down my phone and walked over to the computer that is always on at the house and logged in to 23andme.com.
And the results are...
wait for it...
disappointing.
I am absolutely and profoundly boring.
My ancestry mirrors what I've been led to believe my whole life. I am 100% European and even more boringly over 98% Northwestern European. Yes, there is more British Isles in me than I would have expected and even some Scandinavian (I knew I was part Viking!), but I'm just a slightly mixed Northern European. No Mayan. No Zulu. No lineage which can be traced back to the vicious tribes from the Steppes of Russia. No evidence of even ancient Roman conquests.
Similarly, my health results showed nothing too surprising. And even most of the physical traits were as expected.
The only thing even slightly interesting about me is that I have more than ample evidence of Neanderthal DNA. So I guess I am part knuckle dragger.
Some of the predicted physical traits don't match up with reality. I don't see this as a failure of 23andMe, but just an acknowledgement that the science behind some of these things is still in a learning phase and may be for a long time - 23andMe does say many times that not all genes are identified and how they interact is often unclear in the current state of the art. The additional information about the science behind this provided by 23andMe is fascinating as well.
There are lots of other information that I'm still going through, and if anything, this has increased my curiosity about my ancestry - even if it is boring at first glance. So was it time and money well spent? If the goal was to quell the curiosity, it failed. If the goal was to learn a little in order to think more and likely investigate more - it was definitely worth it.
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