Nothing Will Save Us From Boredom

Mike Elgan—who finds genealogical research "boring"—looks forward to "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases," which he expects to appear in ten years or so.

Such a database would enable you to do absolutely amazing things. For example:

• Enter your unique ID info (probably your Gmail username) and that of any other person, and the site would trace you both back to the most recent common shared ancestor.
• Follow a timeline that shows the locations and migrations of ancestors all leading up to the descendant that is you.
• Track down every living relative.

Boy, that'll be great.

Here are a few quick observations:

• Not all ancestries are traceable.
• DNA cannot solve every genealogical mystery.
• Records, even if digitized, require interpretation.
• Data submitted to websites—even Web 2.0 sites—can be incorrect, inconsistent or incomplete.
• That computer algorithm that can reveal your genetic ancestry "in minutes" won't reveal your ancestors' names—even if you give it a couple of hours. Finding common genetic ancestry ("We're both Chinese!") is not the same as finding a common ancestor ("We're both descended from Jackie Chan!").

The gist of the article seems to be that aggregating and "mashing up" content from disparate sources will somehow fill gaps in our genealogical knowledge left by traditional ("Web 1.0") methods. This may be true to some extent, but not to the extent Elgan predicts. If "The Mother of All Genealogy Databases" exists in ten years, it will only be as accurate and useful as the data it contains. Rooting out errors and omissions would require more than an algorithm; it would require good, old-fashioned, boring genealogy.

Redheads a Dying Breed

Remember the story that circulated a few years ago about blondes becoming extinct? That one turned out to be false, but a new one says redheads are an endangered species.

According to genetic scientists redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years.

The current National Geographic magazine reports that less than 2 per cent of the world's population has natural red hair - created by a mutation in northern Europe thousand of years ago.

Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and so producing little redheads of their own. [Link]

[Thanks, Nancy!]

A Premature Purchase

A couple in Serbia took advantage of a funeral parlor's going-out-of-business sale by buying their headstones early—and having the dates of their deaths carved in advance.

Dragoslav Mikic, 78, of the northern village of Dubnica, said: 'After looking at the length of time my relatives lived, and taking into account I eat well and am healthy, I am sure I will die in 2020.'

He predicted his wife Dragica would die in 2021. [Link]

The Genetic Cure for War

James LeVoy Sorenson is very rich, kind of eccentric, and supremely confident that his DNA database will help bring about world peace.

Sorenson's fortune has long been a byproduct of his passions, and DNA is his biggest passion to date. The project is ramping up, and the collection will grow from 100,000 samples to 250,000 in the next year. It's an expensive endeavor, but worthwhile, Sorenson says, because when factions learn that they share a common ancestry — that Jewish Israelis are related to Palestinians, Sunnis to Shiites — there will be peace on Earth. "We're all sons and daughters of God," Sorenson says, and he expects DNA to prove that with the forensic certainty of a CSI episode. [Link]

Portrait of a Past Future

Check out these predictions made in 1900 about life in 2000. Some of them were on the mark ("Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors"), some were just wishful thinking ("A university education will be free to every man and woman"), and some were just plain wrong.

There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.

All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated.

[via Long Views]

She Didn't Stay for Lunch

Chicago Sun-Times business reporter Francine Knowles got some help tracing her roots from Megan—who apparently has given up sleep as a condition of her new position at Ancestry.com. Francine was helped also by the long memory of her father, who remembered the former slave enumerated with his family in 1930.

Mama Creasy was apparently psychic. According to my dad, she lived to be either 115 or 116 years old, and on her last day on this earth, she told everyone earlier in the day she was going to die at noon. My dad recalled, "When daddy came into the house after farming out in the field that morning, she said, 'I told you I was going to die at 12 o'clock.' She said, 'You all have been good to me, and I want to thank you.' She took her last breath as a bell outside tolled noon." [Link]

O Brave New World

From Mirror.co.uk of Sept. 19, 2005:

THIRD OF US SINGLE BY 2021

A NEW study claims that by 2021 more than a third of households will be made up of singletons.

And, as the birth rate tumbles, extended family will also decline.

Researchers say family trees will grow upwards, not outwards, as numbers of aunts, uncles and cousins fall.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

Let's break out the soma and prepare to decant the Epsilons. At least genealogy will be easier.