OPINION
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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2016
Discover missing pages in your family’s story
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Louis Gates Jr. will inspire more
Americans to become involved in per-
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dented insights about who our ancestors
were and how we became who we are.
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relocate great distances from one generation
to the next, it’s easy for the threads of mem-
ory to break, severing us from even the rela-
tively recent past.
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with many. They either
are habitually incurious,
too busy just getting by,
or certain their families
did nothing of interest.
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itively hunger for such
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norant of their family’s
Matt
past are like pages torn
Winters
from a long and compli-
cated book. They might
be interesting, but they have no context, nar-
rative or plot. You can’t understand who the
characters are or why they behave as they
do. Being part of long, messy stories is what
makes us human. Without your family’s tale,
you’d just as well be a rabbit hiding in its hole.
Daniel Bradley/Trinity College Dublin
This 5,000-year-old skull of a female farmer recovered in 1855 from a Neolithic tomb near Belfast provided DNA that helps reveal
the deep ancestry of the Irish people.
Fleshing out these stories takes
old-fashioned genealogy
What it can and can’t do
Fleshing out these stories takes old-fash-
ioned genealogy — genetics technology isn’t
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will a genetics test prove a link to some long-
lost relation who has already accurately recon-
structed part of your family narrative.
What genetics testing can reliably do:
• Find cousins you didn’t know about.
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known ancestor and someone further back.
• Tell whether you, a parent or more distant
ancestor was adopted, or born as the result of
an out-of-wedlock affair.
• Determine an approximation of your ra-
cial composition.
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regions some of your ancestors lived in.
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one with the same last name.
• Find out what percentage Neanderthal
you are.
These uses will be incredibly meaningful
to some and completely boring to others. The
fact is, though, that even someone who is 100
percent certain they know all there is to know
about their family is likely to be in for surpris-
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lenged, it’s best to not ask questions or take
tests.
Genetics sounds scary to many. They fear
it is too technical to understand, or too ex-
pensive, or that their personal data may be
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genuinely interested in answers to compel-
ling questions, don’t let these concerns get
in your way. Testing companies and hoards
of enthusiasts stand ready to help interpret
results, tests are becoming steadily more af-
fordable and thorough, and the types of DNA
tested for ancestry are rarely susceptible to
misuse.
Company reviews
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dozen years and have answered questions for
many friends and family members. For what
it’s worth, here are brief reviews and recom-
mendations about testing and DNA-interpre-
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reliable in terms of doing accurate tests, but
they differ greatly in value and the services
they offer. Testing procedures are painless and
easy. They are listed in order of usefulness, in
my subjective opinion.
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offers good explanations about the differenc-
es between them. There are occasional sales,
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other companies do the same. FTDNA is one
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tabase, with hundreds of thousands of testees
being able to compare results and learn from
one another.
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RQO\WHVWZKLFKFRVWVLVDJUHDWYDOXHD
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health-related information.
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corporate transitions since then, but still is a
credible choice, particularly for we with main-
ly British ancestry.
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cestry also offers DNA tests. A large testee
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found their suggested genetic matches to be
useless.
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sia-based interpretation service, they take
DNA raw data obtained by clients from other
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terribly helpful for beginners, but worth bear-
ing in mind if you become as obsessed with
the topic, as many do.
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for this purpose, National Geographic has
been a major player in DNA testing via its
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esting results about ethnicity, but is less useful
for other purposes.
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value for the money.
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other places. For one, much to their mutu-
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biggest source of DNA for most in England’s
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This is the golden age of genetic and ge-
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we’re likely to get to having a time machine.
So get after it.
—M.S.W.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
Cornering the anger market
Trump seems to feel abso-
There’s something a little re-
lutely no compunction to ex-
freshing in a candidate who does
plain how anything would work.
all his bragging upfront. And let’s
His defense program is basically,
et’s talk for a minute about Bernie acknowledge that the number of
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typical American voters who
Sanders and Donald Trump.
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want to listen to a call for the re-
Both of them were in New York this turn of the Glass-Steagall Act is
He’s going to get rid of all the
week.
immigrants here illegally — the
not as large as the number who
actual procedure for making this
Sanders made a speech about Wall want to hear Trump rant against
happen is hazy — and then force
Street to a large and boisterous crowd. They environmental regulations by
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Gail
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tions and using the money to make public spray.
Collins
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But Sanders has such better
college tuition free. They booed Wall Street
executive bonuses, and loudly joined in to YLOODLQV,QKLV:DOO6WUHHWVSHHFKKHWDONHG GXFHWKHWUDGHGH¿FLWZLWK&KLQD³WKHVLQ-
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gress does not regulate Wall Street ... WALL ¿QDQFLDO HTXLYDOHQW RI PXUGHU :DFKRYLD ´$WWKHHGLWRULDOERDUGPHHWLQJ7UXPS
an American bank later acquired by Wells said he’d use his stupendous deal-making
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said Trump at a meeting Wednesday with ers said, by laundering billions of dollars in ue of their currency.
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The Times editorial board. He added, of WKHLUFDVK³<HWWKHWRWDO¿QHIRUWKLVRIIHQVH
course, that his were way, way, way bigger. was less than 2 percent of the bank’s $12.3 Trump said he’d impose a tariff. How much
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This seemed like a new number. A few
rage. Sanders wants the country to rise RQHZHQWWRMDLO´
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up against the special privileges that keep
making the richest 1 percent richer. Trump 0H[LFDQZRUNHUVVQHDNLQJDFURVVWKHERU- WDULII RQ &KLQHVH JRRGV DQG HDUO\ LQ WKH
der — even the ones who FDPSDLJQKHPHQWLRQHGDSHUFHQWWD[RQ
rocketed to the top of the
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polls by railing about illegal
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immigration. The saddest
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thing about this presidential
race so far is that the Trump knows? It’s selves across a fence out of that he just makes this stuff up as he goes
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approach has gotten way
a theory.’
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that less than two years
more attention.
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Donald Trump
a candidate for the Senate SDLJQKDVSLFNHGXSRQWKDWDQG,GLGQ¶WGR
Trump as a presidential
who ran an ad in which an WKDW LQWHQWLRQDOO\´ 3HUKDSV WKDW¶V WUXH LQ
candidate is fascinating, in a
perverse way. The effect is sort of like being RI¿FHZRUNHULQ6RXWK'DNRWDZDVLPSHU- the sense that he never sat down and wrote
at a cocktail party listening while a half-tipsy sonated by a French model. We’ve come so RXWDQ$QJHU3ODQ+HMXVWNHHSVUHSHDWLQJ
whatever seems to get a rise out of his lis-
celebrity blathers on about his stupid co-star IDU
0D\EHWKHSUREOHPZLWK6DQGHUV¶VSHHFK teners. He always was a great marketer.
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Trump doesn’t drink, but his speeches do was that after he warned Wall Street and
have that sloppy off-the-cuff quality. He’ll FRUSRUDWH$PHULFD³LI\RXGRQRWHQG\RXU ahead in the national polls, given the qual-
start to talk about an issue and then abruptly JUHHGZHZLOOHQGLWIRU\RX´KHVHHPHG ity of the Republican competition. But it’s
DQQRXQFH³6RZKRNQRZV",W¶VDWKHRU\´ to feel compelled to say how he would do depressing that he’s cornered the anger fran-
7KHQKHERDVWVDERXWKLVSROOV³,FRXOGWDON that. Which did require some discussion of chise when his targets exclude America’s
the Federal Reserve and banking regulation. own wealthy and powerful.
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By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times News Service
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Jim Cole/AP Photo
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves
to a cheering crowd during a campaign stop Tuesday in
Claremont, N.H.
Mikayla Whitmore/Las Vegas Sun
Michaela Lash is held up by her mother Elana Lash at a
rally for Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ber-
nie Sanders, I-Vt., at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas on
Wednesday.
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
• CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
• DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Founded in 1873