You’ve got to watch the video of Nikki’s presser if only to see the dude doing the sign language. I had no idea it involved such dramatic facial expressions….
See how you like these:
- Here comes Matthew — My wife is scrambling because she’ll have four grandchildren at the house with schools closing. How is it affecting you so far? Meanwhile, the effect in Haiti is described as “catastrophic.”
- In their only debate, Pence and Kaine prepare to defend running mates — I suppose I’ll watch this, and I suppose I’ll live-Tweet it. Unless I think of something else to do.
- Fact-Checking Family Lore With DNA Tests — I read this with great interest for two reasons — 1) I’m spending all my spare time working on my family tree; and 2) I got an AncestryDNA kit for my birthday, and can’t wait to send my spit off and see what they tell me. Have any of y’all done this? Did you find out anything cool?
- British Pound Hits Three-Decade Low on Brexit Concerns — So don’t tell me there’ve been no negative effects of Brexit…
- Report: Russians slipped ‘roofies’ to U.S. diplomats — No, really. There’s a news story about it and everything.
I’ll stop on that note. Y’all have anything else?
Related Posts
Like Donnie Myers getting a pass on the breathalyzer reports by the Judge? That’s not the way it works for regular people, I don’t imagine. It kind of makes a mockery of the SC judicial system when things like this happen. It will make a mockery of the system if he is not ultimately convicted because of this evidence removal.
How many more innocent people have to die at the hands of drunk drivers before real change comes to the prosecution of DUIs in SC?
Yup. Got a $1000 fine and no jail time. He is three for three in getting the system suck up to him. Pretty disgusting, if you ask me.
But he’s suffered enough with having to retire, right? And next time he gets pulled over or crashes? Then will he have a consequence?
He had a good lawyer who got the Breathalyzer test thrown out. That’s all it takes for those can afford the representation. You get the justice you can pay for.
Like Trump.
bud, Trump is not the only one who can afford a good lawyer. A good example of being able to afford a great team of lawyers or attorneys, is O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.
A good lawyer can get a vehicle case reduced to paying a fine or dismissed. Been in court when individuals who clearly violated the law were let off with a slap on the hand because of the attorney representing them. One case in particular was a young male speeding, 95 mph, on a busy street. His attorney was apparently prominent and had a good relationship with the judge. He was let off with a warning, paid a small fine, and no points deducted. Another defendant was driving an older vehicle and accidently brushed the side of a parked vehicle. Based on the description of the vehicle he was driving, it was a very heavy, older vehicle, he didn’t even realize he had hit the parked car. He was ticketed, went before the same judge without an attorney. The judge fined him to the max and sentenced him to 30 days to be served on the weekends. That day in court taught me a valuable lesson after watching the judge hand out sentences that simply were not consistent considering the fact that many of the cases were almost identical. So, when it was my turn in front of the judge, I held my ground and wouldn’t back down even when the judge tried to get me to admit I did something I did not do. He got so damn mad at me, when he dismissed the charge of causing an accident and speeding, he told me he would be looking for me if I ever come before him again and he would “throw the book” at me no matter what legitimate defense I had to present. The problem then becomes, if you can’t afford a top notch attorney, what does the average person do to get justice and a fair and impartial hearing before a judge and jury?
Yeah, justice is for sale if one can afford a really good influential attorney. I don’t have a lot of trust in some judges either. Sorry Bryan, present company not included and you are present company.
No offense taken. I’m neither important nor influential – just competent at understanding the law and making a legal argument. 🙂
Agree. Justice should not depend on the color of one’s skin OR wallet.
I think that anyone who can afford a private lawyer gets shockingly good treatment on DUI cases. The system is rigged in favor of drunk drivers….gggrrrrr
When legislators stop getting pebbles in their shoes….
From a legal standpoint, wouldn’t Myers perhaps done better to postpone this case as long as possible? Also, is this case appealable to circuit level, and will it help that couple key pieces of evidence not allowed?
Facial expressions like that are a part of speaking ASL. Since they don’t have tone of voice to convey emotion, they make up for it with facial expressions. It is just part of the language system to code certain things, like intonation, phrasing, and prosody are in spoken language.
It was fascinating to watch… Most of the folks I’ve seen doing that in the past have been relatively subdued…
It’s true, many interpreters for these sorts of events do not use the typical ASL facial expressions like this guy did. I wonder what his background is. He signs like a native ASL speaker, which usually means you would be deaf and not able to interpret on the spot like this. Maybe he was raised in a deaf household. It’s interesting.
Apparently similar things have happened. The interpreter for a press conference for Bill DeBlasio drew lots of attention for the same reason. He was a deaf native ASL speaker who was interpreting second hand via an interpretation of a hearing signer – the purpose being that his communication would be more authentic for actual deaf speakers that the interpretation was for.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/heres-how-mayor-bill-de-blasios-expressive-sign-language-interpreter-got-the-job-6715526
http://mentalfloss.com/article/59719/sign-language-interpreter-de-blasios-press-conference-was-deaf-how-does-work
Hey look – he is a native deaf speaker of ASL.
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article106085547.html
There apparently was another English speaking signer interpreting what Haley said to him. He is a certified deaf interpreter. This is apparently standard procedure for a certified deaf interpreter. Pretty cool.
Nice thing about being a blogger; you keep learning new stuff.
Anyway, I enjoyed watching him. It’s like a new form of theater I had not previously experienced.
Also… and this might just be me… but doesn’t he bear a resemblance to Doug (on the right in this photo)?
You need to check with Professor Teague–she knows the best DNA tests–there’s a big quality differential.
Well, the two big brand names in the field are AncestryDNA and 23andMe.
My daughter recently did 23andMe, and got some pretty interesting results. She gave me the AncestryDNA kit for my birthday. When I do it, it will not only give us a perspective from a different test, but presumably show what parts of her heritage come from me, and by default, which traits from her mother.
I look forward to making the comparison, both for the commonalities and discrepancies.
I think I mentioned this before, but when my daughter got her report from 23andMe, it showed she was slightly Scandinavian, which she doubted just because she had never heard of any such ancestry. Well, she wouldn’t have, because it was too far back. A couple of months later, I struck a particularly productive branch on the tree that kept going back, and back — to the Tudor period… back to the Plantagenets… back to the Norman conquest… back and back… and suddenly our direct ancestors on that line were Vikings (why? because the French king had ceded Normandy to Viking raiders — or something like that).
It will be interesting to see how the findings back up what I know, and how it sends me in new directions…
Of course, what I’m hoping for is that the morning after I get my results, a delegation from HMG will arrive on my doorstep to tell me that I, and not my distant cousin Elizabeth, am supposed to be on the British throne….
And here I am. I will not be brief.
The big three for DNA testing are Family Tree DNA, Ancestry and 23andMe. I’ve been tested at all of them. All provide technically sound lab results, but for a family historian they are very different. 23andMe provides health-related DNA information and is extremely frustrating for genealogical researchers because relatively few matches are willing to reveal any information at all about their families. Interpreting DNA for genealogy is all about who you match, so this is a very bad thing.
Ancestry has the largest comparative database, and links to family trees, etc., in their system. Ancestry then provides “DNA circles” of people whom you match and who have one of the same ancestors that you do listed on their trees and projects possible ancestors based on your matches. The circles are pretty much by definition ancestors you already knew about. I have no projections, and you probably won’t either Brad since you’ve been working on this and will already know most of your ancestors. However, the Ancestry results are useful as a base level interpretation, as long as you bear in mind that most of the on-line trees contain some amount of utter nonsense. Very often the same nonsense is presented in a hundred or more trees, because Ancestry makes it easy to graft other people’s (often incorrect) trees onto your own. So, wariness is needed.
The worst part is that Ancestry adamantly refuses to provide a tool for chromosome mapping against your matches. You may not want to get into it that deeply, but if you want to truly find ancestors you didn’t know about, or prove some that you suspected but couldn’t prove with documents, you must do this, comparing overlapping DNA segments with your matches,
However, you can upload your Ancestry raw data to GedMatch, a free service that does allow chromosome mapping as well as fabulous tools for comparison to both modern ethic and archaeological specimens. GedMatch allowed me to confirm what I have always suspected — if you have German-Swiss farmer ancestors, the further you go back, the more German-Swiss farmers you get. Significant parts of my DNA match 7000 year old Neollthic farmers from what is now SW Germany and Luxembourg.
You also can also upload your data to Family Tree DNA, which does not have the largest data base but does provide excellent on-line tools for chromosome mapping. This is free for very limited access, $39 for full access as if you had originally tested there (which, by the way, costs $79). This is the preferred site for most very serious genetic genealogists, but then most of us have tested or uploaded at several sites anyway.
And yes, it is extremely helpful. Using autosomal DNA I have confirmed several lines for which documentary evidence was too weak for me to be certain of the lineage. I have found a major correction to one line. I have found evidence of some ancestry that just plain puzzles the heck out of me but is bit by bit leading to identifying some previously unidentifiable maternal lineages.
Also, I have mentioned here previously that one encounters unsuspected cousins who can be very rewarding to get to know.
I highly recommend it, whether one wants to dip a toe in for a quick look at genetic ancestry or go burrowing into the data in search of hidden ancestors.
Clarification: I said “. . . Brad since you’ve been working on this and will already know most of your ancestors. ” I mean “most of your ancestors” in the time frame that autosomal DNA combined with other peoples’ trees is likely to give you through a simple tool like the DNA Circles. Obviously none of us know “most of our ancestors.”
Final note on 23andMe: They encourage clients to agree to use of their data for medical research. Many believe that this is the humanitarian thing to do, However, 23andMe clients should be aware that the company actually sells the DNA data long with client responses to health questionnaires to pharmaceutical companies. It is part of the business model, not a pro bono humanitarian outreach effort as some assume. You may or may not have a problem with this, but users should be aware that their data will be sold, not given away.
Thanks so much, Lynn! I plan to give y’all a report when I get my results back….
Thank you Lynn. That is the best explanation/comparison of the 3 I have seen. Very interesting.
This is my problem with Ancestry.com. I’ve dabbled in geneology. I have a great Aunt who was a librarian and very big DAR, etc. type person and did geneology for people professionally. She has done quite a bit with our family so I’ve got a pretty good base to start from.
But I’ve been hesitant to get involved with Ancestry because the little bit I’ve looked at among family members that have lines up online have lots of errors that I can see in the little bit of common history that we share and I know, even of recent and verifiable still living people. And I see this information copied and replicated without question and errors are proliferated rapidly. Makes me doubt any geneological information on the internet.
Do they have any sort of designation for connections that are verified by documents, etc. to help you differentiate what might be a true connection?
Part of me also is offended that they have taken all this info that people should have free access to and charge people for it. I realize that it technically is still free if you can travel all over the world to various libraries, which my Aunt used to do, and what you are paying for is ease of access, but it still bothers me. Like I said I haven’t looked recently but last I checked, lots of census records and such that ought to be free online resources had been locked up by ancestry. Maybe that has changed. I ought to get back into it.
Well, I haven’t had much occasion to resent them yet because there are so many free sources of info that I am a LONG way from running out. Which means I’m a long way still from having to PAY for information.
And yes, there are LOTS of errors out there — often, there will be more than one entry on the same person in a database such as, say, geni.com, and one or more of them will be obviously wrong — but I search for the most reasonable entry (in terms of dates and relationships), put it on my tree, and move on. Taking one precaution: In the notes field, I include the URL for the page or pages where I got the info, so at least an error can be tracked. (At first I didn’t do this, but I’ve been pretty strict about it on the last few hundred people I’ve added.) Whenever possible, I cite more than one online database — although of course, any two databases may have the same tainted info from the same original source.
The fact is, when you’re back in the 15th century or earlier — or even sometimes in the 19th century — there’s no one alive today who really KNOWS. So I don’t take anything on my tree as gospel. And I see it as a fun game, a challenge, a puzzle.
For instance — it’s sort of a joke out there on the Web that all white people are descended from, or at least related to, Charlemagne. The way I look at it, the point of the game is to show HOW you are descended from Charlemagne — which I succeeded in doing a couple of months back. So I win! (The way I figure, he was my 38th-great grandfather.) Even if I have no way of knowing if all of those connections are accurate. In fact, it’s a near-certainty that at least one of those 38 links is bad. But going by the best information available to me, he’s my grandpappy.
Also… by the time you get back to Charlemagne, your tree has long since started collapsing onto itself — a 23rd-great grandfather is probably your ancestor several ways, for the simple fact that if your ancestors were all separate individuals, at that point in history they would add up to far more people than existed at the time.
So I’m in the hunt for my first double great-grandparent. I came close a week or so ago…
Elizabeth Isabel Tyrrell (1440–1505) was, if all my info is correct (and that’s a BIG “if”), my 15th great-grandmother. She was married to Richard Haute. His brother, Sir William Hawte, was my 15th great-grandfather! All right! So that would make their father, William Haute, member of Parliament, my DOUBLE 16th-great grandfather!
CLOSE, but no cigar… Because I’m not descended from Richard Haute. I’m descended from Elizabeth’s other husband, Sir Robert Darcy, sheriff of Essex.
Dang. But I feel like I’ll strike the real thing before long, snooping around that far back….
Yeah, I can see y’all’s faces now — wearing the same expression my wife’s does when I drop the name of another Sir So-and-so or Lady What’s-her-name to her. I’m weaving great castles in the air — castles which, by the way, went to some OTHER descendant and not to me! Blast primogeniture and entail!
But I’m doing the best I can, based on the best information I can find — and having harmless fun doing it.
Also — I’m sure that MOST of my ancestors in the 1400s were illiterate peasants. I find the lords and ladies because they’re the only ones about whom there is a lot of data. I probably don’t have more nobility in my background than any of y’all do…
I suppose there’s something wrong about me, but I’d rather not find out I was related to the aristocracy–not very nice people, at least to begin with…
I only ever knew one grandmother, and she was not a kind person. I know my ancestors emigrated from Germany. My dermatologist thinks I have Celtic ancestors, and Celts settled near where my family emigrated from. Beyond that, I am rather incurious…
Oh, but there are such interesting characters to be found on one’s tree! Not always commendable, I have some ancestors I’m sure I’d rather not meet, but interesting characters.
First, I accept no responsibility for my ancestor’s deeds. Still, some can be disturbing. There was this one Norman lord who lived in the early 11th century — my 31st-great grandfather (perhaps) — who, according to Wikipedia, was a real monster. He took his personal army down to Iberia and committed unspeakable atrocities.
But that wasn’t me. And finding out I’m related to unsavory historical figures doesn’t make me feel guilty. How could it?
But it’s a fun new way to delve through history. Reading biographies is one of the more pleasurable ways to explore the past, and this is like speed-dating lots of biographies.
For instance, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know about the early English settlement of Virginia, through tracing people named Pace and Page and Chiles and Wyatt, and pausing to read about what they did, and what was going on around them. It’s fascinating…
A basic requirement for honest family history is a willingness to deal with the more unpleasant folks. As you say, we’re not responsible for them, but they do provide a different perspective on history.
There are provisions for indicating sources for source info for Ancestry trees. However most don’t list sourcesl mostly because they don’t have them. I don’t list sources on my Ancestry tree because I don’t want it to be that easy for someone to lift my years of research. If they get in touch with me they get the references to primary docs.
However, there is much more on Ancestry than just individual trees, from censuses to tax records. Like most serious family history buffs, I have a love/hate relationship with Ancestry. There is considerable added value in their scanning and indexing, but they are ruthless about maintaining their profit margin.
… and yet they’ve let me build a tree on their site for free over the last six years. It now has more than 1,800 people on it…
That is their strategy for drawing people in. It doesn’t work all the time, of course, but a lot of folks start with free trees and then subscribe.
They may have overdone it.
As of this moment, I have 7,208 “hints” from Ancestry that I cannot access because I don’t subscribe. Send me one or two, and make them sound really good, and I might be tempted to sign up.
But when I contemplate signing up for Ancestry and suddenly having 7,208 leads to follow up on, it’s overwhelming. When would I find the time?
I like the pace of what I’m able to find out for free. Maybe, as lines dry up and I run out of free leads, and maybe I’m retired and have all day to do this, I might sign up. But not yet…
Lynn, you speak of “provisions for indicating sources for source info for Ancestry trees.”
What do you think is the best way to source info? Rather than messing with the “web link” field or anything like that, I just paste URLs into the “notes.” Do you think I’m doing it wrong?
I realize you say you DON’T make that info readily available to others, but since you have a lot more experience with this than I, I’m wondering how you would do it if you did.
Whichever way you do it, I wish it were easier. I wish there were a place to put source URLs in the “Quick Edit” form, where you can enter name, gender, and birth and death dates and places.
Putting a single URL in notes requires a minimum of a dozen clicks and/or keystrokes, which really slows me down when I’m racing along on a rich new vein, maniacally adding as many new people as I can…
It is a bit awkward, but the shortest route I know is to go to the family page for the person on your tree (rather than the tree view), click on “Facts” in the menu below the name and dates panel, and click on “+ Add Source” or “Add Web Link” below that. (By the way, that has to be the most awkward sentence I’ve written in ages, which will teach me not to respond late at night from my iPad while watching TV.)
I don’t often go to the “hints.” They are usually a listing for the same person on someone else’s tree, without documentation. I look at a hint if it is someone who has been a brick wall for me, but seldom find anything useful that I didn’t have before. On the other hand, I’ve been at this for almost thirty years, doing long days of research at SCDAH and elsewhere, after growing up in a family in which some long dead ancestors were talked about as if they might stroll in the door at any moment. The hints are probably much more useful to those starting out.
The awkward sentence that I mention is the one that you quoted previously. I just don’t seem to be very good at achieving clarity at present.
Scout, You are right about Ancestry.com.
The thing to do for your own tree is to verify, verify and verify. Don’t trust what other people throw up on there. Start from yourself and work back.
Before you believe something from somebody else’s, find the documentation. As others on here have said, what many are eager to do is connect themselves to some famous person or royalty. Only a few can prove it.
I agree with you that it seems to offend to charge for public documents such as census. But the mormons have done the work to round them up and make them convenient, and that is the commercial side of Ancestry. If you willing to travel and spend time deep in the musty records, you can get them for free.
I’ll pass on that. Personally, I am (literally) allergic to musty records.
It’s nice to have records, or at least electronic scans of records, for the most recent few generations. But when you’re doing one of the things I like to do — chasing a line as far back as it will go, century before century — you can’t really find records to confirm your connection. But it’s still a lot of fun, like riding a big wave.
The earliest relevant records I’ve been able to find — and I’m not talking about originals, but copies of copies of some transcription — involved the first Warthen (then spelled “Wathen”) to come to America. But while it’s detailed, it’s still dicey. An excerpt:
“I believe?” Who’s this “I?” Is it Carol Collins? If so, who in the world is Carol Collins? And “believe?” What’s the belief based on. “Tradition states?”
But that’s about as good as it gets, unless you find somebody famous like my ancestor Richard Pace. But then, when you read his Wikipedia page, you realize some of that stuff is pretty dicey, too.
For instance, near as I can tell, the Wikipedia page for my ancestor Col. John Page misstates who his parents were — which really blows about half of my tree, if it’s right. (That’s the line that goes back to Charlemagne.)
But I find more sources (three) saying that’s WRONG than I do saying it’s right (two). And one of those sources specifically SAYS the parentage listed in Wikipedia is wrong, and offers the correct parents. I’ve thought about trying to correct it on Wikipedia, but haven’t figured out how. And what if I’m wrong? I hesitate…
By the way, y’all — I mailed off my spit to Ancestry this morning! I can hardly wait to hear back…
Dang! I sent it off HOURS ago, and I STILL have no results!…
In the coming days (and, they warn me, weeks) I’m going to be like a kid who sent off cereal boxtops, waiting for his decoder ring…
How much would you have to be paid to have the job of opening the spit packages?
A bunch. But maybe it’s done by robots.
One thing making it less unpleasant, or at least less dangerous to health, I hope — when you close the tube, the cap squirts a liquid into the saliva that stabilizes it. I’m assuming it also stops germs from growing, although I don’t know that…
Is it not just a little off-putting to hear that Hillary is taking off four days from campaigning (except for two fundraisers, naturally) to prepare for the next debate? How much more preparation does she need for a 90 minute debate? How does this not feed into the perception that a) she lacks the energy to be President and b) she is overly scripted? I assume her “comedy” writers are preparing a number of zingers like they did for Tim Kaine.
If she loses this election (and it IS still hers to lose), it will be because she didn’t do the hard work of campaigning. Trump is at least RUNNING for President, not COASTING.
It’s the safe play. If this election was a football game, there’s less than two minutes to go in the game, and Hillary is up by 5 points. Trump has the ball, but he’s on his own 15 and out of timeouts. All she needs to do is keep Trump from scoring a touchdown. There’s no need for her to bring extra pressure and possibly give up a big play. Just play the base defense, drop eight in coverage, and let the clock be your friend.
I’d say she’s up by only 2 and Trump’s on the 30 with Hillary’s star pass rusher out of the game due to pneumonia. All he needs is to get that final 40 yards plus a kick to win. Trump is Les Miles at this point… seemingly out many times but crazy enough to eke out a win.
People keep losing sight of the fact that this is about electoral votes not popular votes. The only number that matters is 270. A half dozen states will make the difference of whether Trump barely wins or loses at a McCain to Romney level. If Trump can win PA, OH, and FL it will be close. He has a shot in all three.
Trump can easily lose the popular vote to Hillary since she’ll rack up big margins in California, Illinois, etc. but he just has to get one more vote than her in states like OH, PA, FL, VA, NC, MO to win the election.
Y’all lost me with the analogy. Translate it into baseball.
I’m thinking she’s ahead, but he’s at bat and the tying run’s on first…
I’d say the tying run is on second with one out and the relief pitcher is working his third day in a row. The pitcher has to either bear down and gut it out or walk the batter and hope for a double play ball.
My impression is Trump reached his lowest point two months ago and Hillary still has room to drop if she makes any big mistakes. Trump is bulletproof right now — nothing has moved the needle for him. Kaine hurt Hillary a little bit. Puts doubt in people’s minds about his ability to take over in case something happens to her. Pence probably made more people say, “Oh, he SEEMS presidential”.
So, to take the analogy to a different level…
Don’t you think it’s smart for Hillary to give her arm a four-day rest before what could be the critical game of the season?
Are you serious? You are faulting her for trying to be prepared instead of just blustering into it assuming you are gods gift to all things like trump would do. I rather like the contrast.
Especially when the stakes of the outcome are so high.
Valuing preparation seems like a nice attribute in a world leader.
So no, I don’t find it off putting. I find it reassuring.
What doesn’t she know at this point that requires four days of preparation? She will have to speak for a couple minutes each on a half dozen topics. At this point, she should be able to roll out of bed and do that. Oh, sure, she (Her staff) has to come up with some “brilliant” one liners and determine how many times to say “tax returns”, “misogyny”, and “didn’t pay taxes”. And she’ll be loaded up with a few touching anecdotes about some poor souls that she can go to when necessary. She’s prepping for a performance, not a debate.
But that’s why she doesn’t do press conferences either. Maybe she’s not so good at thinking (or standing) on her feet.
She seemed to do just fine in all the hours of that House hearing.
Please.. Democrats make sitting at a table and avoiding answering questions into some type of heroic effort. First, with all the grandstanding on both sides of the committee, she was listening more than she was talking. Think she could do it again tomorrow without days of preparation with her handlers? Think she could do TWO hours in front of the press? Nope.
Exactly – a performance with the whole nation watching, which is not natural for an introvert or typical for the actual job. I have no problem believing she can think on her feet in real life situations with real people and real information when the whole world isn’t actively watching in real time. Doing the same thing on camera is something different and it doesn’t bother me if she takes time to prepare. I doubt she needs prepping on the info, as you say. Practicing stylistically is something else.
Hey, it’s your candidate. If you think her time is better spent creating a presentation for a 90 minute debate versus actually going out on the campaign trail to rally the troops, that’s great. Others will have a different perception. Let’s not forget she has the time to do fundraisers while prepping. At this point, how much more money does she really need to sell herself?
Trump’s working hard across the country to win (he probably won’t and I am not supporting him). Hillary is prepping for a debate. We’ll see which strategy works. Maybe she’ll come in over-prepared and overly scripted like mad dog Kaine…