Sunday 11 March 2018

A DNA Footnote

Last year when I did the DNA test deal....one of the odd pieces that came out of the test....was this .1-percent (yeah, awful low) of a connection that leads DNA-wise to India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  You can search over both sides of the family tree, for five or six generations....and find nothing that really explains the eastern Asian DNA significance.

So I've spent a couple of hours over the last month looking at a likely scenario.

You see, there is this odd factor in the DNA test results..... a .4-percent Ashkenazi Jew. 

One of the branches in the family had this dramatic move in the mid-1600s from southern France to central Germany, and stayed there (around the Rheinland Pfalz region) for about two to three generations....then packed up and left for America in the 1760s era. 

My best guess is that one of those members ended up marrying some local German, who had this family connection back to the 300 AD to 700 AD period and some Jewish trader who came into central Germany.

That Jewish trader?  Well....only because of the Roman Empire passion for trade....does he end up making his way from Rome to central Germany.  Prior to that, this guy probably lived in Judah and his family....for generations...had gone to using the 'Silk Road' which led from the Mediterranean through India and Afghanistan....onto China. 

My scenario would suggest that one of these relatives of this guy had some long period of trade going on in perhaps Afghanistan....married up with some local gal, and had Jewish-Ashkenazi-Afghan kids from that situation, who eventually moved off to the Med and one of them ended up in central Germany.

The Silk Road deal?  Most folks agree that it began as early as 220 BC.  This road connected Rome through Persia, the Med, India, Afghanistan, Greece, and onto eastern China.

A odd factor in the DNA?  Yes, and it lays out an awful long route for that sequence to exist today.

"Maybe That Tracker Can't Count That High"

Someone last week was observing CNN on one of their anti-Trump chats, and viewed what had been a regular feature (almost daily in early 2017)....the jobs-created-tracker.

It's a simple graphics chart that they'd get routine updates from the government and it would show jobs created since day one of the Trump administration.

Up until 5 January, it was kept up to date (monthly updates).  So sixty days have passed, and.....nothing.  The chart still says on 5 January 2018....1,839,000 newly created jobs. 

It's a puzzling thing....you'd think that one single guy has three-hundred-odd facts to update for CNN on a monthly basis, and it's like he just went off on a vacation or just refuses to update the number.  I noticed someone even suggesting that the counter (tracker) maybe was built to only handle the number going up to 1,839,000 and there's no more that you can add to the number.

The Daily Caller, I noticed, even discussed the idea that CNN laid off the individual who was handling the jobs tracker.  Oddly, if true, this is one of the individuals who've actually lost their job at CNN because of lower viewer count (shocking, you know).  Daily Caller says fifty folks were lost in this recent period at CNN. 

The odds that the graphic will continue to be used?  Since they pointed this out....my guess is that CNN is desperately trying to find the method to update the slide and by April....will correct this.  But this brings me to this odd conclusion.

CNN's whole view of constructed news since the summer of 2016 and the election period.....was to pump and hype political news a great deal...being the anti-Trump network.  At this point, almost two years into this....it's actually harming their bottom line and creating a profit-problem.  By the end of 2018?  Another fifty to a hundred folks likely to be dismissed.  If Trump were around to 2024....what would be left at CNN?