found on the web

for the record, i'm not an atheist. At the moment I'm leaning toward Judaism. One thing tho, the persecution complex is so 79A.D. How a religion that constitutes 85% of Pennsylvanians, and 80% of overall Americans can be persecuted is very much beyond me. Anyway enjoy what I posted below.

at street prophets

and let me tell you, it's hard.

Why sometimes I have to drive MORE THAN TWO OR THREE BLOCKS to find a Christian church - many of them don't even have 60 foot tall gold crosses!!! - clearly they are having to hide with, say, only a $60,000 electronic message board or, gasp, even a small tasteful sign to signal to those brave few who know where to go....

often the Churches are clustered together with 3 or 4 in one area - I can only assume that happened as a defensive measure...

Unfortunately it didn't work as usually in these groupings you'll find that the security circle was breeched by some damn Catholic, Southern Baptist, American Baptist, Mo Lutheran, Wi Lutheran, Episcopalian, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Evangelical, UCC, COGIC, MCC, Free this or that / insert a group you have minor theological differences with so they are hence doomed to the fiery pit here so called "church". And then there's the Unitarians....

and Christians are SO persecuted here that when Pastor Joe Wright of Central Christian (such a martyr Joe is - his flock bravely has both a 60 foot gold cross and 2 60K multimedia boards along one of the busiest intersections in one of the fastest growing and richest areas of town... they had to FLEE there from an old downtown location where there were homeless and hungry people persecuting them by getting in the way...)

anyway - when brave Joe stands at the opening of the legislature to lead the body in praying to Jesus, and attacks abortionist, homosexuals, and greedy welfare queens - why - SOME OF THE LEGISLATORS DON'T EVEN STAND. Some even walked out.

They walked OUT.

It's terrible suffering such persecution....

/snark

sigh

HA ha TO went to the CowGurls!

More on My Gene Pool

To clarify, I'm testing my Y-DNA. It will trace my most direct parental ancestor. Later I will test my mtDNA, which will trace the ethnoancestry of my most direct maternal ancestor. Family lore has that branch of the family as the descendents of a great Delaware Indian chief. mtDNA would not exactly show this, but it would show if I have markers shared by Native Americans.

I'm sort of in luck there. While my dad's family doesn't have the best records, both sides of his family come from The Bahamas, which has pretty good records and an active cultural community in the islands and across the US where they've ended up. I suppose one could say there's a small Bahamian Diaspora, white and black, that ended up in Florida, Georgia and other southeastern states. My surname is somewhat common in the Bahamas while rare in most of the US outside of Florida, and strangely, the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My mother's family has kept excellent records, however.

Through records, I've traced my most direct parental ancestor, assuming the records at Ancestry.com are right, to a man named Thomas born 1829 or 1828 in the Bahamas.

The DNA test will not tell me if Thomas is indeed my most direct parental ancestor, but it will tell me where his genes originated (likely in Africa, somewhere.) The DNA also goes into a database and can be uploaded into several other databases, and it can locate another person who can trace direct ancestry back to a person on my line.

I highly recommend this. Another site, Family Tree DNA, is one of the oldest and has many projects going, and a forum that has lots of armchair geneticists tracing themselves and humanity across the globe. It is interesting how genes travel, and it has pulled up some suprises.

I can't wait to get the results back!

geneology

I am very excited. Last month, I watched a program that helped various Black stars trace their ancestry using DNA. That program really excited me. So now I'm doing the same.

I ordered a DNA test kit. When it arrives, I'll test myself then send it back. They'll send me my results (genetic/geographical ancestry). They'll also upload the data (with my permission) to their database, which connects thousands of people. It will help me trace my family, a really long sorta-project I've worked on.

Genebase is the site I am using. I have a little site set up through them. There are a variety of sites out there, as there is a major market for this sort of thing. Even though we're in these fast heady days, people still want to know where they came from. And I also love history.

Dump Santorum Website

yes

Okay, as a civil servant I'm not really supposed to endorse a candidate, even though this particular candidate's opponent runs counter to my entire world-and-religion-view. Privatize the weather service? WTF!

Anyway.

So I'm not endorsing Mr. Casey. I'm merely posting the link to the Dump Santorum website and allowing others to come to their own conclusions. Heh, indeed.

New Blogs

Hey kids, I added some new blogs to the list over on the left there. They are all Harrisburg area people, and all are a good read. Without further ado, they are:

• One Man Think Tank
• Local Feeds: Harrisburg
• Harrisburg Happenings ( a place to escape from censorship at the PennLive forums, which does happen. I post there as DoT1012)
  

Take a look and enjoy.