Thursday, August 19, 2010

new voting ideas

i was in a cabin in sweden the other night talking with some friends about politics and 2 interesting ideas that came up regarding voting, are:
* nameless voting - vote only on issues, not on names
* voters must take a multiple choice test which shows how informed you are. the more correct answers you get, the more weight your vote is given.

UPDATE 20120720
i've made this idea into its own blog called microdemocracy

Monday, August 2, 2010

my paternal grandmother is Pearl Lorine Mustoe (seattle, washington, usa). are you my paternal grandfather, a dutch sailor in november 1950, from the netherlands / holland / Nederland?

my paternal grandmother is Pearl Lorine Mustoe. she lived in seattle, washington, usa (the united states of america) in november 1950. her sister, Flora May Mustoe, believes that Pearl dated a dutch sailor in the period around october, november, december or january of 1950, who was visiting on a boat/ship from the netherlands / holland / Nederland at that time?

does this fit your profile or anyone you may know? i don't know who my paternal grandfather is and i would really like to find out, hopefully before he dies, if it is not already too late. but no matter what, i would like to know, dead or alive, who he was =)

in the winter of the year 1950, Pearl would have been 25 or 26 years of age.

UPDATE 20100803

i have ordered a y-dna 37 marker test from FTDNA to see if it will at least give me an indication as to whether my paternal line comes from the netherlands or not. i wrote to IGENEA who cooperates with FTDNA and they said:
we have about 1.500 Y-DNA samples from the Netherlands so far.
Whether a Y-DNA test can answer your question also depends on where the other man came from who could be your fathers father. If he is, for example, of french, british or german descent it could be hard to distinguish the profile from profiles from the Netherlands.

I would suggest to give it a try and start with the 12-Marker Test. This will show us if you have relatives from the Netherlands in the database. If there are such relatives we can test more markers to get to know the distance of the relationship.