The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

How does someone take to the skies in a plane, without anyone stopping him?

While it's "easy" for an employee to gain access to a plane for a variety of reasons.... somebody left the keys insecure.

This was all supposed to have been tightened up since a chap stole a plane to fly home in 1969.

Maybe this new guy got the idea due to recent coverage of the old event. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43800089

LydiaJ

ivyleaf wrote: »

That's good news Lydia! I hope he will turn out to be just right for you, and you for him

Thanks ivyleaf. If all goes well I should have photos to post soon. In the meantime, DD and I have hunted out some of Avatar Dog's belongings - his food and water bowls, and some of his toys. They're a bit big (Little Dog is quite a lot smaller than Avatar Dog) but they'll do until we've got smaller ones for Little Dog).

vivatifosi

The "how did he access the plane" is relatively straightforward as he was an airline employee and had the right to work on the planes.

A more relevant question is how did he access the runway during a busy period? The planes take off in allocated slots. How did he manage to get among those and take off? He certainly would not have been given access to the runway, and may well have jumped another plane's spot, which in itself is also dangerous.

On the positive side this may have done aviation security a huge favour. With locked cockpits, hijacking is now near impossible. However the insider threat from terrorism isn't. One bloke stealing a plane is much better than an undercover terrorist. As a result of this new measures will be put in place that will make us all that bit safer.

Pyxis

You were up late, Viva!

Did you get a break in the cloud cover to enable you to see the Perseids?
No luck for me. Cloud too dense.

The forecast for tonight is for broken cloud, so I'll set an alarm for midnight, and see if it's worth staggering outside and looking skyward.

vivatifosi

No Perseids here sadly, just clouds and rain.

It was my nephew's birthday yesterday, so went to his party last night, then when we got back caught up on the European Athletics championships that we'd recorded. I also drank a diet coke, which now I've stopped caffeine didn't help.

Incidentally I got my DNA test back. Mostly British with 6% Germanic and 3% Scandinavian. This fits in exactly with what I found in my tree, which has Flemish Belgian, Dutch, German and Scandinavian (prob Danish or Swedish but haven't been able to distinguish). I thought I'd have some Asian to fit in with my Romany roots, but 100% European, but this may have been bred out. This is not unusual with Romany roots apparently.

My mum did hers too and she had some in hers that I didn't inherit such as Orkney, but she's a redhead and I have my dad's colouring. She didn't have any Germanic at all, which is consistent with those relatives being in my dad's tree.

My husband came out as more strongly Scandinavian, which is funny, because over there he gets spoken to in Swedish and me in English, even though neither of us speak a word of it. There is a family in his tree at great grandparent level that we couldn't trace back Very far that had a Swedish surname from the Arctic Circle. They also had anglicised versions of Swedish names. So that's in context too.

I know that there is still more to be done with reference populations, but it's interesting nonetheless as it has backed up my research.

Pyxis

Which testing company did you use?

(I think there was some chat on here about DNA testing sites, but I can't remember the details. I only know that some sites are better than others).

Pyxis

Been watching the marathon in Berlin, and I saw for the first time the Holocaust Memorial. I'd never heard of this memorial, so was intrigued by all the blocks and googled it.


Link here for anyone who wants to have a look...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe


Apparently the architect denies that there is any significance to there being 2711 blocks. I wondered whether the fact that it is a prime number was deliberate, to avoid speculation.
Although someone found that there are 2711 pages to the Babylonian Talmud!

vivatifosi

Pyxis wrote: »

Which testing company did you use?

(I think there was some chat on here about DNA testing sites, but I can't remember the details. I only know that some sites are better than others).

We had ours done with Living DNA which is supposedly the best for Brits. I did a lot of research before choosing that one.

You get a portal to log into, and as DNA research progresses, they send you updates to your findings. They are very clear from the outset as to their limitations. I also wanted a European company to hold my gene sequence as the GDPR requirements are greater.

The other thing with Living DNA is that they are doing a lot of work within countries to work out the long term groupings within that country and you can opt in to be part of that research.

The main downside is that they don't have as many people who have done the test so you don't get as many matches as with say Ancestry. However my family didn't particularly go to America, they stayed in the UK or went to the Commonwealth. I think it's about picking the most appropriate firm for individual needs. For example there's one firm (can't remember which) that is very good at testing Jewish ancestry.

The other thing I should mention, is that Living DNA tests autosomal, mitochondrial and Y DNA all in one test (The latter for men only). Most others are autosomal only.

antrobus

vivatifosi wrote: »

...
The other thing I should mention, is that Living DNA tests autosomal, mitochondrial and Y DNA all in one test (The latter for men only). Most others are autosomal only.

You do realise that if you or a member of your family commit a crime and leave some DNA they can now be traced and identified?

I'm not taking the risk.

Pyxis

vivatifosi wrote: »

We had ours done with Living DNA which is supposedly the best for Brits. I did a lot of research before choosing that one.

You get a portal to log into, and as DNA research progresses, they send you updates to your findings. They are very clear from the outset as to their limitations. I also wanted a European company to hold my gene sequence as the GDPR requirements are greater.

The other thing with Living DNA is that they are doing a lot of work within countries to work out the long term groupings within that country and you can opt in to be part of that research.

The main downside is that they don't have as many people who have done the test so you don't get as many matches as with say Ancestry. However my family didn't particularly go to America, they stayed in the UK or went to the Commonwealth. I think it's about picking the most appropriate firm for individual needs. For example there's one firm (can't remember which) that is very good at testing Jewish ancestry.

The other thing I should mention, is that Living DNA tests autosomal, mitochondrial and Y DNA all in one test (The latter for men only). Most others are autosomal only.

Thank you. That's useful.