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Wanna see 'em hangin'!

As here

What kind of name is Zuckerberg anyway?

Zuckerberg Name Meaning Jewish (Ashkenazic): ornamental name composed of German Zucker 'sugar' + Berg 'mountain', 'hill'.

http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=zuckerberg

Imagine if, say, the UK meddled in our business in the 1880s and forced us to improve factory conditions prematurely. Our growth would have been slowed and the eventual creation of the middle class would have been delayed. A well-meaning effort to improve the lives of a few then would have hurt the quality of life for many later.

Your equation is faulty, because you use words like "few" and "many" on a very ad-hoc basis without quantifying them. Why, exactly, would "few" be affected, and not the entire worker base? And why should those "few" be forced to sacrifice their life quality for the sake of some other "many"? If you know anything about the history of sweatshops in US and Europe, those places were real hell; we'd probably consider them outright torture in some cases, in fact.

And the abundance of cheap labor, aside from a "sustained economic boom", has a lot of externalities, since in many cases it is cheaper for a capitalist to buy the disposable labor than to actually invest into safety practices or better automation. And then you get stuff like this. Again, who are you to decide that those people need suffer such for the sake of future generations?

Considering the fact that you ignored my post where I established, long before your post, that evolution is a basic part of the state curriculum standards, and that Creationism isn't part of the standards and isn't widely taught, you don't seem to be keeping up with the discussion. Instead you are making wild claims based on tenuous grounds. You seem to have little respect for the methods of science.

Moron

Interesting, I take it that is your surname in your signature? Is that Spanish, or perhaps French, or Italian? You are one of the few self-identified Morons I've encountered. Shall I assume your Christian name, that is your given name, begins with "A."?

This is something that I have tried to explain to my gun-hating friends.

Banning "assault weapons" (a category which is nebulous anyway - ANY gun is an assault weapon when pointed at someone) won't do a damn thing. A vast majority of gun crimes are done with hand guns. Yeah, I know, those big scary looking rifles sure do look big and scary, but they're rarely used for crime. It's almost all hand guns.

Besides. A small bullet kills just as well as a big bullet at close range. .357 magnum, .22 short, .17 HMR, they all kill you. Some airsoft pellet guns that can kill someone if it hits the right spots.

The talk about limiting clip size is also bunk. Ejecting a clip and slapping in a new one takes seconds. It also doesn't stop you from simply carrying multiple guns, or just modifying a clip on your own. A clip is NOT a complicated piece of technology. It's a box with a spring.

Banning guns also doesn't work. Aside from the fact that we have over 300 million firearms in the USA, people who plan to commit a crime with a gun are going to find a way to get one - especially well funded people like the drug cartels. This just leaves law abiding citizens at a severe disadvantage against crooks of all kinds - including those in government.

But let's say that we did somehow magically remove all firearms from the world. Well, then Crazy Psychotic Guy will still want to kill people. He will just use a different means to do it. Explosives of all kinds can be made with household chemicals, but why be so flashy?

Just mix some ammonia with bleach and throw it into a room full of people and lock the door. Slip rat poison into the cafeteria. Want to be sly? Instead of rat poison, try botulism. Angry and on a brutal rampage? Baseball bat, lead pipe, knives, swords. What about a car? School lets out, kids are walking through the parking lot, just gun the motor and run them over.

Guns are not the cause of murder, crazy people are. You can take the guns away and we will still have mass murders. This guy didn't need a gun to kill 45 people.

I recently pulled the census data and it's pretty much useless since any information you could use to look at results by city or region have been stripped out in the version available to the general public. Sucks.

What else did you expect when you privatize data collected using public funds> http://corporate.ancestry.com/press/press-releases/2006/06/ancestry.com-digitizes-entire-u.s.-federal-census-collection-from-1790-1930/.

See also http://www.archives.gov/digitization/digitized-by-partners.html

If a lower end worker wants to "negotiate", but there are 12 people behind him in line for the job, then why should that employee have any leverage? That's capitalism. Supply and demand works for labor, too. If somebody thinks they're worth $15/hour, but there's a line of people willing to work for $12/hour, shouldn't the employer just hire the $12/hour employee?

When left completely unregulated, you end up with wages being driven down during economic downturn to levels below the subsistence wage and/or working conditions that are borderline abuse. We've already seen how that works out in practice back in 19th century, with 14-hour work days, 7-day work weeks, and people working for scraps because the only alternative is to starve, in unhealthy conditions that lead to crippling or ugly diseases. Is that the kind of society you wish to see recreated?

Which isn't to say that unions are always the answer, especially today.

Steam powered "Snow Snake": http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wioconto/loggingphotos3.htm

When I hear the name Kim, I think of a white girl named Kimberly....not an Asian.

And Wilfong is a European surname, though I suppose the "fong" part might sound vaguely Asian.

That is what having many alt accounts are for. My college had a law against it as well, but we used fake accounts to keep in touch between student/teacher. Our main accounts with our real names and such were used legit. With fake names you didn't know who was who.

I've had 5 fake accounts since before facebook was even popular when myspace was the thing. I never liked myspace since it was more kiddies and facebook was originally more college based.

I also have 4 fake accounts on google plus.

And here is the info, you want to sign up for multiple fake google plus accounts and need to get real names and such. well if you can't think up good names then use this. http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi

type in a name or 2 and you can get full info for your new social media fake persona screenshot example: http://camelot.bluecherry.net/ssiexample.jpg even down to the social security number, but ssn's aren't required on social media.

So enjoy setting up fake accounts and using those to interact with your teachers and such.

And yes it does work I've had multiple fake accounts along with a real account on facebook and google plus, my google plus fakes weren't purged like the rest were cause my fakes look real and not some obvious fake with names like duke nukem or whatnot of course it will get deleted.

Even after this law passes it won't stop us from staying in touch with teachers and students as those of us that know, use these methods. Including both students and teachers.

This isn't open-source, but it is free (standard version): Legacy Family Tree. I used that and eventually upgraded to the deluxe since it's only about $30 USD. Yes, it's from LDS. You get a lot of choice to customize things to your taste--a really serious amount of options. One thing I really like is it will warn you if you put in a county that didn't exist during the year in question (and will tell if what year it came into existence.) Also has some nice defaults, like marking someone as deceased if say, they were born in 1830, if you forget. You can turn these on and off. But what's really nice is the reporting features (may be in the deluxe only) that nicely put the information together in a story-styled book. You can also make wall charts (although they usually get too complicated in large families so it's easier to do the book.) The deluxe version also gives you access to the databases which makes it easy to research straight from the program, although from what I can see, most are available anyway from your browser.

Check out what's online for free before you jump in and pay. You can also get a lot of free access to Ancestry.com and other paid sites from the library. I did end up joining Ancestry because, while you can add your tree for free and you can get access to documents via the library, the one thing you can't do is contact a member (which you may want to do if you have questions or find a second cousin.) Libraries are a great source of free access to sites you'd otherwise have to pay for. I second FamilySearch.org. They have a beautiful search engine and often it links to actual scanned files, not just transcribed. RootsWeb is owned by Ancestry, but provides free access to other family trees and FreeSurnameSearch is a good starting place.

One caution--do your own research and go with scanned documents over transcriptions. You'll be amazed at how many transcriptions are wrong and how many people are sloppy and just copy what someone else has. We've got an issue in one branch where someone made statements about one ancestor being a full-blooded Indian who was adopted. All nonsense with no facts to support it, but you wouldn't believe how many people are jumping on this and adding it to their trees.

I agree wholeheartedly! Currently, I use ancestry.com for my main family tree, but regularly download a GEDCOM file and import it into GeneWeb (locally hosted) for offline access. I've tried several other programs, both open source and proprietary, but GeneWeb is my favorite by far. It doesn't make the prettiest family tree website, but it's easy to use and its functionality is great.

Even though the primary developer, Daniel de Rauglaudre, isn't developing it further right now, it has more features than I use regularly, and it's highly customizable. I'm somewhat tempted to learn OCaml, just to be able to modify this software.

That's a bit of an urban legend - immigrant names were almost never changed by immigration officials. See for example
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=3893

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~belghist/Flanders/Pages/phossy.htm

As well as the fact that phossy jaw still exists in 3rd world countries to this day. THEY certainly know better.

Every single one of the things you mentioned are already inaccurate by a far greater margin than the difference between atomic time and solar time anyway. We're talking about differences of a second every few years. My computer probably loses about a second per day without nist.gov to keep it honest.

The problem, as I understand it, is that if we ignore the problem that the current solution (Leap Seconds) fixes (ie time drift) then at some point in the future we will have to make a large adjustment to the calendar again.

It seems far more sensible to make a small adjustment reasonably regularly than a large adjustment every 100 years as, for the general population at least, the adjustment will pass without being noticed.

*I think I just made that word up. I love english, you can form new words and people will still understand your message.

Well, I guess that's more common than you think

The word 'defaultly', I meant. :D

A quick look at the other censuses brought up the 1860 census form ( http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/1860.pdf?cj=1&o_xid=0002530104&o_lid=0002530104 ).

Note the last column. It's too bad that they dropped the "# of Idiotic" people from the form. Maybe the numbers were approaching 100%...

You should hear me talk, and you might change your opinion a bit. Ever hear of "Missouri Mud-Mouth?" What I'm trying to say is that the way people speak doesn't make them ignorant, and lumping everyone who pronounces nuclear a certain way together with Bush is a huge travesty. You underestimate the people you are describing.

Language is organic. I find it absurd to think of any dialect as a mutilation - it serves its purpose about as well as any other dialect.

Television dispelling ignorance: now that's one I haven't heard before! It's funny, I meet a lot of people who have trouble understanding people from the surrounding counties and the southern part of the state, or who have trouble understanding certain groups of Black people around here. I don't get it. Every linguistic nuance in speech is as salt to me. And I've never found any group of people with any dialect to be more ignorant than any other, although there are plenty who feel defeated by being put down for the way they speak, and their are plenty who put others down for the way they speak (and believe me, a lot of these people weren't that bright themselves).

Ah, I found your link quite interesting. Very colorful. Here are few from Missouri: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mostone/fun/slang.htm

try this... how many skulls are here?

http://freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jacklee/London/images_Italy/20030924-Rome-CimiterodeiCappuccini-CryptofSkulls.jpg

It's called Evolution if there is any kind of advantage (Which outweighs any disadvantages) to the mutation it stands a chance of progressing and becoming widespread. Hence viruses that are immune to most variants of penicillin and bugs that are immune to pesticides. One must say that this doesn't always track though see http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyperry3/Blue_Fugates_Troublesome_Creek.html although this involved a very small population who were cognescent.

Hey now, don't be hatin' on the blue people. It's not right to harass them for being from Kentucky and being blue...

In case you don't know who I'm referring to, links regarding the blue Fugates and their disorder follow: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyperry3/Blue_Fugates_Troublesome_Creek.html http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1272/is-there-really-a-race-of-blue-people http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methemoglobinemia

From Y-haplogroup distributions, there's very little similarity between the two. China is mosly O-haplogrooup whereas India is a spectrum with two haplogroups (L and H) that are only found in the subcontinent and The rest are mostly R1a (Indo-European/Indo-Iranian)
Linky:Y-dna distribution
They seem to share a bit of mTdna (M haplogroup).

We've known about the perils of phosphorous exposure, leading to phossy jaw, or basically the rotting-out of the jawbone, since well before the strikes of the late 1800's in England's match factories. More historical data here.

The idea that Merck is in any way 'surprised' by this turn of events, when their drug is essentially the same substance at work in the body more than a century ago, is well beyond the outer limits of credibility. Never mind the sharp increase in cases of osteonecrosis of the jaw just in the last few years, since the introduction of bisphosphonate drugs -- by Merck.

Corporations generally incentivize behaviours that are sociopathic on an interpersonal scale but deemed favorable by investors -- in a nutshell, maximize profits by any means available. This ethical vacuum is one of the real flaws of capitalism in its current implementation. Merck's actions are therefore not in the least surprising, and stand as a pointed reminder that corporate excesses must be held in check by some other external mechanism that is not subject to conflicts of interest. This is generally identified as government regulation, though we have seen time and again how government interests can be made to align with those of the corporations and in opposition to those of the public that the government is ostensibly supposed to serve and protect.

Food for thought. Ain't nothing new under the sun, as it's all recurring patterns of human behaviour. The devil is in the details.

Cheers,

SSN's for dead people aren't secret.

You can look 'em up here.

asking a valid question isn't fear mongering. it wasn't that long ago that match manufacturers were still using white/yellow phosphorous despite its known health hazards and red phosphorous being known to be just as effective while not being lethally toxic to factory workers.

while i'm sure this technology can probably be employed without significant health risks to human beings, it's rather foolish to speak as if worker exploitation and endangerment never happens. heck, i think there was a story on /. just a few months ago about a chemical powder use for adding butter-flavor to microwave popcorn causing lung-disease in factory workers (it's only hazardous when inhaled, not when eaten).

i'm the first person to support the need for the U.S. to switch to an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, but that's no reason to be reckless and accept new and untested technologies unquestioningly. after all, a lot of American companies specifically open overseas factories in places like China to capitalize on their lax environmental and work place safety regulations. the days of corporate irresponsibility are not yet in the past.

Here's a sexier one:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~tlosborne/Osborne/Osbornehistory/Adamosborne/osbornecomputerspecsheet.jpg

Let me get this straight.

Religion is outside the realm of science?

MMmm.....then why is it that many facets of string theory are so "religious" in nature.
(i.e. absolutely NO CHANCE of it EVER being tested, but is put forth as credible "pure science" research.)

String Theory is THE cutting edge that we have to offer in physics today about how all of the forces in the Universe relate and work together to form reality.

Even those working on the theory are concerned with it, in that it is becoming almost "religous" in nature. (Oh isn't that just so HORRIBLE?).

See: ``The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next'' by Lee Smolin; Houghton Mifflin

Sounds like there are great leaps of "faith" as it were, based on some logic that may or may not explain how reality is.

So it is OK to have faith based on a logical result of a series of assumptions, as long as it is called "science", but it is not OK to have such beliefs if it is called religion?

I am going to call your bluff, and point out that science frequently intervenes in areas it has no conclusive proof otherwise, and decrees things impossible simply because, well, "I am a scientist. You will not argue with me."

Lets take the age of the earth.

Science says....about ~5-6 billion. (If we can depend on the rate of decay being the same and constant for that length of time. Even THAT may not be the case. See: http://groups.google.com/group/libero-captivum/browse_thread/thread/de09483b3d89936d?hl=en )

Bible thumpers say 10,000 years or so.

On one side you have the decree of the scientists saying any other finding other than 5-6 billion is impossible because we said so.
(This result cannot be proven directly, only indirectly through decay estimates, which MAY or MAY NOT be constant over that length of time, probably not, see above.)

On the other hand you have the bible thumpers who say the ancestry of man can be traced all the way back to Adam and Eve, and its about 4000 BC.

For Example:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~emsleyjohnson/

Now, which one is based on faith.

Answer: Both.

Which one is technically right?

Mmmm....I am not qualified to answer that question, but neither are you.

The only person who is qualified to answer that question is the person who was there when the universe was created and seen it happen, and started the clock.

I wonder who THAT would be.

Wanna take a guess?

-Hack

That's interesting. The site has been around for a while, and it's based on electoral roll data from the year 2000. These genealogy people seem to think that it's legit, if a little inaccurate, giving numbers in the same vicinity as other sources. It's certainly given consistent results over the years. This is a similar service for USA data, and it gives similar results (rare names give low numbers, common names give high numbers).

You didn't put an asterisk in the first name field did you? You don't have to use a wildcard, you just leave the field blank. If you use an asterisk, it assumes it's part of the name, and gives you zero results.

Why don't they just use ancestral heritage? It's not like this stuff isn't available. If 'they' want to discriminate against a certain group, they don't need DNA to do it.

The tribes I'm talking about are extremely xenophobic.

Interesting, the one in the documentary I saw were too, or at least, they were extremely territorial. Yet, they had a meeting with another tribe in order to make peace (had been a long-standing feud, even some killings in previous clashes, iirc).

Their culture is extremely exclusive. I see no reason to believe in the "possibility" of their interbreeding just because our own culture makes that possible. Theirs does not, unless I learn otherwise.

For me, there are two things wrong with the reasoning in this paragraph:

1. You are assuming inter-breeding between populations is a cultural phenomenom peculiar to (say) western people. But inter-breeding a biological *neccessity*, shared not just among humans but all sexually reproducing animals. It should be fairly obvious that small populations, no matter how xenophobic, *need* to at least *occasionally* inter-breed with other populations to avoid dying out completely.

2. You are assuming that individual behaviour is bounded by the social norm. This is clearly wrong. Just because the social norms of some tribe are highly xenophobic and eschew external contact, it does not restrict individuals behaviour. (Especially younger individuals, who can be more curious and 'foolhardy' - particularly where social norms are heavily influenced by older, more conservative members of the population, such as tribal elders).

The original paper would be interesting to read for such bias. I'd like to read some peer reviews which critique its statistical premise. But the article linked to neither.

Well, (joking - no offence intended) you apparently were too busy looking for the hidden creationist agenda, which no one else saw it seems (I thought it was a good pop-science article on how statistics, networking theory and computer modelling can provide rather unexpected and interesting insights into connectedness of the human population), to notice they mentioned the book, Mapping Human History right near the beginning. He's a journalist though it seems, not a scientist. The work may have done by the DCU computer scientist, Mark Humphrys quoted in the same AP article, as this article more clearly suggests. I'd love to read a paper too, can't find one, but Dr. Humphrys has some articles on his site at least it seems.

Note that even if some Amazonian tribes have indeed been fully disconnected genetically from humanity for the last 600 years, that the conclusion instead becomes "we all, except for some statistically insignificant disconnected populations, share a common ancestor from as little as 2k years ago", which remains an interesting thought.

There is a large, well-funded theocrat movement at work in America today, priotitizing science in the media for subversion.

That's a great reason to start attacking one of the better-writen pop *science* articles, isn't it? :). FWIW, if the actual work was done (in part) by a DCU scientist, the (waning, thankfully) vested theocratic movement (Catholic and Anglican churches) over here at least strongly support the scientific method and evolutionary theories arising from it.

Most have just argued with me without logic, just defensively against the idea that theocrats have gotten so far in the media.

Most of those arguing this line with you, to my reading, have been trying to highlight the lack of evidence in the article to support your notion it's some kind of subtle pro-creationism piece. I'm wondering did you somehow read a different article to the rest of us. :)

Try forgetting about BushCo, Rove and the creationist nutters for ten minutes and reading the article again. You might find the interesting and enjoyable pop-sci article the rest of us read.

Fron is:
--"nice hotel right in the heart of Reykjavik Iceland" http://www.hotelfron.is/
--Welsh word for head or top (not terribly certain on this one)
--The name of an Undead hunter (lvl 4 Rouge, lvl 6 fighter) http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/characters/f ron.html
--A surname http://www.ancestry.com/search/SurnamePage.aspx?ht ml=b&ln=Fron&sourcecode=13304
--A common misspelling of the word "from"

Not only is it irrelevant... it makes sense. Bush and Kerry are actually related. Here is their family tree... they are Ninth cousins twice removed! I wonder where the "Bush Relatives" who support Kerry fall into the mix... are they also Kerry relatives???

Byron Katie: http://www.thework.com/

Even more

There you have it. It's an English king, whose name starts with an E and whose ordinal is one. Clicking on the link is left as an exercise for the reader.

The first war-sailing event ever, AFAIK. [...]

Prior art?

Here's an interesting tidbit for Americans who are considering working in the EU.

If you have an Irish grandparent (and you can track down the proof that they were born in Ireland), you can have your name entered in the registry of foreign births, and tada! You're an Irish citizen (they do allow dual citizenship with the US).

Then you can work anywhere in the EU. Plus you can travel with your Irish passport, and (if you can do the accent) reduce your risk of being shot for sport in places that are getting hostile to Americans. Neat, huh? Of course, you do need that Irish grandparent...

There's a nice summary here, and the relevant page with the Irish Embassy.

Which of course, is a stupid thing to do, since the SS# is NOT GUARANTEED TO BE UNIQUE.

While they're are valid reasons to using something other than SS#'s for systems such as bank records, uniqueness is in fact one of it's strengths:
http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/columns/georg e/4199.asp

If you don't believe them, check out the SS site:
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/ssa.cfg/php/en duser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=86

You can snag the plugin here for 32 and Mac if the lizardtech servers are still smoked.

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".

I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.

Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.

Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).

Also from that bio page, we learn the following:

After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.

So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.

Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.

So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.

I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)

It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).

Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.

I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)

Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".

I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.

Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.

Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).

Also from that bio page, we learn the following:

After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.

So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.

Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.

So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.

I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)

It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).

Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.

I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)

Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".

I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.

Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.

Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).

Also from that bio page, we learn the following:

After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.

So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.

Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.

So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.

I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)

It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).

Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.

I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)

Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).

Now, can anyone trace ol' Jack's family tree...?

Sure. As you stated in a previous reply, it's all about the Google search. Mine was "free genealogy".

I found the site awt.ancestry.com . The previous link goes directly to Jack Valenti's info page.

Did you know he's married to Mary Margaret Wiley , who was President Lyndon Johnson's secretary? She may have provided some important connections in the RIAA's formative years.

Then I clicked on "Trees". To get his family tree, I had to provide birth date and place, so another Google search ("jack valenti biography born") found the following biography with all I needed (Born: September 5, 1921; Birth Place: Houston, Texas).

Also from that bio page, we learn the following:

After serving as a bomber pilot in World War II, he opened Weekley & Valenti Advertising in 1952 and later became a top aide to fellow Texan Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1966, President Johnson appointed Valenti as the third president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, a post he has held ever since.

So my assumption was slightly off; he most likely met his wife while working with Johnson.

Plugging the data into the tree search page , I am frustrated to find that this is to create your own family tree, not to provide one for you based on your initial person.

So I clicked on the "Ancestry Family Tree" and got here . This is a program you need to download (closed source, spyware leaps to mind) but I'm running Ad-Aware so I boldly go.

I had to register to download, so I used a throwaway Hotmail account. (It's really tough to create a unique username!)

It's a 4.5 MB download and appears to be an ActiveX control; waiting for it to finish (slow modem in Brazil).

Well that was entirely too frustrating; the program is also for creating a family tree, not for automatically generating one.

I tried a couple other sites and had my hopes dashed for finding a quick solution. I spent a good bit of time on this (thinking it would be a bit easier) so I'm posting this anyway; even though it's not as Informative as I would have liked, it could at least be considered Cautionary. ;-)

Of course, if anyone knows how to do this, please post! Would be neat to find potential "influences" (actually, I already found one -- a former president).