I heard on tv yesterday that George Bush is related by blood to a lot of people you wouldn't have suspected.  I didn't pay attention all that closely but I think they said he was related by blood to his VP, to Barak Obama, to Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Tom Hanks, Vlad The Impaler (the real Dracula in Transylvania), and Bart Simpson.  The only one of those I see a real similarity to is Bart Simpson.

The newscaster went on to say that they were all his ninth cousins three times removed, or something like that.  Most of them were ninth cousins, removed to various degrees.  And I was wondering what the hell does that mean.

So, man of action that I am, I looked it up on the internet.  Here's what I got out of it.

It's all about ancestors who are siblings.  Your father is the brother of someone's mother.  One of your ancestors is a sibling of one of the other person's ancestors.

If you only have to go up one generation, to your mom or dad, it is a first cousin.

If you have to go up two generations, to one of your four grandparents, connecting to one of the other person's four grandparents, you are second cousins.  That means that your grandma Bubby was the sister of her grandpa Harry.  Second cousins.

To go past second cousins, you are getting pretty deep into the family tree.  If you have to go up the tree nine generations, that's a lot of greats.  That's your great great great great great great great grandma or grandpa.

Your parents aren't great.  Your grandparents aren't great.  You have to go up three generations to start in with the greats.  So you have to subtract two greats.  If you want to go up nine generations, you say seven greats.

So the number cousin you are depends on the number of generations you have to go up, to find the sibling who is connecting to the other person's ancestor.  Just to mom or dad?  First cousin.  Up to grandma or grandpa?  Second cousin.  Up to great great great great great great great grandma or grandpa?   Seven greats means nine steps up, so you are ninth cousins.

But what if the siblings aren't both the same number of generations up?  What if your 9th generation grandma is the sister of her 12th generation grandma?  You go with the lower number and say you are ninth cousins, but since the other person goes three further than that, you say you are ninth cousins three times removed.

So let's say your mom is the sister of Tommy's great great great great great grandpa.  You are Tommy's first cousin a lot of times removed.  How many?  I don't know.  I don't care either.  Tommy is a big fat idiot.

Now then, where were we?  All of these relations of George Bush were ninth cousins.  If you go up nine generations, and dismiss inbreeding, you will have 512 ancestors.  You get that simply by multiplying by two all the time.

2 parents.  4 grandparents.  8 three generations up.  16 four generations up.  32 five generations up.  64 six generations up.  128 seven generations up.  256 eight generations up.  512 nine generations up.

So if you are talking about ninth cousins, meaning nine generations up, you are talking about 512 people here, half men, half women, unless one of your ancestors fucked himself.

Which means that each of these people theoretically contributed 1/512 of your genes.

So that's how much you have in common with your ninth cousins.  1/512th of your genes come from that person's ancestor's sister.  Or something like that.  I'm confusing myself, and hopefully you too.

I can see Bush as having 1/512 in common with Marilyn Monroe.  They could both act the part of a ditz, but in Marilyn's case, it was just acting.