blivet radio
The Radio weblog of Hal Rager

Saturday, March 9, 2002

OSXGuide.com: Installing Open Source Software on OS X With Fink. ";Fink is very handy. With it, you can automatically install and update dozens of free software programs on OS X. These programs include many different text editors, Internet programs like email clients and Usenet browsers, programming tools, and more." [mac.scripting.com] 11:55:10 PM    comment   trackback []

I could have sworn he was writing about Archaeologists... Ernie the Attorney mentions some of his assumptions about Attorneys: The practice of law is basically "information processing" Computers facilitate the processing of information Information in digital form is easier to process (i.e. transmit, store, access etc.) Lawyers are generally not comfortable with technology Thanks to Dave who pointed to to Ernie's site for something completely unrelated. 11:02:23 PM    comment   trackback []

Rats, blivet seems to be unreachable again... 10:57:08 PM    comment   trackback []

Humans Emerged "Out Of Africa" Again And Again. [Science Daily] "Analyses of recently derived human genetic trees by Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D, of Washington University in St Louis, show that there were at least two major waves of human migration out of Africa. DNA evidence suggests also that these wanderers bred with the people they encountered, rather than replaced them, in a "make- love-not-war,"scenario.(...) Templeton analyzed human genetic trees for maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, paternally inherited Y-chromosomal DNA, and eight other DNA regions, including two on the X chromosome, to reach his conclusions. He used a computer program called GEODIS, which he created in 1995 and later modified with the help of David Posada, Ph.D., and Keith Crandall, Ph.D. at Brigham Young University, to determine genetic relationships among and within populations based on an examination of specific haplotypes, clusters of genes that are inherited as a unit. Templeton's study is based on 10 DNA regions, while most other genetic analyses focus on just one, mitochondrial DNA, for instance. It also differs from most approaches because it uses a statistical approach with a priori inference criteria but requires no prior model of human evolution. Most others have a model in mind, and then see if the data are compatible with it.(...) "Humans expanded again and again out of Africa," Templeton concludes, "but these expansions resulted in interbreeding, not replacement, and thereby strengthened the genetic ties between human populations throughout the world."(...) Templeton's contributions to the controversy of recent human evolution include dashing the popular 'Eve Theory' because of flaws he detected in researchers' 1987 computer analyses. In 1998, he published a paper in American Anthropologist that explained humans as one race, instead of a species with subdivisions, or races. His study showed that, among people now categorized by race, everyone shares about 85 percent of the same genes. The 15 percent of variation is not enough difference to separate people biologically." 8:39:39 AM    comment   trackback []