These are my links for July 9th 2009 through July 13th 2009:
- Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety – washingtonpost.com – "There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness to the number three — the triangle, the Holy Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps not surprising that the Family of Man is divided that way, too…. All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made — the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens….One group is the African. It contains the descendants of the original humans who emerged in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The second is the Eurasian, encompassing the natives of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and — thanks to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping in the South Pacific — of the Americas and Oceania as well. "
- The Technium: Triumph of the Default – "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. "Default" is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. Default, for instance, as in: the default of this program assumes that dates are given in two digit years not four. Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental to the technium. "
- 100 Essential Skills for Geeks | GeekDad | Wired.com – As Geeks we are expected to have a certain set of skills that the majority of the population does not possess. This list is by no means complete, but I think it is a good sample of the skills required to be a true geek. I won’t pretend to have all the skills listed here. I even had to Google a few of them.
Like all good Geeks you should be able to utilize resources to accomplish any of these things. Knowing where to look for the knowledge is as good as having it so give yourself points if you are certain that you could Google the knowledge necessary for a skill.
- Doctoring the Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail by Richard Bentall review | Non-fiction book reviews – Times Online – "“Psychiatry,” he writes, “has been profoundly unscientific and at the same time unsuccessful at helping some of the most distressed and vulnerable people in our society.” "
- The Mistakes That Argue for Evolution – TierneyLab Blog – NYTimes.com –
- BBC NEWS | Health | Obesity ‘link to same-sex parent’ – There is a strong link in obesity between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, but not across the gender divide, research suggests.
- Ruse of war – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – A ruse of war (from the French, ruse de guerre) is an action taken by a belligerent in warfare to fool the enemy in order to gain intelligence or a military advantage against an enemy.
- Closed minds stifle science | The Australian – Cognitive misers make science communication a hard sell by relying heavily on mental shortcuts, values and emotions, often in the absence of knowledge
