Testing G-Mail

So I scored an invite to G-Mail (you have to be invited to use G-mail by someone already using G-Mail). By now you’ve all heard about G-Mail: 1GB of storage, small google text ads, spam filtering, blah, blah, blah. So far it’s okay, you can’t get your contacts from OS X’s address book to import into G-mail contacts list but the ads are unobtrusive and it seems pretty fast. My biggest complaint is that you have to check via the web, no way (yet) to configure a mail client to check it (I think, someone clever has probably figured a way around this).

Of course since I’ve only been using it for a couple of days I don’t have too much to go on. So if you wouldn’t mind helping out just a bit click this chriskseibold@gmail.com. Thanks. Merely printing the address will ensure I get plenty-o-spam and if one or two people bother to send an e-mail I’ll be able to better evaluate the spam filter. Particularly poeple who have been immortalized in the alliteration hall of fame.

One of the deals with G-mail is that, as a G-mail user you may or may not be given some invites to pass out. If I am given any to pass out and if the folks who mailed me don’t want them you can count on them being given away in my semi frequent bloggings. So watch this space.

At this point most of you are expecting links. Sorry to dissapoint (momentarily) but first a sojourn into the odd fringes of anthropology.

There is going to be a little talk of race in what follows so let me say clearly at the outset that race, gentically, boils down to looks. There’s just not much difference in our genetic makeup (there are reasons for this none of them concerning an Ark). No really there is more genetic variation within a single tribe of chimpanzees than has been observed within all existing humans.(that tidbit gleaned from: “Mitochondrial Sequences Show Evolutionary Sequences of African Hominids,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96 [1999]: 5077-5082)

Which really means that race per se is largely illusory. Basically we’re all Africans. Or to put a finer point on it:
Spot the differences:


What’s the biggest difference between these two specimens? Genetically speaking close to zip. In the real world the big difference is that one of them can actually ball. The other just lumbered up and down the court in an NBA uniform and got paid a gazillion dollars.

All that out of the way we can now move on to Kennewick Man.
You probably don’t remember Kennewick but he was a highly contentious fellow. See Kenny ehibited decidely non mongoloid characteristics and was dated to be in the Americas pre American Indian. So that was troubling, it would seem to indicate that the American Indians were not the first people to arrive in the “New” world.

Why this is troubling escapes me, I suppose the reasoning would be something like if Pilgrims showed and displaced American Indians it would be okay if the American Indians had previously displaced another group. Except I don’t think the treatment of peoples should be predicted on something their ancestors did in this distant past. You don’t see a lot of people still outraged by what the Huns did so I don’t think you can actually justify the crimes against the American Indian by blithely saying “they did it first to someone else”

In any event Kennewick man was one skeleton, one skeleton sans the expected shovel teeth and such but still only one sample. You can’t really say much from just one sample, maybe Kenny was just horribly, horribly lost. But wait new evidence may be coming to light:
Did the First Americans come from,er, Australia?

Interesting stuff indeed. It has been known for at least a little while that there were people in Australia much earlier than previously thought. Early enough that people wonder how they got there. Remember, you can’t just have two or ten people making it from Asia to Australia you need a decent sized founding population. This just makes the question a bit more tricky, how do you get all the way from Australia to the way Baja California? We’re talking 12 thou years ago, not exactly a lot of high grade intercontinental ship building going on. Mysterious.

time for links….
Petulant Pete’s Plethora of Painstaking errrr Puns?

A gem for Bailey:
The Wacky World of Wally World

Beat the Casino (everyone’s got a system)
BlackJack

Sure it’s a lame WMV file, but it IS funny:
News From Iraq

A great music video, not from Beck:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Steve Jobs seems to be recovering nicely
American iPod

Just cause those swift boat guys pi$$ me off so much
GWB AWOL

PWI index: fully

BL/cks tridiot rating: 121%