More on my dear Great-Grandfather

Academia, Anthropology, Business, Crime, Culture, History, Oddly Enough, You have got to be kidding

Ghent, Belgium, is apparently considering naming a street after one of the Filipino Igarot tribe members abandoned by my great-grandfather there, circa 1913. Here’s a recent news story from the Philippines about my mother’s father’s father, Richard Schneidewind, and Timicheg, one of the tribespeople he displayed. Oh, great-grandfather Richard. Sigh.

Eventful featured on 10News

Fun

I don’t usually go on about my work, but the company was recently featured on San Diego’s local 10News.  The piece is actually pretty representative, covering both the upcoming-events side of things as well as the demand side of it.  There’s a YouTube video of the segment at the official blog.

In case you wondered where I’ve been hiding (including on my birthday), we’re just finishing up an awesome weekend visiting Deb and Kerrigan in Petaluma.   It’s the Land of Things Ben Likes, including sheep, tractors, a big biodiesel truck, a little hybrid-electric car, and playgrounds up the wazoo.  He even got to ride Deb’s horse Chance, as did K and I.  Fun all around!  Thanks, D and K!

Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution

Anthropology, Culture, Science

From the New York Times:

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.