Ah, that's better. I've got a nice fresh "new entry" screen here, and it is much more comfortable than that old "This photo needs a caption" post. Like a nice bed with clean sheets and a cold pillow.
Anyway, yes, we are at lunch break. It took me two hours to drive down here owing to Twin Cities traffic. Once I got here, I was in line with the car for about a half hour winding my way through the campus to get a parking place, with a thousand otehr cars. This is like a rock concert but with no drums (so far).
Ran into Dawn Norton in the parking lot (she parked two cars down from me!).
There are five thousand or so people here, and I have to say that this campus can only just handle the crowd. There is room for only about half of the ... oh, oh, wait, there's Ben Campbell ... my old buddy from graduate school. Ben is a hormone guy with a great sense of humor and a dark attitude. Hold on a sec, I've gotta say hi....
.... OK, I'm back. As I say, this campus can only just handle this crowd. After streaming in via car, we streamed in (rock concert style) by foot, and into the great hall where just under half the guests could be seated to watch the talks. The other half are in overflow areas with giant TV's. It turns out that the giant TV's in the overflow area are the same as the giant TV's in the main hall, because from back here everybody on the stage is about the size of a capuchan monkey.
My goodness, this network connection sucks. Sorry, got cut off there for a while.
Anyway, as I said in another location, I did see Marean's talk this AM, and while it was a great talk I also found certain aspects somewhat disturbing. Plus his conclusions are totally wrong, of course. But I'll fill you in on that later.
Now I'm off to see Svante Paabo's talk on Neanderthal Genetics.. Will report back later this evening, most likely.
After the debates?
UPDATE BELOW THE FOLD
OK, svante baabo has spoken. Neanderthals do not contribute to the modern genome. They took Fox3p gene human allele and inserted it into a mouse. The mouse is the same as without the insert except it has a slightly different peep. Very very slightly. And, there are now clealry enough neanderthal samples to kill off the mulitreginal hypothesis forever.
By the way, both Marean and Paabo have explicitly nogted that the multi regional hypothesis is truly, finally, completely dead. That's nice.
I will probalby not be blogging on the conference again until late tomorrow. Please visit my post on the Minnesota Science Museum Race Exhibit for the interesting discussion that is going on there regarding race and racism.
Life Science
Comments
disturbing? wrong? grace us with more details plz.
(a Minnesotan at the left coast)
Posted by: DDeden | October 7, 2008 11:25 PM