phyllostachys 52: Minute Tech 37 show notes

37 - Who were the Ancient Africans?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 37 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Saturday & Sunday, November 24th and 25th , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

explorers in Antarctica and in Earth orbit and Apple's Burst settlement,
we'll discuss who were the ancient Africans, talk about twitter posts and recent beer findings,
and wrap up with a biographical sketch of Willa Cather.

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Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.

A couple of Show Notes for today: Back from the brief Thanksgiving holiday hiatus and back on schedule; I got some excellent critiques from listeners and will be attempting to streamline the show. I'll alter the intro to highlight the topics of the current podcast, and try to keep the topics somewhat more focused. The changes at this point to the three primary sections of the podcast: the "Tech items" section will become "Tech News"; the Tech Question will remain as it is, and "Podcasting/Blogging tidbits" will be renamed to "Podcasting - Blogging News."


Tech News:

(1) Astronauts on the International Space Station, or ISS, have just completed a new set of space walks. They added power and coolant fluid lines to the newest module and re-inspected the solar panel movement joint, which had been found to have metal shavings in it;

(2) Canadian Cruise Ship Explorer was attempting to re-enact the 1914-1916 expedition of Ernest Henry Shackleton, motoring through waters around Antarctica, when it struck an iceberg and slowly sank. All 150 of those aboard, from Canada, America, Europe, Australia and Japan, successfully escaped via lifeboats and were eventually taken to a Chilean air base on Antartica, before being flown to Chile.

(3) Apple Inc. settled it's patent litigation with Burst.com. Burst owns patents covering compression technologies for sending large files, such as video and audio content uses, over the internet, and had sued Apple for using some of their technology in Apple's products. Apple has settled by paying Burst.com a 10 million dollar licensing fee. Burst.com will now search for others who seem to be using their patented processes.


Tech Question:

Who were the Ancient Africans?

As I said in a previous podcast, if you look back in time far enough, we all emigrated from somewhere to our current locations. I personally moved from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. My ancestors variously moved from various parts of Europe to America. My distant ancestors probably moved north from southern Europe to northern Europe, and if we look back 10's or 100's of thousands of years, I wouldn't be surprised to see, as science tells us, a movement of peoples from Africa and the Middle East out to other Mediterranean lands and eventually north to Europe, bringing domesticated animals and crop-growing techniques.

A timeline of human culture in Africa suggests the following, about the time-period of 600,000 to 200,000 years ago:

"Wide spread of species across Asia, Europe, and Africa. Fire use develops. The earliest true human being in Africa, Homo sapiens, dates from more than 200,000 years ago.. A hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools, Homo sapiens banded together with others to form nomadic groups; eventually nomadic San peoples spread throughout the African continent. "

This information comes from a timeline from Cora Agatucci's class listings on her culture & literature of Africa courses at the Central Oregon Community College - a Link will be in the show notes. Is it accurate? Learn and investigate.

So, the ancient africans were not only the peoples who arose into the native africans of today, but also the nomadic peoples who spread out of Africa in search of better game, more land and different resources.

Podcasting - Blogging News:

From my region of Twitter Space this morning, Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun Times twittered that he'd nearly run down the batteries of his Amazon Kindle by surfing the web wirelessly, and Merlin Mann of 43 Folders gave a link for his 10/21/05 podcast in which he jokingly spoke of provide transcripts for each of his podcasting shows, including some level of transcript on cuneiform clay tablets.

Perhaps I need to do a series on beer and wine - every now and then I get the bug to learn how to brew beer or vint wine...and then I taste some of the awesome beers and wines that others are making...and the desire leaves. Just like that. This past weekend I picked up a six of Bell's Expedition Stout. I have never tasted such a thick, heavy stout as this. The foam is even dark. Whoa. Now, I'm not having any this morning, but remembering from the last few nights. I got this in Cleveland, at the Wild Oats food store in Beachwood...I wonder if I can get it locally? Guess I'll go to their website, www.bellsbeer.com to find out!

Our biographical note for today: Willa Cather -- born in Virginia in 1873, Willa Cather was an influential American writer
who began her writing career in Pittsburgh, writing reviews for the "Pittsburgh Leader." After Pittsburgh, Cather moved to New York City to write for McClures magazine, which published her first novel, "Alexander's Bridge", in serial format. Cather went on to write such titles as "O Pioneers!" and "My Antonia".

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Explorers in Ocean & Orbit?
- Who were the ancient Africans?
- Twitter news from Ihnatko and Mann.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.