Because their ancestors often were slaves during the 18th and 19th centuries, and therefore usually lacked birth or death certificates, it is very difficult for African American genealogists to trace their ancestors further than a few generations. Even when they can trace their ancestry to the slavery era, it is virtually impossible to find exactly where their ancestors originated because slave ships did not keep passenger lists of the people they captured from Africa. As ...

Earlier this week I presented at SWIG-UK about rdfQuery. rdfQuery is a set of plugins that I’ve developed for jQuery in order to support RDFa parsing, querying and generation. There are a bunch of other Javascript libraries for RDFa around, such as Mark Birbeck’s Ubiquity RDFa and Ben Adida’s RDFa library. What I’ve really tried to do with rdfQuery is tie it in with the “Write Less, Do More” philosophy of jQuery and provide a ...

Because many Geni users are just getting started with their family history research, occasionally we like to share helpful resources thay may assist you in your research.Today's guest blogger Lee Everton presents Everton's Genealogical Helper. Make sure you check out the special offer at the end for Geni users:As you enter new family members on your family tree, you will arrive at a point where it becomes more difficult to add branches to your family ...

Did you see this in the New York Times, this morning? ANCHORAGE — Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska fired back Friday at the unnamed McCain campaign aides who have been maligning her in recent days, saying that their criticism was “cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks.” Well, ya know what? She’s right. Sarah Palin Look, gang, whatever other arguments might come to the fore about Sarah Palin, there ...

At its user conference, SaaS vendor Salesforce.com announced an update of its hosted CRM apps and a new technology that lets customers run Web sites on its systems.

王小峰又火了，可是这次的“出名”事件似乎是在貌似更火了的“北大一流女”的哄托下完成的，个中滋味值得品尝。 “北大一流女”事件来的很突然，看了个大概。个人觉得之所以会火，主要牵涉到了北大清华等名校和中山等次名校的“一流”争端问题。舆论对此事的看法主流有两点，一是北大女zhuangbility and没礼貌，另一个是北大女有思想有胆量有魄力且在被剥夺了话语权之后敢于说话。这件事的争端在于一流、知识、文化和话语权上。有位网友的观点很有意思：三表一直是装的没文化，但如果有人在他面前装的有文化，那一定是自讨苦吃。 对他们的争论我倒是没感觉有啥新鲜的，试想如果这事发生在错综复杂的娱乐圈，还有什么值得奇怪的吗？而且恐怕这个王小峰有借机炒作自己之嫌。我更关注的是王小峰的DV作品《你丫真狠》，不知道里面究竟讲的是关于什么的，怎么会牵涉到孙中山先生？无奈在如此发达的网络上还没有这部作品，只看到了简单的些许简介，有趣的是它正是描写娱乐圈的：一个八卦周刊的摄影记者终日跟拍明星，见惯了娱乐圈的丑恶，没想到自己的电台主播女友最终还是经不住诱惑，踏进这个圈子，并且跟了一个老板。八卦DV的巡映上出现了八卦，奇怪吗？ 值得一提的是，听说前一段曾火过的恶搞名片《十面埋妇》也是王的大作。还有就是，我还是不明白北大女为何会在争论中提到孙中山先生。 王小峰曾无数次的告诫过大家：我拍这部DV纯粹是娱乐和个人爱好，不能当真。这个纯粹是扯淡，连周星驰的无厘头搞笑都能被赋予那么多现实意义，你这对真切现实的恶搞影片却一再强调不要当真？这似乎有点此地无银三百两的感觉，你应该知道，大众可不是那么容易被娱乐的！ 我们来看看这一事件的当事人之一，他的背景也是这一事件之所以惹火的重要原因。 王小峰，《三联生活周刊》的主编，能做到这个职位上的人，肯定是有几把刷子的。但他的出名不是因为或者说不仅仅是因为他的这“几把刷子”。比他更火的，应该是“三表”这个博主名号，以及“不许联想”这个niubility的blog。这个三表，说起来可是中国文化知识博客界的名人，尤以他的zhuangbility言论以及自称没文化的shability而著称。 与之相关的则是，老六、老罗、钱烈宪他们几个名博臭味相投的齐聚以“牛博网”命名的博客圣地，当然也顺带邀请上了十年砍柴、冉云飞、韩寒之素来的名流。(这个冉云飞的匪话连篇曾专门涉及过图书馆，惹得图林怨声载道，但如果你仔细看看他的一贯言论，似乎就会见怪不怪了)。 我一向是在当对社会有点信心的时候才会去看牛博网的牛博的。大自然的一切都需要平衡，也就是道家所说的中庸，人更是如此。点入牛博网，映入眼帘的绝大多数是“难登大雅之堂”之作，而且里面绝对没有一件值得我们生活在这个社会的现实人所高兴和乐观的，所有的事都是坏事，所有的人都是坏人，因为好事也有坏的一面。仔细看完里面的文章和观点，绝对会让你那对社会刚刚有了的一丁点的希望和信心化为乌有，从头再来。 我曾专门搜寻过这些牛博们的背景和资料，发现他们都或多或少有些许共同点：能说会道的媒介人——主编、作家、学者，中国那个特殊时间——六七十年代生人，学历不一定高但知识和阅历一定极其丰富，被现代人称之为有个性的性格——敢想敢做敢说...还有一点，他们都是在当今社会中有些许地位和名望的人，金钱方面不太清楚，但起码是衣食无忧，否则怎会有这么些闲工夫在那里费尽心思的扯淡？ 我非常同意一种观点：社会始终是在被一群社会精英所把持的。社会精英也分为很多种，比如政治精英、经济精英、文化精英等等。他们之所以是精英，是因为他们知道怎么做，也知道怎么去说，当然最重要的是他们都有话语权，掌握着社会舆论的导向。 当然，凡事总有两面，有主流的就得有和主流不一样的。就像时尚分为主流和非主流一样，社会精英也分主流和非主流。如果说吴敬琏、余秋雨等名人是主流社会精英的话，那么王小峰、韩寒这些牛博们则可称之为非主流社会精英了。想想也是，有人专门歌功颂德，当然就得有人专门揭露龌龊，这个世界是很公平的。至于大众更会被谁迷惑，这得看他们各自的本事了。 舆论的影响是重要的，舆论的力量是可怕的。它的力量不会立刻爆发，它的影响在于看不见的未来。 话只说到这里，要声明的是：本文只是就一不算娱乐圈的娱乐事件发泄了一些不可当真的言论，敬请读者不许联想。如果你非要联想的话，那我只能说：你丫真狠！ Delete

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Larry Moran tells an interesting personal story about long-distance gene flow among Roman-era elites in Europe (What does Marcus Antonius tell us about evolution?). He describes the genealogical connection between Mark Antony and the dark-age Irish warlord, Niall of the Nine Hostages, Y-chromosomal progenitor of a large proportion of Irish (and British) men. But the strange thing is that after this story, describing how one man's descendants covered more than a thousand miles in a ...

来源：http://digg.com/comics_animation/Wrong_Glasses_COMIC

In this post, Geni guest blogger and avid genealogist Lisa Alzo explains the steps you should take after you interview family members. If you missed Lisa's first two posts in this series, Interview Your Relatives and Oral History Obstacles, you may want to read those first. You’ve just returned from a visit with your Aunt Betty where you recorded several hours of video (or audio) tape of her telling you about her childhood, your maternal ...

Australian poet Peter Nicholson sent me a link to Blesok, a bilingual online literary magazine from Macedonia (I assume the title is the Macedonian equivalent of Serbo-Croatian bl(ij)esak 'flash of light'); if you click on the македонски link at the upper right, you get the journal in Macedonian. And among the many writings on his site I found a reference to Gwen Harwood, of whom, despite the fact that (according to Wikipedia) she "is regarded ...

Find out what countries your family name is most common in with Public Profiler's World Names search and map. Enter your last name and you'll get back a world map with the countries where your name is most common colored in. Unsurprisingly, my last name has the highest frequency per million people in Italy, Argentina (where there are many Italians), then the U.S. Public Profiler will also list top regions (for my name, Vermont first, ...

Find out what countries your family name is most common in with Public Profiler's World Names search and map. Enter your last name and you'll get back a world map with the countries where your name is most common colored in. Unsurprisingly, my last name has the highest frequency per million people in Italy, Argentina (where there are many Italians), then the U.S. Public Profiler will also list top regions (for my name, Vermont first, ...

Filed under: Odds and ends, Software Update, iPhone, App StoreWant to carry your family tree with you?Synium Software, the developer of a genealogy app called MacFamilyTree, has announced a mobile companion for their Mac product. MobileFamilyTree for iPhone and iPod touch requires MacFamilyTree 5.2.3 to run, and allows genealogists to review, edit, or add to family tree information anywhere at anytime. Once you're back at your Mac, MobileFamilyTree syncs your changes with MacFamilyTree. This is ...