Discovery Channel :: Chimps More Evolved Than Humans?

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Discovery Channel :: News - Animals :: Chimps More Evolved Than Humans?
A comparison of human and chimpanzee genes has revealed a startling possibility: chimps may have evolved more than humans in the 6 or 7 million years since both diverged from a common ancestor.

A study comparing human and chimp genes that appear to have evolved since we parted ways shows that humans have about 154 such genes and our nearest primate relative a whopping 233.

This implies that chimps have undergone more evolutionary changes than humans over the same period of time. It also underscores a common misunderstanding that if an animal is “more evolved” it must be smarter or superior to others in some way.

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Very interesting.

Conservatives to Bush: Fire Gonzales | TIME

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Conservatives to Bush: Fire Gonzales | TIME
The two-page letter, written on stationery of the American Freedom Agenda, a recently formed body designed to promote conservative legal principles, is blunt. Addressed to both Bush and Gonzales, it goes well beyond the U.S. attorneys controversy and details other alleged failings by Gonzales. “Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances,” it declares. “He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm.” Alluding to ongoing scandal, it notes: “He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice.”

The letter concludes by saying, “Attorney General Gonzales has proven an unsuitable steward of the law and should resign for the good of the country… The President should accept the resignation, and set a standard to which the wise and honest might repair in nominating a successor…

April 17, 1790: America Loses One of Its Most Inventive Minds

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April 17, 1790: America Loses One of Its Most Inventive Minds -
1790: Benjamin Franklin dies.

Printer, newspaper publisher, statesman, inventor, scientist, patriot, revolutionary — no one, with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson, cast a more imposing shadow over young America.

Franklin spent his working life as a printer and publisher and much of his legacy rests there. But his contributions to the scientific sphere were equally impressive.

Although not formally trained as a scientist, Franklin was hardly a duffer when he forayed into the field following his retirement from the printing trade. He possessed a keen intellect and a naturally logical and inquisitive mind, and his experiments with electricity, begun in the early 1750s, yielded results that led to a number of technological advances, the lightning rod and the electric battery among them.

Franklin’s work with electricity brought him international fame, several honorary degrees and membership in Britain’s Royal Society, but he was active in other areas, too. He studied weather closely and proposed better methods for tracking storm progression. He invented the catheter while trying to help his ill brother, and he conducted experiments to make agriculture more efficient.

Franklin retained a lifelong interest in science but the events of the day moved him inexorably toward the politics of revolution.

When Franklin died in 1790 at the age of 84, more than 20,000 people attended the funeral.