**Despite example Republicans to the contrary, scientists find human-chimp differences

Scientific American site reports Nature findings indicating significant differences between humans and Chimps. A starting paragraph below.

Differences: human and chimp

The DNA sequences of humans and chimpanzees are 98 percent identical. Yet that 2 percent difference represents at least 15 million changes in our genome since the time of our common ancestor roughly six million years ago. Now a new computational technique has identified 49 regions that have changed particularly quickly between humans and chimps, and may have revealed at least one gene critical to the development of our larger brains.
Source Link--- Scientific American

Check the article. It is not really very long or complex and is worth reading. Probably millions of dollars and millions of hours of research and ingenious thinking made those results possible.

And, one author on Charilie Rose a few nights ago summed up the differences between humans and other animals in one neat phrase that didn't require a lot of research. She said, "Humans cook their food."

**Stay tuned even if that made you hungry for cooked animals---Doug Wiken

Comments

[Ken Blanchard]

I enjoyed your joke at our expense. I said as much in a post, and added some comments on the teaching of evolution.

[Doug Wiken]

Ken,
It appears your position on evolution is moderate compared to some of the theocrats in the GOP.

Without going into detail, I tend to disagree that there is no danger in assuming that there is a grand designer running "micro evolution".
This requires faith with no observable or testable possibility. That kind of faith is part of religion, but it is not part of science even though it is possible to find scientists who have such faith.

The other danger of the attitude in relation to schools and education relates to separation of church and state. Churches and religions have benefited greatly in the US because of the separtion. Attempting to blur the lines in biology classes and require government intervention to force perspectives based on faith do damage both to education/government and also endanger religion and churches.

Religions and churches should let sleeping dogs stay sleeping and not become aroused fighting and biting mad ready to shred religious freedoms and politicians exploiting those religions.

[Ken Blanchard]

Doug:

Thanks for the reply. I have posted on this again, and I included excerpts from you comment above. At the risk of bragging, I think it is a well constructed post. Consider the two images.

I suspect that we agree more than not, at least on this subject. I do not share your approval of the NVB post on the "reptillian cortex." It strikes me as an abuse of science to argue that your oponents operate out of a lower region of the brain than you do, if that is what the NVB is saying. But Professor Newquist is by-George colorful, and that makes the blogosphere worth reading.