The Value of ‘Activism’ By George F. Will
Convinced that popular sentiment is with them, some conservatives fan the flames of resentment of judicial review, calling for judicial “restraint.” They do so in the name of dogmatic majoritarianism — the right of majorities to have their way. There are, however, impeccably conservative reasons for regarding judicial review as a valuable restraint on majorities, and hence for having high regard for some judicial activism.
Our disregard for our nearest kin is equal to our disregard for each other. More importantly, how few genetic changes there are between us. We are about to take sledgehammers to our own genome without any real sense of that subtlety.
Case in point: chimps rarely get Alzheimer’s. Therefore, let’s find that gene that protects them/harms us and deal with it. After our mucking about, will we even be capable of seeing we’ve lost creativity or a grasp of what freedom is? mjh
Scientists Complete Genetic Map of the Chimpanzee By Rick Weiss
The fresh unraveling of chimpanzee DNA allows an unprecedented gene-to-gene comparison with the human genome, mapped in 2001, and makes plain the evolutionary processes through which chimps and humans arose from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago.
By placing the two codes alongside each other, scientists identified all 40 million molecular changes that today separate the two species and pinpointed the mere 250,000 that seem most responsible for the difference between chimpness and humanness. …
As predicted by preliminary studies, the human and chimpanzee genetic codes are essentially 99 percent identical, a testament to how fundamentally similar the two species remain. At the same time, it is powerful evidence that seemingly modest changes in molecular code can lead to very different stations in the web of life.
Because of that 1 percent difference, experts noted, humans now dominate every ecosystem on Earth while chimpanzees and other great apes — a group that also includes bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — are at risk of becoming extinct within the next few decades, largely because of human activities. …
The human and chimpanzee genomes are distinguished by 35 million differences in individual DNA “letters” — each the result of a tiny, random mutation — and an additional 5 million larger differences in which entire chunks of DNA were either added to or deleted from one genome or the other.
All told, the two sequences differ by 4 percent. But three-quarters of the differences seem to be in non-functional parts of the genome, suggesting that a mere 1 percent variation makes all the difference.
Put another way, the difference between the human and chimp genomes is 10 times as great as the difference between any two humans. …
Acknowledging recent challenges by proponents of “intelligent design,” a proposition that posits the need for an intelligent creator, several scientists said the genome study offered elegant confirmation of Darwin’s vision of evolution.
One analysis, for example, showed that the accumulation of deleterious mutations in the human and chimp genomes is greater than in the mouse and rat genomes in just the proportion predicted by one of the mathematical corollaries of the theory of evolution.
“I can’t imagine Darwin hoping for a stronger confirmation of his ideas,” said Robert H. Waterston, who led the Washington University team.
First Chimp Fossils Found; Humans Were Neighbors
Cameron Walker for National Geographic News
Researchers have found the first reported chimpanzee fossils in Kenya’s Rift Valley, providing the first physical evidence that chimpanzees coexisted with early human ancestors, known as hominins.
Thousands of fossils, including the famous Australopithicus afarensis, “Lucy,” found in Ethiopia, have been filling in the hominin family tree. Early humans split off from a common ancestor shared with chimpanzees between five and eight million years ago.
PowerPoint: Killer App? By Ruth Marcus
The most disturbing development in the world of PowerPoint is its migration to the schools — like sex and drugs, at earlier and earlier ages. Now we have second-graders being tutored in PowerPoint. No matter that students who compose at the keyboard already spend more energy perfecting their fonts than polishing their sentences — PowerPoint dispenses with the need to write any sentences at all. Perhaps the politicians who are so worked up about the ill effects of violent video games should turn their attention to PowerPoint instead.
A Half-true Attack on McCain – FactCheck.org
Summary
The conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth targeted 2008 presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain with a TV ad in New Hampshire. It contains a half-true claim that McCain would “keep the death tax.” In fact, McCain has long advocated reducing the number subject to the tax, so that it falls only on the estates of multi-millionaires.
The ad also misleads viewers by saying, “when you die, the IRS can tax you again. Taking as much as 55 percent of everything you’ve saved for your children.” In fact, only estates exceeding $1.5 million currently pay any tax on that wealth. It fell on fewer than 1 percent of all Americans who died in 2004.
Bush Calls Iraq War Moral Equivalent Of Allies’ WWII Fight Against the Axis
By Peter Baker and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A07
CORONADO, Calif., Aug. 30 — Invoking the spirit of Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush on Tuesday cast the war in Iraq as the modern-day moral equivalent of the struggle against Nazi fascism and Japanese imperialism in World War II….
Although Bush gave his speech only hundreds of yards from the towering hulk of the USS Ronald Reagan at Naval Air Station North Island, the White House made certain the ship was not in the television shot — an image that could remind viewers of the president’s 2003 speech on the Iraq invasion given on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in front of a premature “Mission Accomplished” banner.
President’s Poll Rating Falls to a New Low
By Richard Morin and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey found Bush’s job approval rating at 45 percent, down seven points since January and the lowest ever recorded for the president in Post-ABC surveys. Fifty-three percent disapproved of the job Bush is doing. …
Dissatisfaction is not limited to the president. Fewer than four in 10 Americans — 37 percent — approve of the way the Republican-controlled Congress is doing its job, the lowest rating for lawmakers in nearly eight years.
The survey also provided bad news for Democratic leaders, who are judged as offering Bush only tepid opposition. Slightly more than half of those surveyed expressed dissatisfaction with congressional Democrats for not opposing Bush more aggressively.
New Rules Could Allow Power Plants to Pollute More
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A01
The Bush administration has drafted regulations that would ease pollution controls on older, dirtier power plants and could allow those that modernize to emit more pollution, rather than less.
The language could undercut dozens of pending state and federal lawsuits aimed at forcing coal-fired plants to cut back emissions of harmful pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, said lawyers who worked on the cases.
The draft rules, obtained by The Washington Post from the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, contradict the position taken by federal lawyers who have prosecuted polluting facilities in the past, and parallel the industry’s line of defense against those suits.
MR and I have discussed this issue for many election cycles (the full story is below). We believe yard signs belong in yards, not in public spaces. So, starting with this entry, I intend to highlight candidates who violate this simple guideline: put your yard signs in someone’s yard — nowhere else.
When you see a candidate’s signs in many yards, you know that candidate has real people supporting him or her. When you see yard signs in public spaces, you know that candidate has at least one hard working volunteer and some money to waste — but possibly no support whatsoever. The way to get signs in people’s yards is to meet them; the way to get signs in public spaces is to sneak around at night, like those exuberant Bush supporters who nailed Bush signs high on telephone poles in my neighborhood to make them hard to remove. Turns out it was quite easy with a golf club.
Today’s inaugural violator is Wayne Johnson. On my morning bike ride, I saw many, many of Wayne Johnson’s yard signs in various public spaces and only one in a yard (Wayne’s own yard?).
Mr Johnson: I will not consider voting for you until you remove your signs from public spaces. peace, mjh
The back story:
Continue reading Political Yard Signs Belong in YARDS