“I presume that humans and chimps share common ancestry.”
I would be very interested to know why Mr. Klinghoffer presumes this. Also why he uses the word “presume”, which suggests an opinion easily abandoned given evidence, with which he would be unfamiliar. Is he in fact acquainted with the relevant data, and if so what conclusion can he reach, and how strongly?
The gift that keeps on giving:
The comedy stylings of Casey Luskin and David Klinghoffer.
It’s amazing that they try to claim the moral high ground re: animal cruelty when the Discovery Institute is one of the purveyors of climate change denialism. I guess we’ll just forget the impact climate change has on global ecosystems and species extinction, while pretending the DI is somehow in favor of animal welfare.
What unbelievable clowns.
The ironic twist regarding animal lovers being inhumane to people is a classic Hemingway rationalization. Rationalization and religious sectarianism cut a deep and wide path through the DI. Apparently, because Hitler had a favorite dog–a German shepherd named Blondi–bullfighting, a vile and disgusting “sport” akin to dog fighting and cock fighting is OK. Sounds like old Dominionism b-llsh-t to me…….
I believe Elvis Costello said it best (I paraphrase): I used to be disgusted, but now I’m just amused….
Hm. Has anyone here read this presumably ridiculous book?
No, but when I looked at it Amazon told me I might also like Project Whisker: Alien Theories about Cats. 
Perhaps the most important finding from Project Whisker is that humans and cats share 99.999999% of their DNA for each of their nine lives…….
….and whenever you see a cat staring at you, you KNOW that they are totally annoyed by that fact.
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Live Science fluff article published this morning eventually gets around to agreeing with @GutsickGibbon. It missed the point that most of the differences are still non-functional and not regulatory.
Do humans and chimps really share nearly 99% of their DNA? | Live Science Do humans and chimps really share nearly 99% of their DNA? | Live Science
Note that the meandering Live Science article argues that changes in noncoding DNA are actually Deeply Significant because changes there are known to be involved in gene regulation. (My palm just injured my face, so have to stop for now).
I think it must be repeated over and over and over again - the important point, that confounds all the gyrations coming from the DI camp, is that the study being championed by the DI shows that chimp and human genomes are more similar than are two different gorilla genomes. It’s hard to spin this any other way than that chimps and humans share a common ancestry.
@Joe_Felsenstein @Art
I found the author on LinkedIn, and I am tempted to send her a note. Maybe I will just link here here.
I also suspect that her article may have been butchered by an editor.
Message sent to author:
Please let’s give Clarissa the benefit of the doubt about what she wrote versus what the editor chopped.
I think you meant “your article”?
On this subject, I always suspect that the crazies get excited over nothing. What if the human and chimp genomes WERE only 85% similar? That strikes me as waaaaay too much ape content for the average creationist to accept. I think those people want the genome to be 100% ape-free, don’t they?
I think those people want the genome to be 100% ape-free, don’t they?
Yeah, they are pretty touchy about being associated too closely–even genomically–with feces-flingers. [Insert your own David Klinghoffer, Ken Ham, or Kent Hovind joke here.]
I’ve always found it interesting that around my Young Earth Creationist friends, I can get away with calling humans mammals or vertebrates without too much opposition—but if I call humans primates or even just animals, they get very upset. (By the way, I’ve been surprised to get away with simian in front of some audiences—but many nowadays don’t know what the word means.)