Quickies: Equal Rights, Primary Picks, Hominid DNA, and more…

Welcome to your Friday Quickies!

• The US House of Representatives votes to extend the deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. This comes on the heels of ratification by Virginia as reported in a previous Quickies. As with most good things these days, the Senate is not likely to follow suit until we VOTE TRUMP AND MITCH AND THEIR CRONIES OUT OF OFFICE.
• Continuing in US politics news, because I live in New Hampshire after all, here are some arguments why Iowa and New Hampshire should stop dominating the primaries every four years. As a voter on the ground in this 93% white state… I agree. If anything, more people should get to share in this actually really cool experience of getting to meet candidates one-on-one.
• And now for some science news, evidence of an unknown early hominid group is found in the DNA of West African people. This is super cool, and also not that surprising when you think of how complicated the story of human evolutionary origins is, and how darn hard it is for fossils to be made, let alone found. (Here’s a fun little flash interactive I did with my class yesterday!)
• And in shameless plugs AND science, I was on the radio last week distracting our local NPR station from all the political news with a show full of astronomy.

And now on to cute animal Friday, with help as always from Muscadine!

• Wildlife photography prize goes to this amazing picture of two mice brawling on an empty London subway platform. And this wasn’t just a lucky shot. FTA: “To get the shot, Rowley spent nearly a week down in the London Underground tunnels – much of the time lying flat on his belly to get the right perspective.”
• From a bit ago… Alleged Russian spy whale defects to Norway, entertaining the locals with tricks. I mean, you just have to read it AND check out the cute pics.
• Meanwhile a beluga whale (possibly the same one?) retrieves a person’s iPhone after it falls in the water. A bit of hyperbole surrounding both of these accounts, but it’s still fair to say, whales are cool.

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