From the Library

“Bossey was a pleasant village just three miles outside of Geneva, close enough that the tower of the cathedral could be seen from the windows of Jean-Jacques’ new home. The village was surrounded by meadows, which intoxicated the city boy, but social relations were less satisfactory. When he was writing Emile and wanted to illustrate the inferiority of urban children, he claimed that the village children considered him a complete idiot when he first got there, for trying to catch up with a galloping horse and for throwing a stone at Mont Saleve, a mile away. Both examples seemed preposterous, as they confirmed Jean-Jacques’ perception of not fitting in, which would torment him throughout his life. And it’s conceivable that in addition to severe short sightedness, he had some sort of perceptual disability; these examples don’t sound like mere city-boy confusion.” (Damrosch L. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Restless Genius. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 2005: 25)

Pseudogenes are the molecular remains of broken genes which are unable to function because of lethal injury to their structure. The great majority of pseudogenes are damaged copies of working genes and serve as genetic fossils that offer insight into gene evolution and genome dynamics. However, recent evidence of activity among pseudogenes, and their potential …