Good people, good will & good ideas

Every time a donation comes in, or someone offers the fruit of their labours to help us make The Beagle Project happen, I get quite emotional. There are a lot of people who think that a replica HMS Beagle hitting the water and the media in 2009, then going out and helping spread the word about science would be a good thing.

Today's moments, in order of arrival:
• The maker of the film Flock of Dodos, although in the red as a result of making the film has offered us a copy to screen to raise funds for the Beagle. Now that's big, and generous, so if you're in the US visit his site, find out where screenings are and go support.

• Brit bio blogger MissPrism dropped a great fundraising idea into comments - a bring and blog sale:

"It would be like a blog carnival, but every blogger would send something (beautiful handcrafted item, unwanted piece of tat, or somewhere in between) to one their commenters in exchange for a Beagle Project donation. Darwin's birthday sounds like an appropriate date. What do you reckon?"

I reckon it's a great idea, and a good meme to start spreading round the net. Better post a webpage about it, then.

• And thirdly, Adam Turinas and his blog Messing about in boats, which if you are a sailor you should visit since it is a celebration of sailing at its best. He popped a donation in the tin, then added a good idea which may speed things up with US donors. One of the reasons we want to build the Beagle is so that we can sail across the Atlantic, and do our bit to support pro-evolution campaigners. We can't fight your court battles for you, but we can welcome you aboard when we're in port, have science work done on the Beagle streamed into classrooms and labs and take some of your aspiring young scientists to do some amazing field - er - sea work, generate some inspirational science, media coverage and teaching material.

So we're touched and encouraged. Thanks.

Tags: hms beagle replica, the beagle project, sailing, fundraising

You know when you've been Pharyngula'd..

...because your webserver rings you up screaming for mercy. Thanks to PZ Myers, top science blogger, squid lover and associate professor at the University of Minnesota Morris for his mention on Pharyngula. PZ on the Project here.

On a nakedly mercenary note, huge thanks to all who exercised their mouse fingers and donated today. When you're looking up the big hill we are, every donation cracks a big smile. It's taken a lot of work to get us this far - none of us are earning anything from this: no consultancy fees, no salaries, no dividends. We're doing it because we believe that the Darwin 2009 celebrations needs an icon for people to say 'look at that!', and because science - both as a profession and as understood by the public - matters. And we want to give Charles Darwin a big 200th birthday party.

And to that end, some people have started a petition on the 10 Downing Street (note to overseas readers: it's where our Prime Minister lives) website asking for Darwin's birthday, February 12th to be declared a public holiday. The petition is open to British residents only and those who want a day off in honour of the great man should sign up here.

Tags: hms beagle replica, Charles Darwin, voyage of the beagle, pharyngula

Now is the time for all good evo-devotees

to come to the aid...the donate button is to the right. If we're going to have a replica HMS Beagle sailing and celebrating Darwin, helping to spread the word about evolution, inspiring a new generation of young scientists and sticking it's bowsprit up the noses of Creationists and Intelligent Designers, we need to build it. And to build it, we need money. Here's my dream for the replica Beagle that we want afloat and spreading the word in 2009: that tens, hundreds of thousands of scientists, students and science enthusiasts throughout the world each chip in a few pounds, dollars or euros and help us build the boat that changed world history.

Darwin and the Beagle grace the British £10 note, and President Jackson was in the White House when the young Darwin was retching and researching his way round the world on the Beagle. Jackson's face is on a $20. So please, hit that donate button and send us your Darwins or your Jacksons. If you feel strongly, as many do, that the Beagle must sail again, donate more. We need $200,000 by March to get the plans approved by Germanischer Lloyds, and the boat will cost £3.3 million, $6.6 million at current exchange rates. Please donate: your donation will be recorded on our website and will all go towards building the replica. We're a not-for profit company and have applied for charitable status. So there we are: donate, email this to your friends, mentally upend them, shake their pockets out and send us another Darwin or Jackson. Then pack them off to do the same to their friends. Email this post to five scientific friends, and ask them to email it on to five of theirs.

In 2009, it's Darwin's 200th anniversary and the world owes a great debt of thanks to him: lectures, books and poshed up buildings are very worthy and will make a great conrtibution. But square rigger sailing ships make heads turn, give people the yearning to get aboard and head for horizons: both the one over the bowsprit or the one found where the human minds yearn to know more. Darwin did both in 1831. I've sailed in the Tall Ships Races, skippered a youth sail training boat and know that great things can happen when young people challenge themselves on the decks of a boat.

And imagine: 2009, and a replica Beagle sailed around Cape Horn and through the Pacific by an international crew of young scientists sails into The Galapagos as part of a recreation of the Voyage of the Beagle. That, surely will be the TV picture of the Darwin 2009 celebrations. How can Darwin's 200th anniversary pass without that happening? Donate, and help us give a new generation of young people the chance to see a replica Beagle built and launched, and the opportunity to head for horizons of their own.

Rant ends.

Tags:hms beagle replica, charles darwin, 2009, voyage of the beagle.

Website delousing:

all the buttons now work and go where they say, and the links page now actually has some links. If you have any suggested links to pet evolutionary/Darwinian/Beaglian sites or blogs, email me or leave a comment.

Tags: hms beagle replica

When in London

go to the Natural History Museum. The outside alone is worth the effort: enough carved creatures and gargoyles to make a cathedral sick with envy. Then you get inside and you're looking right up the fossilized hooter of a diplodocus. Its skeleton fills most of the enormous entrance hall. In 2009, the NHM will host an exhibition on Darwin, which is currently pulling in crowds at the American Museum of Natural History. The NHM shop is worth a visit, but at the risk of damage to your wallet. One book that caught my eye was Inside the Beagle with Charles Darwin, an illustrated book for kids 8 and older. An excellent book to have in a primary school or around a home. It's not listed in the NHM shops online catalogue, but details from Amazon here.

hms beagle, charles darwin, natural history museum london

Many thanks...

...to the PR guru who gave us a free masterclass in London the other night. If we'd had to pay his hourly rate, I'd have been offering a kidney for sale. Thanks to all who commented on the flyer, it's back from the printers and looks excellent: copies on the site soon.

London meeting & leaflet available

The Beagle Project team are in London to meet with a fundraiser and PR guru. (The coffee is expensive, and served in bowls without handles: what's that all about?) We also have a superb A3 leaflet about the project: if you'd like a hard copy let me know in comments or email through the site. Superb job by Haven Colourprint, and many thanks to them for their help. PDFs will be on the site as soon as I'm back in civilisation.

Tags: Tags: hms beagle replica, charles darwin,

Charles Darwin: not always bearded.

Darren Naish, blogger and Doctor of theropod dinosaurs (which in my book makes him a Ph.D. of Th.D.) makes the point here. The iconic image of Darwin is the bearded old man. We do much the same on our site using the hirsuit old Darwin here. He was bare-chinned both in 1831 when he stepped aboard the Beagle and in 1859 when he published the Origin of Species. Darren calls Darwin: 'the most important biologist of all time', and says that portraying him as an old man, 'is annoying and misleading, and perpetuated by a society that seems to want scientists to be oddballs that operate on the fringes of society.'

A primary teacher relative says something similar: ask children to draw a scientist you inevitably get a wild-haired Einstein-alike. My recent visits to labs like the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg showed plenty of smart, bright young things quite unlike wild-haired or bald and bearded geriatrics. If we're to recruit young people into science as a career, these are stereotypes we need to challenge. We are admonished: younger and less hairy Darwins will be appearing on the site shortly.

charles darwin, science, beards, hms beagle

Don't forget Darwin Day 2007

it's less than a month to 12 February, Darwin Day 2007. To find out what's happening worldwide check out the Darwin Day website here and if there's nothing happing in your school/college/university it's not too late to organize an event to celebrate this great hero of science.

That Beagle Project, I wish I had a leaflet...

Now you can. Artwork drafts as PDFs here for some open source proofreading. Comments (good or bad), suggested improvements to Peter via the contact page. The first page is a fattie, 1.1 MB.

Tags: hms beagle replica, hms beagle, the beagle project

Bank a/c open...

thanks to HSBC in Pembroke for getting the Beagle Project bank a/c opened so quickly. The 'donate' button will be on the website in short order: we need 330,000 Darwins (£10) or a million Lincolns ($5) to get a Beagle in the water, celebrating Darwin and evolutionary theory by 2009.

Hej.

Tak for hjalpen humaniorabloggen.

The Beagle Project has reached Sweden.

More media interest...

the Beagle Project has been approached by a Japanese TV company interested in working with us covering the build of the replica Beagle. More details later.