Light blogging, heavy weather...

Half of the Beagle Project blog is stormbound in Harwich, recovering after a three-day head to wind flog along the south coast of England. I have bruises in places where I didn't know I even had places. So for the next few days you are solely in the capable and clever hands of Nunatak.

The London meetings were encouraging: the science arm of the BBC is now looking seriously at us (hoorah) and looking at it from a science point of view, another hoorah. You'd be amazed at how many people thought the Beagle would be a good reality TV show, with Creationists being thrown to ravening Evolutionists in scenes reminiscent of The Coliseum. But at sea, and not at all Roman.

The Darwin200 steering group now has its website up so click over, have a look and link to them. They'll be posting details of the Darwin 200 events as they are organized and trickle in. This post was made possible by the generous offer of wifi (and a mindblowing espresso) from The Book Annex in Harwich. Academic books at competitive prices, and they're very nice.

Darwin200 goes live.

The UK Darwin200 community website has just gone live. The site is still undergoing some revision, but you'll get the picture. Click "Who is involved" to see, um, well, who is involved. The site will serve as a portal to the full flurry of UK-based Darwinia during the 2008-9 anniversary period. And just in case you didn't know, we're not just celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday on 12 February 2009, we're also trumpeting the 150th anniversary of the joint reading of Charles Darwin's and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers at the Linnaean Society of London in July 1859, as well as the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in November 2009. Three cheers goin' out to Charles Darwin for timing the significant events of his life with a view towards the future publicity opportunity offered by three sequential anniversaries.

In London

for meetings with broadcasters and the Darwin200 participants. Darwin200 (website coming soon) is the umbrella group of museums, universities, Darwin residences, media, academics, broadcasters and Beagle builders who are organising events to mark the great man's bicentenary in 2009. If anything exciting transpires, I'll post it here.

Developments: a nice, large multinational business came calling today asking for sponsorship information. The buzz phrase in sponsorship these days is a '360 degree project', which means it will be in traditional and new media. The Beagle Project will be that: she'll be wired with webcams and have video editing and satellite comms, so you'll be able see stills and video clips of what's happening aboard, and we'll be able to stream footage of fieldwork, experiments, lessons and lectures, send pics of specimens, you'll be able to email the scientists, students and sailors aboard.

The Beagle Project will be a real 360 degree project - she could carry your brand on a circumnavigation of the world, to the USA, South America, around Cape Horn, the Galapagos, across the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand, to South Africa and back up the North and South Atlantic home to Britain. Wherever we land there will be crowds, media attention, and wherever we sail there will be school and college students around the world following our exploration in the physical and scientific world. The replica Beagle arriving the Galapagos has got to be one of the guaranteed media images, young scientists working from its decks, producing inspiration science teaching and public outreach materials, investigating the effects of global warming and helping communicate their findings to colleagues in classrooms the world over. Well, if your media advisors don't think that's worth getting involved with, sack 'em.

19 April 1882

'Fatal attack at 12': Emma Darwin's diary entry recording the death of Charles.

PZ Myers at Pharyngula writes at length about it here, with a fruity comment warning.

Larry Moran, a biochemist whose blog is called Sandwalk in honour of Darwin's thinking walking path at Down House, adds this reflection on Darwin's death.

The BBC and a Ham project*.

BBC Radio 4 is gem, and among is finest jewels is From Our Own Correspondent, a half-hour programme which allows the BBC's reporters around the world to muse about a place, event or subject rather than file a straightforward news report. It's a lovely, mind expanding half hour every week. This week Martin Redfern visited the 'museum of creationism' in Petersburg, Kentucky run by a man called Ken Ham who was instructed to open this in a dream. Go read. I sent PZ Myers at Pharyngula a link to the article (he has been trenchant about the museum and its creator Ken Ham in the past), and he posted Somebody, please take this myth outside and shoot it? by way of reply.

*'Ham' can mean amateur, as well as cured pork (best served on buttered white bread with watercress and atomic mustard).

Galapagos flora and fauna under threat.

This NASA image of the Galapagos archipelago from space reinforces a perception of the island chain as a precious jewel. Indeed, common knowledge tells us that the Galapagos Islands enjoy strict environmental protections. Au contraire, reports the Beeb. Even though the islands were have been a World Heritage Site for 30 years, Galapagos plants and animals are facing "'huge institutional, environmental and social crises' ... as a result of neglect by previous governments". Vigilance, folks, vigilance.

Darwin had a grandfather

- Erasmus, and he had a house in Beacon Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire, England. The house is a museum and they need 12 volunteers curators to help keep it open to the public 6 day a week. The manager is Alison Wallis and she'd be delighted to hear from people with a few hours to spare each week.

We'll need sailing vessels.

"If we want to make it to the future, we'll need sailing vessels" writes Dmitry Orlov of Boston, Massachusetts in the second of a trio of can-do environmental citizenship stories from Orion Magazine's new department Making Other Arrangements.

By "make it to the future", Orlov means maintenance of a functional civilisation in an environmentally sustainable future. Sailboats will figure heavily, Orlov argues, and in doing so he reminds us that a 21st Century Beagle should fly the flag for more than just science.
"Sailors and their ships run on food and water and wind—all renewable" writes Orlov. "Sailboats can be made from renewable materials as well: wood, hemp, flax, and pitch ... the trends that will once again make sailing a viable form of transportation are already in place."

Always a rich source of segues, Orion this month offers up yet another Beagle aim. In "Leave No Child Inside" (for those who understandably tune out American politics, this is a play on George Bush's No Child Left Behind strategy that many argue leaves plenty of children behind), Richard Louv paints an achingly appealing picture of a future in which children and nature are reconnected as a central function of education.

"Such a future is embodied in the nature-themed schools that have begun sprouting up nationwide," writes Louv, "like the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center Preschool, where, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April 2006 'a 4-year-old can tell the difference between squirrel and rabbit tracks—even if he can’t yet read any of the writing on a map.'"

And so should be the Beagle: a floating nature-themed school that gets youngsters outside and fosters their native intelligence of nature amongst other virtues. And on these I'll give Orlov the last word: "The culture of sailing is rich, ancient, and largely intact. It is also a culture that fosters competence, fitness, self-reliance, and courage, which are all sadly missing from the world we see around us."

Charles Darwin has a posse...

click the posse button on the right to find out more.

Sorry...

Good news: a big commercial sponsor is nibbling. BUT that doesn't mean we don't still need Darwins and Jacksons.

Young? Scientific? Literate?

If so, go and check out the Bayer/Daily Telegraph Science Writer Awards. Science needs wordsmiths and lab rats.

Hola!

For your friends and colleagues who speak Spanish and are aching to find out about 'il nuevo Beagle', here's your chance with a report in the Argentine sailing magazine Welcome Aboard.

Progress..

Much of this Project involves having meetings with people, writing letters, filling in forms and waiting for answers. Sadly, none of this makes for very compelling blog posts, but we are making progress especially with two very large funders here in Britain. Television production companies continue to knock on our door, excited by the possibilities of a bunch of teenagers and scientists sailing the Beagle round the world in Darwin's wake. And we're a about to take on an assistant project manager.

A couple of days late

but thanks to Richard Carter, FCD for this account of April Fools Day aboard HMS Beagle:

April 1st

All hands employed in making April fools. — at midnight almost nearly all the watch below was called up in their shirts; carpenters for a leak: quarter masters that a mast was sprung. — midshipmen to reef top-sails; All turned in to their hammocks again, some growling some laughing. — The hook was much too easily baited for me not to be caught: Sullivan cried out, "Darwin, did you ever see a Grampus: Bear a hand then". I accordingly rushed out in a transport of Enthusiasm, & was received by a roar of laughter from the whole watch. —

Stop. Read. Think. And Hilda: thank you.

I have just minutes ago finished watching a TV programme about the Falklands War, a war which started 25 years ago today: many good and loved people from Britain and Argentina died and were injured. And I, an Englishman, came to my computer tonight to find an email from an Argentine scientist called Hilda in my inbox. I am posting from the Yorkshire* town of Whitby, whose patron saint is Saint Hilda. When the western Christian world celebrates Easter in one week, its movable date was fixed by a meeting in Whitby Abbey in 644. The boss of that meeting? Saint Hilda.

HMS Beagle under the command of Robert FitzRoy spent a year surveying the coast of Argentina before sailing to the Falkland Isles (where one of the crew died). Darwin made many great discoveries in Argentina and on the Falklands. In 2010 the replica HMS Beagle will arrive in Argentina. We hope British students will join Argentinian young students and scientists to recreate Darwin's great 1833 journeys in Argentina, and that Argentine students, teachers and scientists will join HMS Beagle as to sail around Cape Horn, to show us the Patagonia that so impressed Darwin. So here is the email, unedited:

We contact you for send an article about Darwin and the Beagle Project (in joined file) It had been published in a magazine of Argentina name Bienvenido a Bordo (Welcome on board), a nautical magazine. The web is www.bienvenidoabordo.com.ar. The idea of the magazine will be continue with these theme all along the 2007 and 2008 years, until the Beagle come to South America.

The magazine set us in charge of these section name On Darwin steps. We are biologist, wildlife photographers and science writers and we went and will be go to the places that Darwin visited during his journey in Argentina. Further, we are authors of education books in Argentina.

Thus, this year we went to Sierra de la Ventana, to resolve the unknown quantity about of what hill Darwin climbed in these region. Some people said that he climbed the Ventana’s hills, but we said that he climbed Cerro Tres Picos. The Darwin´s description matched with the last opinion. In the BAB´s article there is a photograph of these hill. In another article we will tell the complete story.

We visited Puerto Deseado and we made the journey until the end of the Ría Deseado, a place that Darwin visited in 1833. The place is known as Balcony of Darwin, actually.
We visited, too Punta Alta, where Darwin founded his first fossils in Sudamerica.

We are trying to go to all the places that Darwin visited during his inland expeditions, and in these sense, we are trying to receive the support of the British ambassador in Argentina. The Ambassador, Dr. John Hughes has a special interest in the Beagle Project and say us that he would want to contact with you. In a few day we will contact him to show these articles and others. He is Welsh.

We known a lot of researchers in Argentina and researchers that made theirs investigations in our country, we are biologist, we known about Darwin and we have contact in Argentina. A good combination for the project.

Congratulations from Argentina and cordial greetings.

So: another and very important reason why we should build a replica HMS Beagle.

* Another Darwin link: Charles Darwin posted his first editions of The Origin of Species from Ilkley, Yorkshire in 1859.

Quite.

This in from a Beagle Project supporter from Canada who shares the widespread surprise that the British Broadcasting Corporation so far sees no merit in a British-built replica of a British built ship which, commanded and crewed by courageous British sailors took a British born and educated man around the world. That British man then framed a theory which changed the world of science and establish biology a we know it today. Young British sailors and scientists will be among the crew who re-stage Darwin's 1831-36 voyage, crossing four oceans, crossing the equator, rounding Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. British academics will have experiments and projects carried out aboard. Broadcasters from America, Japan, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand do find this interesting. Strange.