Deep, baying howls of derision.

Today the New York Times brings us Richard Dawkins at his finest. Dawkins reviews intelligent design advocate Michael Behe's new book The Edge of Evolution. He precisely incises both Behe's psyche and his thesis (which appears to be evaporating).

Here's a snippet: "Single-handedly, Behe is taking on Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Richard Lewontin, John Maynard Smith and hundreds of their talented co-workers and intellectual descendants. Notwithstanding the inconvenient existence of dogs, cabbages and pouter pigeons, the entire corpus of mathematical genetics, from 1930 to today, is flat wrong. Michael Behe, the disowned biochemist of Lehigh University, is the only one who has done his sums right. You think?"

Now, get over there and read it.

Update: Just in, here is a video of Richard Dawkins reflecting on Darwin, the Beagle and the flora and fauna of the Galapagos Islands.

What happens when a tall ship comes to town?

This. A flotilla of boats escorts her in, thousands of people line the harbourside, kids jump up and down to get a look as the wooden hull cuts the water and the masts tower over everything else. People clap and cheer, there's usually a couple of blank cannons fired in salute, bridges open, thousands of pics are taken. Food, drink and souvenir stalls appear, the waterfront takes on a carnival atmosphere, and just because a square rigger's come to visit. The boat moors up, and before long it's open, hundreds of people a day are visiting, marvelling, remembering our maritime past when men (and a few women) climbed willingly or were pressed aboard ships and went to sail over horizons, usually to fight the French but often to trade, discover new lands, found new colonies, to serve sentences, hunt whales, catch fish, to see the world with an open mind and years later write a book that revolutionizes science. They slept where? Climbed all the way up there? Went to the loo how? Yak. Anyone whose waterfront has hosted the Tall Ships Races, or whose town has been visited by the replica Endeavour or Grand Turk has seen all this. When the replica Endeavour first came to Whitby, 20000 people lined the cliffs and piers to welcome her.

And none of these boats have the brand recognition of the Beagle. In 2009 (Darwin's 200th anniversary), the replica will sail up the Thames to Woolwich, the site of the original's launch in 1820. The welcome home for her should make Goteborg's (above) look modest.

Science broadcasting at its finest.

In Our Time on BBC Radio 4, a weekly discussion on the history of ideas. IOT does science superbly, and todays was among the best: 45 minutes of conversation about the Permian-Triassic extinction with three academics who knew their stuff and could talk about it in a clear, understandable way without patronising or over complicating. Brilliant, brilliant and the generous BBC lets you listen again or download as a podcast. Which you should. Why highlighted here? Because part of the discussion covers evolution in the aftermath of of a big wipeout, including a lovely phrase about the survivors: 'dead clay walking'. Now clear off and listen to it.

Yum yum

A banquet of evolutionary journalistic goodness, the New York Times has dedicated its entire section to evolution so pop over and fill your boots.

Beagle plankton sampling

There is a good precedent for plankton sampling on the replica HMS Beagle: Darwin did it on the original in 1832, as this sketch from his diary shows. On January 10th and 11th he records:

it is a bag four feet deep, made of bunting, & attached to semicircular bow this by lines is kept upright, & dragged behind the vessel. — this evening it brought up a mass of small animals, & tomorrow I look forward to a greater harvest. —

11th

I am quite tired having worked all day at the produce of my net. — The number of animals that the net collects is very great & fully explains the manner so many animals of a large size live so far from land. — Many of these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms & rich colours. — It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose. — The weather is beautiful & the blueness of the sky when contrasted with white clouds is certainly striking.

From the beginning of this project we've been clear that the replica will be no museum ship, but will update Darwin's science. When we sample plankton we'll know where we are thanks to GPS and a friend in orbit, and we'll also know whether we're in normal oceanic water, on the margins of or in the midst of a plankton bloom. Darwin had a microscope with which to look at his haul, we'll have specimens preserved for DNA barcoding.

Stories of sailing and the supernatural are legion. Joshua Slocum, the first man to circumnavigate the world single handed in his yacht Spray, told the story that in a crisis (he was sick and in foul weather) he was joined by the ghost of the navigator from the Pinta, one of Columbus' ships. The British sailing magazine Yachting Monthly has a monthly column by all round sailing guru Tom Cunliffe. He has a reputation as a man who neither talks not writes male bovine manure. In last month's issue he related three occasions when, sailing his old pilot cutter Hirta, he was joined by the ghost of the Welsh pilot. On one occasion the sailorly spirit helped Tom douse a large, ill-behaved mainsail with a heavy gaff swinging destructively in the high wind. So it wouldn't surprise me if, somewhere in North Atlantic (it would have to be on night watch) we are doing our thing with continuous plankton recorders and metagenomics when the ghostly figure of a 22 year old Darwin elbows his way into the lab space and asks for a go. 'DNA. What's that?' Explaining that to Darwin's ghost and watching the lightbulbs go on really would be a webcast worth watching.

Mano Singham

is a theoretical physicist and director of the University Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University. He writes a web journal and has just posted part 3 (evolution and the age of the earth) of a clear and entertaining overview of evolution. Part 2 deals with the lack of evidence for perfect design and part 1 covers the power of natural selection. Well worth a browse.

26 June 1832: Beagle gets bigger teeth

Charles Darwin's HMS Beagle diary records his rejoining the ship after a stay ashore in Rio de Janeiro:

Rode to the city & went on board in order to make final arrangements for living in the ship after my long absence. I dread this process nearly as much as I did at Devonport. There have been several alterations in the ship. Amongst others we have 2 long nine-pounders; this will make us much more independent: several cases occurred during the last war where very small vessels terribly injured large ones, from having one great gun & keeping out of range of the other. I am sorry to see so many new faces on the deck, in the whale boat which took me ashore there was not one old-hand.

Hmmmm. Nunatak is blithering on about wanting a continuous plankton recorder for the Beagle. If she gets one of those to play with aboard I want a 9 pounder cannon. Just for authenticity, you understand.

This entry lifted from the Darwinbeagle blog, where Roger kindly serves up Darwin's daily entries from Darwin's Beagle journal for our pleasure. The originals can be seen at the (my superlative mine is exhausted when talking about it) Complete Works of Darwin Online website.

John Murray was Charles Darwin's publisher

and his archives have just been opened to the public. The letter in which Darwin proposes his book about natural selection is among them, image here. A great job by the National Library of Scotland. Darwin had other links with Scotland: he studied medicine at Edinburgh University but found the barbarity of 1820s surgery offputting and he decided not to follow his father into the family business. He also made some of his early sampling field trips in Scotland, collecting on the shores of the Firth of Forth and at Prestonpans ten miles north of Edinburgh. He befriended trawler crews and went fishing with them, rummaging through their catches as they were emptied from the nets in search of specimens.

Well done that government!

The Government is clear that creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science.

All clear? That's the key line in the government response to an online petition expressing concern at an attempt a pro-ID pressure group. Evolution=science, has a place in science classes. Creationism and ID ain't and get the door of the lab slammed firmly on their prying fingers.

The Register reports, Pharyngula crows. That doesn't mean we don't need a replica Beagle of course. We need to make the Darwin 200 celebrations bigger, the science education better and for that we need a replica HMS Beagle on the water in 2009. Especially now we've got friends and scientific collaborators in high places. Oh yeah.

The pale blue dot...

...and some rather fascinating aquamarine streaks.

Today is not the anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth, death, or anything else, but I just so happened to stumble over his visage today on my way to a slew of youtube videos poking fun at creationist banana-awe. It's as good a reason as any to highlight the great science communicator: just watch him go
...and go
...and go.

Carl Sagan was a great speaker, and no where was he more eloquent and moving than when he waxed lyrical about the pale blue dot, our precious earth set in the great "bastion and citadel of the stars". Nothing comes close to the image of our planet from space for communicating in an instant the wonder, vulnerability and mystery of our shared home.

Pictures from space can also have more direct scientific relevance, such as this one showing a plankton bloom off the coast of Patagonia. We can hypothesise about what's going on in the different ribbons of colour there, but it takes real work on the ground to validate and calibrate those sorts of inferences. Enter: Beagle.

Imagine it...
Astronaut: "Greetings, Beagle, you're about to enter a plankton bloom."
Beagle crew: "Thanks, we'll lower the continuous plankton recorder and step up our rate of metagenomic sampling."
Astronaut: "10:04am Beagle, you are moving into a new zone of the plankton bloom."
Beagle crew: "Roger that, time point marked on plankton recorders and gene sampling filters replaced."

Friday reading.

Pay attention now, I'll be testing the class on Monday. An excellent interview with Prof. Steve Jones in New Statesman here. (As long as you get past the first paragraph without headbutting your monitor. It is journalistic knackers of the worst sort: a non-scientist castigating non-climate scientists for not writing about climate change.) And if you haven't already, bookmark The Dispersal of Darwin and visit regularly. From a recent standing start Michael's blog become a really excellent collection of Darwinalia and links.

Tangled Bank

the Origin-inspired science blog carnival is up for perusal here. Worth a click for the introduction alone.

BBC: ignores Britain's maritime heritage.

Libby Purves is a proper sailor. She's owned a Contessa 26 (nods of approval from all who know their boats), crewed on sail training square riggers and writes for the UK cruising mag Yachting Monthly. She's wiped the salt spray off her face, has lived life at 20 degrees and knows of what she writes. She's also a regular BBC broadcaster hosting Midweek on Radio 4 and writes for The Times, the newspaper for which the Beagle's Captain Robert FitzRoy became weather forecaster later in his career. In her most recent column she comments on its shabby treatment of our maritime heritage. Evidence for the prosecution was its refusal to broadcast the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar in 2005. It clashed with the G8 summit and the Glastonbury festival. In Libby's words:

You get a sense of men in suits desperately clawing for youthful edginess, for membership of any hip minority rather than horrid old “Middle England”. During that week of Live 8 craziness, another huge BBC presence was down at Glastonbury straining to be cool. Meanwhile, there was the Trafalgar Fleet Review – tall ships and fireworks, a unique assembly of international vessels, a powerful message about the continuing importance of the maritime sector to everything we do. It was spectacular: it drew 750,000 people to the banks of the Solent (six times as many as Glastonbury, three times as many as Live 8). Yet the BBC would not carry it on terrestrial television, even though cameras were there for News 24. People without satellite or Freeview (who are legion, and often fond of ships) were dismayed, betrayed at a national hour by the national broadcaster.

The snub was plainly a matter of policy, not resources: it would have been possible to simulcast News 24 on BBC1 for the crucial hour, replacing (for God’s sake!) an Antiques Roadshow and a tennis recording. But no: the message was: “Ugh, ships, so retro! And ugh, imperialistic! Who cares? Everyone, like, prefers Madonna and Geldof and Primal Scream.”

This from the national broadcaster of a nation whose identity and history is shaped by our ability to build ships, sail them well and sometimes recklessly, win naval battles, do things that history views askance (slavery, colonisation) and do things necessary to civilisation (exploration, surveying, trade, helping some bloke discover evolution). As I mentioned in a previous post, the maritime heritage of another country is getting BBC airtime. Or you could always have your ship burn down.

Now, we at the Beagle Project think we've got a rather neat idea with lots of TV appeal: a great many TV production companies almost incontinent with the possibilities of working with us agree. The BBC doesn't. A shame, because as anyone who has seen the (insert superlative of choice) wildlife series presented by David Attenborough, when they do it they're worldbeaters. And our talking a replica Beagle round the world would give them the biggest vistas to film, the most significant theory in biology to communicate and the biggest questions facing humanity to confront.

Reasons to build a Beagle (n+1)

Bolton in the North West of England has seen the latest outbreak of educational IDiocy, as the head of a school has suggested that Intelligent Design is suitable subject material for? Discussion in science lessons. Good story from the local paper the Bolton News here including a poll in which 70% of the good burghers of Bolton give the IDiotic idea a loud, prolonged rational raspberry. Mr Williamson is pedalling the intellectually bankrupt 'teach the controversy' line beloved of Creationists and ID shrills in America. The bandwagon which this educationalist helped push blogged about here.

H/t to Psilordinary for the story. He runs a blog called Truth in Science revealed dedicated to exposing and countering those bilge-purveyors Truth in Science (no link). If you're concerned about these incursions onto the turf of the science curriculum (and you should be), add him to your blogroll and visit regularly.

Conrad Martens

sailed on HMS Beagle from 1833 and produced many wonderful sketches and watercolours. Cambridge University have just posted scans of his sketchbooks. Furrfu! has posted a tremendous painting of Adventure, the schooner bought by Commander FitzRoy to help with the surveying work that was Beagle's prime job on the 1831-36 voyage.

The Darwin Correspondence Project has a letter from Charles Darwin to his sister Caroline describing the purchase:

A great event has happened here in the history of the Beagle.— it is the purchase of a large Schooner 170 tuns, only 70 less than the Beagle: The Captain has bought it for himself, but intends writing to the Admiralty for men &c &c.—f8 Wickham will have the command; it will double our work, perhaps shorten our cruize, will carry water & provisions, & in the remote chance of fire or sticking on a Corall reef may save many of our lives.

(and a pretty horrendous gale around Cape Horn), full text here

Despite FitzRoy's on the spot judgement of of his situation, the Admiralty failed to support FitzRoy's decision to buy the Adventure and he was forced to sell her, also reported by Darwin in a letter home:

You will be sorry to hear, the Schooner, the Adventure is sold; the Captain received no sort of encouragement from the Admiralty & he found the expense so large a vessel so immense he determined at once to her up.

full text here.

Here at the Beagle Project we have mulled over an Adventure Project, too: while Beagle is away around the world, a replica Adventure could be continuing the evolution, Darwin and science education work around Britain (and if you haven't just click over and look at the picture, schooners have the lovliest lines of boats), but one thing at a time: got to get the Beagle underway first.

Boo-reaucrats reject Darwin home heritage bid.

The bid to have Down House designated a world Heritage Site has been withdrawn by the UK Government Department of Culture Media and Sport. BBC story here. The people at Unesco were unconvinced of Down House's (photos by Richard Carter) merits, so the outline bid was withdrawn. A revised bid will be submitted during Darwin's anniversary year of 2009.

Down House really is Darwin central: you want to go and stand on the very ground where history was made and the intellectual landscape of the world decisively and permanently changed, Down House is it. If you wanted to fly a flag (a big, proud flag) somewhere in the world to proclaim 'birthplace of evolution' Down House is where the flagpole should be planted. Congrats to all involved in the bid, we wish them well for 2009, will be cheering them on. And as for the distant bureaucrats who nixed it, they deserve a very British obloquy:

A good slap across the kite with a large fish. Saturday update: The Guardian reports too.

Charles does Chicago

with Field Museum's Darwin exhibition which opens in Chicago on Friday. It's getting good coverage in the Chicago press. Bill Mullen at the Chicago Tribune gives an excellent brief account of Darwin's life and work to mark it, Chicagoist (like the name) weighs in with a pithy, approving piece while Donna Vickroy at the Daily Southtown gets it in the first para of her piece: "To think, Darwin Almost missed the boat". As Darwin said:

"The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career."

If you're in the area, do pay a visit.

Beaglebloghousekeeping

Our chef de science Nunatak has been away, but left instructions to post a clustr map. Done. Lots of dots already.

Darwin's experiments

described in one easy to digest page at science weblog Afarensis.

H/t Coturnix.

Get lost in a tangled bank.

If you haven't been living on the side of a vent at the bottom of the Atlantic you'll have heard of blog carnivals. One of the best science carnivals is Tangled Bank and number 81 has just been posted at The Behavioural Ecology Blog, and a champion job Matt has done with it, so click over. And the inevitable Darwin link? It's in the title, which comes from the last paragraph of The Origin of Species:

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

And if that doesn't get you to the barricades, check you've still got a pulse.

Environmental metagenomics: explained.

Our director of science is keen that we should use the decks of the Beagle for metagenomic sampling. A splendid idea, and if like me you are a bit hazy about what it is, the answer is in a lucid report in PDF format here.

Update: Bad link to pdf fixed, thanks to Humblewoodcutter.

Science in the age of sail

An ever-so-slightly hungover Nunatak here, reporting on yesterday's splendid meeting at the Linnean Society in London ("In Linnaeus' Wake: Three hundred years of marine discovery"), followed by an even more splendid reception aboard the Swedish ship Gotheborg (pictured at left, 5:57pm last night in Canary Wharf).

It is always a delight to attend meetings at the "Linsock" as it is affectionately known (pictured below right), where Darwin's and Wallace's papers on natural selection were read aloud to a weirdly bored audience on 1st July 1858.

This particular conference was a very special event for anyone interested in the history of science, not least a museum denizen with a soft spot for famous dead scientists and the square riggers that bore them to fame.

The presentations ranged from biographics on Linnaeus to 18th century microscopy to marine biodiversity to maritime history and back again. To provide a glimpse into the day, here is a little list of some things that I learned:

• in addition to huge booties of tea, nearly 1000 scientific specimens were delivered back to Sweden by every Swedish East India Company (SOIC) voyage
• Linnaeus mistakenly thought that fungal spores could turn into tiny swarming animals and thus misclassified fungi as animals, assigning them to a group he aptly named "Chaos" (in fact fungi form a separate kingdom altogether and the rainwater he used was contaminated by protozoa)
• The Natural History Museum in London holds 70 million specimens
• this century, warm water marine species have moved northward by a whopping 10 degrees latitude (that's right, George, the ocean is getting warmer)
  
• sperm whales' teeth have rings like trees that you can use to track their past migrations
• there are more species of deep sea vent bivalves in the family Lucinidae than there are bird species on the entire planet
• Linnaeus was the first to classify elephant seals
• you can't stop a sailing ship
• RRS Discovery was one of the last sailing vessels ever used for science (just you wait!)
• % of the deep sea explored by man < % of the moon's surface explored by man
• oil companies sometimes do some good
• marine biodiversity increases with depth, peaking at about 2000 metres
• 40/94 members of Cook's Endeavour crew died, and this was considered a success
• the O-ring was patented in 1948
• the third voyage of the Gotheborg ended badly
• the replica of the Gotheborg was built using 18th century craftsmanship, right down to its hemp ropes and linen sails

After absorbing all of those bullet points, it was time to absorb some alcohol. Excited delegates scurried over to Canary Wharf to partake of unlimited champagne spiked with lingonberry liqueur aboard the replica Gotheborg. She's quite simply spectacular, and she helped me to imagine what it might be like to have a real-life oak-creaking, salt-smelling Beagle underfoot.

After the last lingonberry cocktail was drained and I had spread the word about The Beagle Project to as many tipsy bigwigs as is humanly possible, it was time to disembark and head back to our beds, and dreams of hosting similar celebrations aboard another notable square rigger in 2009 when the drink of choice will be gin and tonic.

Reasons we need a Beagle (n)

because the Church of England's head of education Rev. Jan Ainsworth has suggested that intelligent design should be taught in schools:

Ms Ainsworth told the Times Educational Supplement: "While it is not something I would subscribe to, it is a recognition that there are different ways of looking at the evidence. You would get howls of protest from the scientific community, which would say there is absolutely no place for it in the curriculum. But you could do it in history of science," she added, pointing out that religious education lessons in CofE schools include discussions of different beliefs.

Rev Ainsworth is responsible for 4,600 schools. The CofE's spokesman was reported to be playing down the significance of the comments:

A spokesman for the Church of England said Ms Ainsworth was "simply representing the fact that some schools currently discuss intelligent design within the context of lessons exploring how our understanding of science has developed historically". He continued: "Ms Ainsworth was not suggesting that intelligent design should be taught as a scientifically-based theory, but merely stating that some schools do include the topic on their history of science curriculum, and that she does not propose to prevent them from doing so. "She believes that schools should take a lead from the national curriculum, and use discretion in enhancing this with discussions about the theory of intelligent design where appropriate," he added.

Sigh.
Write down 100 times: Intelligent design is not a theory, it is an opinion with no supporting evidence and is based on an argument from ignorance and incredulity.

Hat-tip Pharyngula for ruining an otherwise lovely Saturday morning with this. And to MissPrism who made the Darwin puppet and supported us through a blog and buysale. MissP is a good oeuf and currently spending time being put right by the NHS following a torn calf muscle. Click on over and help her recuperation with some nice comments. The Darwin puppet found a new home in Canada thanks to a generous donation from an Humblewoodcutter. I only hope Chas did his share of the lifting in the recent house move.

Not very envious...

of Nunatak who is spending the day at the In Linnaeus' Wake conference.

"The meeting will cover the historical importance of the SOIC and Linnaeus, life aboard an 18th century vessel, and scientifically will focus on marine systematic and taxonomic discoveries from the last three hundred years. It will show how in the age of DNA sequencing and deep-sea robotic submarines, much of marine science is still in the ‘discovery phase’, just as it was in Linnaeus’ day."

Then in the evening she's putting on her best going out labcoat for a reception aboard Gotheborg, a replica square rigger of the type used by the Swedish East India Company.

Science + square rigger = sexy science event. British science could do with a square rigger of its own. Nunatak promises pics and a report.