Goring creationist oxen...

it's good to be stroked every now and again, and this post from the Readers and Writers blog has left us purring. It says nothing about our shipbuilding but is very complimentary about the writing on the blog:

And, as only the Brits can do, the blog is extremely well written. Now believers in creationism and intelligent design, take note: Our interest in the blog is its writing and history, but be warned that the Beagle bloggers do gore your oxen.

and

Much of the rest of the blog also is written with a sense of humour, but with a serious devotion to Darwin and the tall ship replica that will celebrate him and his groundbreaking science.

I hasten to point out that half the credit (and all the credit for the science) must go to fellow Beagle blogger Nunatak, who is from the USA (as is Stacey, who has yet to break her Beagleblogging duck).

Goring creationist oxen. We like that.

HMS Beagle replica: science aboard.

The replica HMS Beagle is being designed and will be operated with real science in mind. We'll be both running long-term projects and inviting bids for shorter researcher led projects. Details on the new Beagle Project science page.

Evolution and how to turn little kids into scientists

Hurrah for the Sunday Star Times of New Zealand and their feature about physicist Paul Callaghan, most recent winner of the Blake Medal an award given to commemorate NZ sailing great Sir Peter Blake. Science, sailing, where's the evolution?

Here: first of the key scientific concepts Paul Callaghan says we should understand is evolution:

"THE FIRST concept I would choose, even as a physicist, would be Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection. It's a really very beautiful idea."

His other big ideas:
2. Big bang
3. Our planet
4. DNA
5. Radiation and waves
6. Hot and cold
And how does the piece end?

"HOW TO TURN KIDS INTO LITTLE SCIENTISTS

1: Give them a compass. "It's this magical little thing: you turn it around and it always turns the same way. What's going on there?"

2: Put a magnifying glass in their hand. "They make things bigger, burn holes in things with sunlight, project images on the wall."

3: Get them to plant a seed. "It's just magic."

4: Float things and fly things with them. "Make model aeroplanes; give them this idea that we live in a fluid, and you make this little thing, and it skips across the room."

5: Give them a prism. Follow in Isaac Newton's footsteps and pass light through it, to make a rainbow."

New Zealand is on the replica Beagle's itinerary anyway (Darwin wasn't too impressed with the place, but it has scrubbed up well since) and Paul Callaghan and journalist Adam Dudding are on the invite-aboard-for-tea-and-cake list.

Christ's College Darwin sculpture update

Sculptor (and Beagle Project supporter) Anthony Smith has written about his Darwin bicentenary commission to cast a life size Charles Darwin for the college here.

The dispersal of Darwin

blog is well worth bookmarking and visiting. But dispersal author Michael Barton FCD has a secret sorrow. He is not British, or at least not a resident of this damp isle, so laments in comments he can't go and sign the 10 Downing Street make February the 12 Darwin Day petition. So will some right-thinking person click over and put your name down in his stead? Ta.

Stand back, I'm going to do science (2)

Maybe this one of Darwin in his more mature years should say 'stand back, I've done some great science'. This photoshop by Anthony Smith for which many thanks. Anthony is a zoology graduate, artist and sculptor with a studio at Christ's College Cambridge, where Darwin got a degree in between enjoying himself and persecuting the local beetles. Christ's wish to celebrate their famous graduate in bronze, and have commissioned Anthony to produce a sculpture. Go visit Anthony's website. Check out the squid and the young Linnaeus. There are not enough graven images of Darwin in the world. There should be one in every biology lab in the country of his birth for a start.

Buy the Stand Back t-shirt (without the hirsuit Darwin inside) here. And if you're a UK resident, don't forget the Downing Street Darwin Day petition: click over and sign up.

Many thanks to the Cothill Trust

for their £5000 donation towards the replica Beagle rebuild. Hopefully many of their young pupils will one day become scientists. Maybe a couple of them will say, 'I got interested in science when I went on that replica Beagle...' We look forward to welcoming pupils form Cothill House aboard, teaching them a bit about Charles Darwin, showing them the ropes, heads ('They went to the toilet like that? Ewww.') and the cannons, maybe taking them out on a day sail.

Having worked in sail training, I'm amazed at how many adults I meet who as teenagers sailed with the Ocean Youth Trust and found their time under sail a life-changing experience.

Downing Street Darwin Day petition: come on, click over and sign up.

Charles Darwin's Beagle diaries

Montevideo 27 July 1832
I had no opportunity of taking a long walk, so that I went with the Captain to Rat island. whilst he took sights. I found some animals & amongst them there was one very curious. At first sight every one would pronounce it to be a snake: but two small hind legs or rather fins marks the passage by which Nature joins the Lizards to the Snakes.

Stand back...

Some people in the British establishment might have wished Darwin had never set foot on HMS Beagle, never tried science (Queen Victoria, f'rinstance declined to give Darwin a knighthood on the advice of her Bishops, gainsaying the advice of her beloved husband Albert who was a science and progress fan). I bet some monumental twerps were knighted that year. Still, we're glad Darwin tried science and that Nunatak tried photoshopping. More to come.

Buy the t-shirt (without the Darwin inside) here.

Darwin Day Downing Street petition

Stephen Rushbrook, keep some time free for tea and cake aboard the replica HMS Beagle sometime in 2009 as our honoured guest. Stephen has started a petition on the 10 Downing Street (the UK Prime Minister's London gaff, for our overseas readership) website asking for 12 February (Charles Darwin's birthday) to be declared Darwin Day. 150 signatories so far, do pop over and add your name. Then go and mither your friends and relatives to do the same. Only open to UK residents.

Reasons to build a replica HMS Beagle...

because we want more students to say (and do) this. Cartoon from XKCD, which you should visit daily.

Update: Nunatak points out in comments that this completely ace cartoon is available on a t-shirt here. No thorax is complete without one.

Is there anyone out there who could photoshop Charles Darwin wearing a 'stand back, i'm going try science' t-shirt. Please. It would be cool, and so right.

The pshaw heard round the world

When Charles Darwin saw the foot-long nectar spur on the Madagascan comet orchid, right, he predicted that a moth with a tongue at least a foot long must also exist. How else could such a freakishly long nectary be explained?

He wrote, "our English sphinxes have probosces as long as their bodies: but in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches!"

Entomologists responded with a resounding, collective pshaw. Such a moth had never been found nor, they pompously surmised, would it ever be found.

Sadly, Darwin died before he was vindicated. But vindicated he was, when, over 40 years later, the giant hawk moth, below right, was discovered with a foot-long proboscis to match the orchid's foot-long nectary. It was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta to honor Darwin's prediction.

You can read more about the orchid, the moth and Darwin's prediction here, on the excellent AMNH Darwin online exhibition (also the source of the orchid photo above).

And as if that weren't enough, now you can even see the Madagascan comet orchid up close and personal at the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

When tall ships come to town (2)

Half a million people turn out to have a look, if the Halifax experience is anything to go by. That's a lot of eyes to get science outreach, education and the facts about evolution on front of. And your brand.

When tall ships come to town (1) here.

Words to make a sailor's skin goosebump

(and set a larval scientist's pulse racing) "My eyes were rejoiced with the sight of studding sails, alow & aloft, — that is wind abaft the beam & favourable.

We are driving along at the rate 8 & 9 knots per hour. A wonderful shoal of Porpoises at least many hundreds in number crossed the bows of our vessel. The whole sea in places was furrowed by them; they proceeded by jumps, in which the whole body was exposed; & as hundreds thus cut the water it presented a most extraordinary spectacle. When the ship was running 9 knots these animals could with the greatest ease cross & recross our bows & then dash away right ahead. Thus showing off to us their great strength & activity. Several flying-fish were skimming over the water; considering time of year & Latitude 31° ., 37' S: Long 49°., 22' W, I was surprised to see them." Charles Darwin's Beagle Diaries 17th 18th and 19th July 1832.

Beagle in audio

And now, for your listening pleasure, a simulated soundscape of what it was (and will be) like to voyage aboard the Beagle. This delicious little discovery comes courtesy the American Museum of Natural History's Darwin Exhibition online.

48:17:22

the percentage of the British population that believes in evolution, "intelligent design" and creationism respectively, according to a MORI survey reported at new blog on the block Atheism and Religion.

I've forgotten how many reasons to build a replica HMS Beagle we're up to now. But the fact that we have allowed 39% of the the population to walk away from compulsory science education without having evolution taught to them in a compelling and comprehensible fashion is surely another to add to the reason pile.

Evolution in today's Daily Telegraph.

Professor Steve Jones writes (and writes well) about the beneficial effects of evolution outside the natural world - in the design of drugs and computing. Click over.

£5000? Thanks. You're Wellcome.

Thanks to the Wellcome Trust for their £5000 towards our our educational efforts as part of their Darwin's Children initiative. Building a pretty ship to celebrate Darwin's 200th is only partly the point of the Beagle Project, it's what we do with it that matters. Wellcome is interested in continuing professional development for science teachers, and the money is to help us develop ideas in this area from our work aboard and ashore. The ideas will be presented at a conference in October when the best will be selected, as is only natural. So thanks to Wellcome.

US museums fight back

against creationist and ID bilge: Scientific American reports here.

Darwin and Fitzroy:

Charles Darwin's Beagle diary 7, 8 and 9th July, Beagle has set sail from and the poor chap was sick as a dog. Meanwhile (though gritted teeth) thank you to the Dispersal of Darwin for reminding me that it was Commander Robert Fitzroy's anniversary on 5th July and Beagleblog missed it. So a belated happy birthday to him.

Coffee at the feet of a giant.

To London for Beagle Project meetings, science director Nunatak and I meet for coffee in the Natural History Museum (more on the outcome of the meetings later). We sat at the table by the statue of Charles Darwin. As you walk into the museum the first thing that greets you is a rather friendly looking sauropod skeleton. The human presence that dominates the entrance atrium is a statue of Richard Owen. When The Origin of Species was published Owen was Superintendent of natural history at the British Museum and was instrumental in the Natural History Museum becoming an independent institution. He was the Big Dog in London science and his opinion mattered. Owen was a brilliant anatomist but disagreed profoundly with Darwin and in 1860 he reviewed the Origin in a manner that Darwin lamented as 'Spiteful, extremely malignant, clever and damaging.' Darwin later described Owen's attitude as 'hatred'.

So we drank our coffee beside the great man's statue, sharing him with a trolley of latte cups and crumby plates waiting to be washed. See how Britain honours its intellectual heroes. There is some muttering that for 2009 Darwin should be moved from the cafeteria to oversee the entrance atrium and Owen packed off to mind the unwashed pots for a while. That might be a recipe for trouble, though. On the other side of the cake and coffee counter is another statue: Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog, PR man and duffer-up-in-chief of opponents of Natural Selection. He reserved particular scorn for Owen. Here he is: looking fairly ferocious. His left hand (out of shot) is clenched into a fist and it looks like he's about to leap from his seat and stick one on a passing creationist. Put Owen's statue near him in 2009 and it may happen. Maybe a better place would be in the big dinosaur gallery, because we have Owen to thank for one of the most evocative words in the English language: dinosaur.

Eight Galapagos tortoises poached

This Tuesday, Galapagos National Park officials announced that eight giant tortoises were found killed by poachers. There are only 7,000 giant tortoises left, so this is quite a blow. Even worse, some of those found dead had been painstakingly hatched from artificially incubated eggs and raised for seven years by scientists before being released into their natural habitat ...only to be slaughtered eight years later by poachers.

A tragedy, yes, but also a call to arms for local educators. Only someone who doesn't understand the value of the Galapagos flora and fauna to science and history--not to mention the Galapagos economy--would commit such an act simply to sell a few hunks of bush meat on the black market.

This just goes to show that the Galapagos Archipelago really is a "World Heritage Site In Danger" and may even lose its UNESCO World Heritage Site status as a result.

Want to help? Why not link over to the Galapagos Conservation Trust and find out how.

Beagle book clarification.

It took me almost a year to get the HMS Beagle book (below) because it needed reprinting and the publishers seemed reluctant to do the necessary. There are now some available, you can order it through your local bookshop, presumably they get them from the same place as Amazon. It wasn't the local bookshop's fault and maybe I was less coherent that usual. I know it's unfashionable in these one click days, but go local.

Update: there is one copy of the shelves at the Natural History Museum gift shop.

Beagle fans, get thee to a bookshop...

by Karl Heinz Marquardt. Rare as hen's teeth, I've had this on order for almost a year, the bookshop tells me only 29 copies are available in the UK. It has drawings of every conceivable bit of the Beagle and an extensive, detailed history of her build, refits and voyages. A must have for Beaglegeeks.

Beagle Project radio silence...

where are we up to with the Project? Well, waiting on the decision of several applications for funds. One is due in this week and we're about as relaxed as if we were sitting on an antheap. We are in negotiations with another large potential sponsor which has said if we even hint at their identity it's all over, so mouths firmly shut here until we can say something.

However, we will soon be in a position to announce a hugely exciting scientific link up which will transform our science programme from merely exciting to enormously expensive, complex, eye-widening science on a global, environmentally important scale.

Missed it...

Thursday 1 July 1858, the paper on Natural Selection by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace was read to the Linnean Society. The President of the Society left the meeting muttering that the year had: 'not been marked by any of those striking discoveries which revolutionize, so to speak, our department of science.' (Anecdote from 'Darwin' by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. If it is not on your bookshelf, it should be.)

Snail's Tales was more on the ball than we dopes at the Beagle Project, and he has links.

Where did the dodo die?

A cave in Mauritius as it turns out. Scientists were so excited by the find that they set a guard of four heavies to make sure no-one stole or contaminated the remains from which they hope to extract DNA. Good find Richard Carter FCD (the story, not the bones, or I'd be right over there to buy him a pint.)

The story could only better if the find was in an ancient midden, then we could report on a dodo in the doodoo.

Science journalism and things Canadian

Baroness Susan Greenfield looks at the crazy attitudes that push women out of science in today's Observer newspaper. Refreshingly, the Observer also devotes three pages to science, based on Tim Adams asking why we are in a new age of scientific ignorance. Poorly paid and under-resourced science teachers, a bonkers university funding system that lets media studies thrive and science wither, crap pay for science academics, poor reporting of science in the UK media is my guess. Next! It's a good Sunday for science: the Sunday Times profiles scientist Craig Venter whose methods (going round the world on a boat discovering things) have caused many to hyperventerlate. We like him. Happy to perpetuate a stereotype, whichever subeditor yakked up the headline called Venter 'mad'. Which in this case is probably shorthand for 'He's cleverer than me by an order of magnitude and a billionaire. Not that I'm bitter.'

And our cluster map tells us we have readers in Canada, so raise a glass in their general direction and wish them a very happy Canada Day.

To neatly combine these two threads, let's recap the sorry tale of Inkycircus, a thoroughly good science blog written by three women. Based in London, they wanted to open a science magazine aimed at? Women. What a bonzer idea, but this being Britain it was doomed. Two of the Inkettes are foringers: Canadian and American, and not being rich enough, married enough or criminally unprincipled enough, they were desired to bog off home. They took their good idea with them and have since set up their magazine Inkling in Canada. Read the sorry tale in their own words here.