The Beagleblog

has moved here.

Please update your blogrolls, bookmarks and favourites, tell your friends, colleagues and anyone who wants to see a replica HMS Beagle sailing the seas in 2009. This will remain as an archive, so if you have links here, they'll still work. And as I said in an earlier post, if you have blogged about us and are not our blogroll at our new home, leave a comment and it will be put right.

Visit the blog often, because as the Readers and Writers Blog says

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.

We promise to gore creationist oxen with as much eloquence and humour as at our previous berth and to rouse the scientific, evolutionary masses to give Charles Darwin the 200th birthday he deserves, by building launching a replica HMS Beagle.

PS: Big science link up announcement coming very soon. Now bookmark our new blog address.

We get mail: what's with the puppet?

The puppet (below) was the idea (and dare I say creation?) of biologist blogger Miss Prism, who ran a blog and buy sale in aid for Beagle Project build funds. This caught the attention of PZ at Pharyngula, and the rush of bids resulted in Charles being relocated to the home of an Humblewoodcutter in Canada. Humble is an evolved homeschooler, and she recently got in touch to say that Charles Darwin now occupies pride of place in her house, where a recent visitor saw him and asked: 'Is that God?'
In her own words: 'Cue thigh slapping laughter.'

The red noticeboard (Darwin's first evolutionary scribbling were in a red notebook, also the title of the Friends of Charles Darwin weblog) was photoshopped onto MissPrism's original pic by me, and her guest post by Charles Robert Darwin is well worth a click. If anyone else has any great ideas for Beagle fundraising, let us know. (T-shirts are underway.)

Historians: welcome to the 2009 party!

The Journal of Victorian Studies is doing a 2009 special on 'Darwin and the evolution of Victorian studies', editor Jon Smith invites essays on

"all aspects of Darwin and Darwin studies in the Victorian period from scholars working in a range of areas, including history and history of science, literary and cultural criticism, art history, and history of the book."

and

investigations of Darwin's impact on previously overlooked areas (e.g., art and visual culture, psychology and the emotions), and new approaches to Darwinism's impact on Victorian attitudes to gender and courtship, race and empire, literature and publishing.

Well I'm delighted that historians are joining in the party and I'm sure they have much to contribute (some may even wish to sail with us), but as one who has a lot of Google alerts about Darwin and sees daily ranting, gibbering screeds blaming him for the misdeeds of Hitler, Pol Pot, Genghis Khan, Stalin, eugenics, the sky falling on Chicken Licken's head and the failure of the Second Coming, my heart sinks to see him being held responsible for how Victorians copped off with one another. That's a real can of worms.

That rumbling you hear outside Westminster Abbey (London, where the poor chap was buried against his wishes) isn't the traffic its poor old Charles spinning in his grave at the millions of hands tugging his great ideas and life's graft in their own preferred directions.

Hat-tip: The Dispersal of Darwin.

Have you blogged about The Beagle Project

and been miffed at the lack of your inclusion on a blogroll? Well, we'll shortly be migrating to a new home and there's blogroll up there. Do pop over and see if you are included, if not leave a comments or contact me though the Peter Mc profile email thang, and I'll unomit your omission.

The Guardian of science

Though it pains me to supersede Peter Mc's previous post highlighting our noted creationist ox-goring propensity and writing prowess, I just can't wait to show you the Guardian's shiny new science website. If its early days are any indication, it will be one for science enthusiasts of all stripes to keep at the top of their list of bookmarks.

Darwin is particularly well represented in recent blogs, but my favourite of all is this week's science podcast in which Ian McEwan explains why we should all love science. As McEwan says, "curiosity is one of the greatest of human attributes and science is codified curiosity."

There's also a Richard Dawkins podcast, a slide show of newly discovered Antarctic species, and an article on Craig Venter, the bad boy of genomics (and, more relevant for us, metagenomics).

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.