Happy Darwin Day!

It’s Darwin Day, and if you’d like to find a group of like-minded folk celebrating this day, check out the International Darwin Day web site.

Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and humanity held on or around February 12, the day that Charles Darwin was born on in 1809. Specifically, it celebrates the discoveries and life of Charles Darwin — the man who first described biological evolution via natural selection with scientific rigor. More generally, Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

In northern Nevada, we’ll be celebrating at Round Table Pizza in Sparks.

(Image credit: mikero.com)

Darwin's Tree of Life (From the 1840s Notebooks)

The Great Tree of Life. Click on image for full size

Happy Darwin Day!

 Charles Darwin:

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

“Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

Looks like I’ll have to buy it from Barnes & Noble

It’s sold out in my local Barnes & Noble store, so I’ll order two copies online; one copy for me and one for my local library. Borders doesn’t carry it in their brick and mortar stores. I have an email to them asking why. I hope it’s not for the same reason major American publishers declined to publish it. According to author Daniel Loxton,  who was interviewed on the January 26th Skepticality podcast, no American publisher would pick up the book.  Loxton stunningly reveals that one New York publisher thought the book was good, but the subject was “too controversial.”

Yeah, teaching kids the foundation of modern science is too hot to go near.  Arrgh!

Ardi

We’ll be watching. 

 Ardipithecus Handbook.