Charles Darwin died on April 19th, 1882, at 4:00 PM.

The death of Darwin is a very nice post, drawing on the best biographic sources, describing this event, it’s significance, and most importantly, it’s lack of significance. What could I possibly mean by that? Just go read the post.
Consider having […]

The British, like the French, do something cool with their money: They put pictures of famous nationals, often scientists, on the paper bills.
The British 10 pound note has a picture of The Queen, as usual, a hummingbird, and preeminent biologist and geologist Charles Darwin.
Intelligent Design Creationist William Dembski has proposed […]

Yesterday, I completed a series of 8 posts (an intro and seven posts, really) on Charles Darwin, to commemorate his birthday. The following is a set of links to that series
Charles Darwin Bicentennial
Charles Darwin Bicentennial - A Tangled Bank
Charles Darwin Bicentennial- Beagle and The Voyage
Charles Darwin Bicentennial - Coral Reefs
Charles Darwin Bicentennial - Finches
Charles […]

Darwin published hundreds of pages of text, but he also kept notebooks many of which come down to us today. They can be roughly divided into two aspects, the Beagle field notebooks of 1831 – 1836, and his later notes. Sometimes these notes are found in a single book, and one way they […]

…They are as black as the porous rocks over which they crawl & seek their prey as from the Sea. — Somebody calls them “imps of darkness”. — They assuredly well become the land they inhabit. — When on shore I proceeded to botanize & obtained 10 different flowers; but such insignificant, ugly little flowers, […]

Painting of a Gaucho Click to visit Obkouna Art Works

You may have noticed that these posts on Darwin are (so far) in alphabetical order. So this means, if I’m doing Gauchos, I must not be doing Fuegians. Maybe I’m saving Fuegians for 2009!?

But I will mention them. The Fuegians live in Tierra del Fuego (no surprise there) way down at the southern tip of South America. Most people know that, but did you also know that when the Beagle departed Portsmouth Harbor in 1831, it was carrying three Fuegians previously captured by Fitzroy and brought to England?

The Gauchos are the cowboys of the so-called Southern Cone and Pampas. The Gauchos are a Latin American version the horse mounted pastoralists that emerged wherever four things are found together: Grasslands, horses, people and cattle. Like all horse-mounted pastoralists, they have been known to have certain cultural tendencies or traits. These include being incredibly good horse riders. It includes a disdain for any sort of locomotion that does not involve a horse. The Gauchos are held in high esteem as a symbol of trustworthiness and strength, this symbol commonly exploited in regional politics in Argentina and Brazil, or by sports teams (in a mascot-like fashion), even in North America.

The Gauchos are beings with four hooved-legs and two heads because a Gaucho is nothing without his horse. Most wars in the region required Gaucho calvary.

Darwin spent a fair amount of time among the Gauchos, and both Darwin and Fitzroy wrote quite a bit about them.

Darwin’s finches are a classic and historically important example of a species radiation (sometimes called an “adaptive” radiation, but that implies a specific assertion about the cause of the radiation which may not be appropriate in all cases). During the five weeks that Darwin spent on the Galapagos in September, 1835, he made a […]

As Europeans plied the seas in search (and ultimately management) of colonies and conquests, they learned the practical geology they needed to find their way and avoid wrecks. Everyone knows that Charles Darwin’s opportunity to spend several years on the Beagle ultimately rested on the British Admiralty’s need to improve navigation maps, especially […]

The point of the voyage of the Beagle was to make an accurate survey of the coastal areas of South America, and to run a chain of chronometric readings around the world. The making of geological maps of all of the regions visited was also on the “to do” list for this expedition. […]

(Freethinker is euphonics for Atheist)
The SOF (Motto: “Ethics Beyond Belief!”) will hold this event in celebration of Darwin Day:

Last Darwin Post I gave you the famous “Tangled Bank” quote, in which Darwin links the concept of selection to the concept of ecology and thus derives “grandeur in this view of life.”
This is a theme of much of Darwin’s writing in The Origin, and in fact, the Phrase “Tangled Bank” shows up […]

Charles Darwin’s birthday is February 12 (This is also Lincoln’s birthday … and thus close to “Presidents’ Day … which might mean that you get a day off from work for Darwin Day!). There are a number of events planned in celebration of Darwin’s bicentennial birthday, in 2009, so there is an effort to […]

President’s day is for shopping. The true meaning of Thanksgiving is being with your family to consume food with gravy on it. Christmas is the day we celebrate the fact that Jesus dies so that we could get presents (remember that video? Just tried to find a link for it but that […]

From NCSE’s web site:
“Darwin Day approaches: Only a month remains before Darwin Day! Colleges and universities, schools, libraries, museums, churches, civic groups, and just plain folks across the country — and the world — are preparing to celebrate Darwin Day, on or around February 12, in honor of the life and work of […]