Messing About In Sailboats

Plankton by Ruth Padel

The deck is dazzle, fish-stink, gauze-covered buckets. Gelatinous ingots, rainbows of wet flinching amethyst and flubbed, iridescent cream. All this means he’s better; and working on a haul of lumpen light. Polyps, plankton, jellyfish. Sea butterflies, the pteropods. ‘So low in the scale of nature, exquisite in their forms! You wonder at so much beauty – created, apparently, for such little purpose!’ They lower his creel to blue pores of subtropical ocean. Wave-flicker, white as a gun-flash over the blown heart of sapphire. Peacock eyes, beaten and swollen, tossing on lazuline steel. This was written by Ruth Padel, a descendant of Charles Darwin. In commemoration of Darwin's bicentennial and the sequential of the Origin of Species, she has produced a book of poetry inspired by his writings - Darwin a life in poems. Here is what she has to say about this poem in particular: "This marks the moment when... Read more →

Happy Darwin Day

200 years and counting. I don't seem to be evolving though! In fact I am going backwards. I just had a delicious banana. It's a matter of time before my knuckles start scraping the ground. Check out my favorite Darwin web site and a very worthwhile initiative the Beagle Project. Peter McGrath, one of project's founders is a skipper of tall ships and guest writer extraordinaire on my blog. Happy Darwin day to you Pete! Read more →

Project Beagle in the Times

Project Beagle was written up today in the Times (the UK one): In the wake of the Beagle Peter Davies From the all-too-modest service career of HMS Beagle, it could never have been divined that she was destined to become one of the most famous ships ever to sail the seven seas. Commissioned in 1820 as a ten-gun brig — a two-masted square-rigger, and one of the lowlier forms of naval life — she never saw action, and spent most of her first few years in reserve, moored and unmanned. In 1825 the pace of her life quickened, when she was adapted as a survey ship. A third, fore-and-aft rigged, mast was added, turning her into a barque, improving her looks and, more importantly, her seakeeping qualities.... Continued Read more →

Happy Darwin Day

It's Darwin's 198th Bithday! And that means it's 2 years till Project Beagle launches. Please give generously. For the full skinny on Darwin Day skip on over to Project Beagle Blog. There are some strange things going down for the big man's anniversary. Trivia Question: Which famous American was born on the same day? Read more →

More on the Beagle Project

A great post on Scienceblogs on the Beagle Project. What are you waiting for? Send them some money! I first saw about this on Pharyngula the other day and I think it is a majestic idea! A group of Brits are trying to build a replica of HMS "Beagle" and, on the Darwin Bicentennial in 2009, sail around the world following the exact path Charles Darwin made on his historic voyage. Have scientists, journalists and, yes, bloggers, on board who will do research, take pictures and videos, and write their ship-logs for everyone to read (if a ship-log is on a blog, is it called shlog?). Stop at every port and promote evolution! Most definitely take your time to check out their website and blog to learn more about the project. They'll have wi-fi on the ship....More Read more →