ONLY TWO MORE SHOPPING DAYS LEFT 'TIL DARWIN DAY!!

[eppur_se_muova]

Darwin Day is a global celebration of science and reason held on or around Feb. 12, the birthday anniversary of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. This year {2009} marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth.

On this website you can find all sorts of information about Charles Darwin and the International Darwin Day Fundation. If you are hosting a Darwin Day event, you can post information about it on our events listing. You can also locate Darwin Day programs near you by searching our events section.

We have also provided resources for hosting Darwin Day events, including promotional support and a list of potential Darwin Day presenters.

http://www.darwinday.org/

The International Darwin Day Foundation promotes public education about science and encourages the celebration of Science and Humanity throughout the global community. IDDF is administered by the American Humanist Association (AHA).

You can even sign a petition, to be delivered to President Obama:

Dear Supporter,

Far-right extremists are using every trick in the book to keep the teaching of evolution out of science classes, and to the degree they are successful they are undermining American values of scientific inquiry and integrity.

Their thinly-veiled religious agenda will have negative effects on our society. Incomplete education about evolution in our classrooms sends the message that not only can the theory of natural selection be sidestepped, but all science can be muzzled if it doesn't neatly fit within a particular ideology. Failure to provide our children with a first rate science education will create future generations who are scientifically illiterate and unable to compete in the global market of ideas.

We need our elected leaders to speak out about the importance of scientific knowledge and its contribution to the advancement of humanity, and send a signal that religious infiltration into our science classrooms will not be tolerated. That's why we're asking you to sign our petition urging President Obama to recognize Darwin Day.

Darwin Day, celebrated every year on February 12, is a day in which people gather together to commemorate the life and work of Charles Darwin, who was born this day in 1809. Charles Darwin was the first to propose the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection—a theory that has done more to unify and bring understanding to the life sciences than any other. Darwin Day is a celebration of this discovery and of scientific progress.

Our petition asks President Obama to issue a proclamation on Darwin Day that honors Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection and that calls on all Americans to preserve scientific discovery as a bedrock of our society. It also asks Americans to commemorate the day with appropriate events and activities.

Sign our petition today to let Obama know that you're on the side of science and you need him to be, too. If President Obama will issue a Darwin Day proclamation, it will send a strong signal to our elected officials in Congress and in the school boards that the American people want scientific integrity to be preserved.

So please sign our petition today and let your voice be heard!

Sincerely,



Roy Speckhardt
Executive Director
International Darwin Day Foundation

Locally, we'll be hearing an anthropologist speak on recent discoveries in Georgiastan:

To celebrate Darwin Day, UALR will present guest lecturer Herman Pontzer discussing “Out of Africa 1.0: Darwin, Dmanisi, and the First Humans to Explore the Globe” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11, in the Dickinson Hall Auditorium.


Pontzer is an assistant professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.

Remains of hominids – any member of the biological family homidae (the “great apes”), including the extinct humans – found at the Dmanisi site in the Republic of Georgia are the oldest hominids, Homo ergaster, found outside of Africa.

Pontzer is involved in the ongoing excavations in the Republic of Georgia. The fieldwork is providing an opportunity to apply results from the lab to the fossil record.

Darwin Day is a global celebration of science held on or around Feb. 12, the birthday anniversary of Charles Darwin.

For more information, contact the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at 569-3173

I think I'll phone the bookstore and ask if they're doing anything special for Darwin Day. :)

[Skidmore]

1. Our youngest grandson was

named Darwin in honor of this great man--and he's going to be a great thinker too some day. Right now his mommy is trying to sign him up for preschool.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. There was a Charles Darwin, Jr. -- not the son, but the grandson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Galton_Darwin

Trained in mathematics, worked in physics.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/39998

And of course his grandfather Erasmus, who penned some speculations suggestive of evolution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_Darwin

Quite an accomplished family!

[Christa]

2. K & Highly rec'd nt

[FLyellowdog]

4. Great idea.

I'd better write it on my hand so I won't forget. :hi: