Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Darwin!

Charles Darwin once wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”  With that quote in mind, I decided to compile a few of the Darwin related resources that I have recently and happily become inundated with.  So, click, read, download, listen, and watch, all the while gaining knowlege and gradually losing any confidence that you may have had… 

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Recent Resources

• Nature – Darwin 200 – This tribute contains links to News, Opinions, Book & Arts, Research, and Resources associated with the Darwinian Revolution.
• Science – The Year of Darwin – This tribute contains links to Perspectives, Policy Forums, Reviews, etc…, News Features and Stories, Multimedia, and Additional Links associated with the Darwinian Revolution.  Some of these links require a subscription.
• Science News – Darwin Turns 200 – Six articles in the Jan 31, 2009 issue are available for reading online and in pdf format for those with a subscription.
• Natural History Mazagine – The most recent issue (Feb 2009) has a nice Darwinian article titled “Seeing Corals with the Eye of Reason” by Richard Milner.
• National Geographic – “Darwin’s First Clues” by David Quammen, and online quiz on Darwin’s Legacy (Feb 2009).  David Quammen also wrote the article “The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin” about the importance of Alfred Wallace (Dec 2008).
• Smithsonian – Their latest issue (Feb 2009) is a tribute to both Darwin and Lincoln with the articles “What Darwin Didn’t Know” and “Twin Peaks“. 
• Scientific American – Offers a Special Issue on the most powerful idea in science (Jan 2009) The Evolution of Evolution.  This site contains 10 feature articles on the topic of evolution from a diversity of perspectives.
• The New Scientist – Jan 31, 2009 article on “Why Darwin was wrong about the Tree of Life“.

Click, Download, and Listen or Watch

iTunes Audio and Video (download iTunes)

• A Song about Charles Robert Darwin by Artichoke can be searched and downloaded for 99 cents from the iTunes store.  Just use the search to find it.  It is one song from an entire ablum titled 26 Scientists – Volume 1 Anning to Mathlus.  The lyrics to the song can be viewed here.  The tune is rather quite catchy.  While you are at it you can check out “What songs might be on Charles Darwin’s iPod“.  If you want to here the entire song before purchasing a student of mine e-mailed me this link.
• Year of Darwin –  Beginning in the fall of 2008, Case Western Reserve has been celebrating the Darwin’s BD with a series of public lecture, each of which has been audio and video recorded.  The series currently contains 17 separate lectures that have occurred during the year.  Lectures range in length from between 30 minutes and just over an hour, and include familiar names like Sean Carroll, Neil Shubin, Judge John E. Jones III (from the Dover trail), David Quammen, and many others.  These are found in iTunes University.
• Darwin’s Legacy – In a similar fashion, Stanford University invited lecturers on a weekly basis to speak to the beginning this past fall.  This series currently contains 10 separate lectures that can only be downloaded as video, and they are all roughly 2 hours in length.  Speakers include Eugenie Scott, Daniel Dennett, Peter and Rosemary Grant, Nile Eldredge, and others.  These are found in iTunes University.

Other Audio, Videos, and Media

• NPR has has produced a number of segments celebrating Darwin’s 200th BD…
  Celebrating Darwin’s Evolution Revolution – Jan 18
  The Forces the Shaped a Young Charles Darwin – Feb 1
  After 200 years, Darwin’s Legacy still Evolving  – Feb 6
  Darwin’s Britian’s Hero, is still Controversial in U.S.  – Feb 8
  Darwin finds some Followers in the Pulpit – Feb 11
  Darwin’s Theory: Too Big to Publish – Feb 11 – This most recent story also contains a link of a three minute video on “Two Men.  Two Voyages.  One Idea.”
  Moving Darwin into the Digital World – Feb 12
  Darwin’s earthworm experiments broke new ground – Feb 13
  Death of a child may have influenced Darwin’s work – Feb 13
• BBC World website has a number of news stories on Darwin as well.  These audios are only available for a limited amount of time.
• Charlie Rose interview with EO Wilson and James Watson on the importance of Charles Darwin from 2005.  Parts of this video are quite powerful.  I was most struck by James Watson’s reasoning for state that Darwin has been the most important person in all of human history (beginning about 24:13).
• Darwin’s Shrewsbury website has a YouTube video summarizing Darwin’s life, and Morph yourself online software that will morph an uploaded image of yourself into an Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, or Homo erectus, or Homo heidelbergensis.
• Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life by David Attenborough and the BBC (airs on Feb 1, 2009) with online resources brought to us by the Wellcome Trust including a interactive Tree of Life (the SWF file can even be downloaded for use offline).

Click, Purchase, and Read

My Top 10+ Evolutionary Related Book Suggestions in no particular order.

1. The Making of the Fittest, Endless forms Most Beautiful, and Remarkable Creatures by Sean Carroll (I just started this last one)
2. The Great Human Diaspora by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
3. Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal
4. The Music of Life by Denis Noble
5. The Machinery of Life by David Goodsell
6. The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
7. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
8. In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall
9. The Tinkerer’s Accomplice by Scott Turner
10. Power, Sex, and Suicide by Nick Lane
11. The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery
12. The Diversity of Life and Naturalist by E.O. Wilson
13. The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner
14. The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins
15. Acquiring Genomes by Lynn Margulis
16. Evolution for Everybody by David Sloan Wilson
17. most any book by Stephen J. Gould