Subject: Bloomberg coverage; Google News

From: David Harris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 03:38:12 +0000

Dear Boardmembers,

We got good coverage (see below) of Darwin Day events and perspective on 
why we're doing it, from the Bloomberg News service (e.g. 
Bloomberg.com).  They distribute financial related news primarily, but 
Jeffrey Tannenbaum, their reporter, did a nice job on us.  Maybe they 
were thinking of the slogan "It's a jungle out there" that resonates 
with us primates.  ;-)  

Bob and I recommend going to the Google.com site, type in "Darwin Day"  
[with the quote marks], and then click on the word "News" to see where 
Darwin Day is being publicized.  We're clearly becoming newsworthy, 
defined as having been reported on in major newspapers.  We have a 
powerful idea, and we're executing our mission well.

We're still looking forward to seeing what the Columbus DISPATCH writes.

Happy Darwin Day!

  - David

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Happy Birthday Charlie: Darwin Celebrated With Cake, Fossils

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- At La Sierra Community Center in Carmichael, 
California, a ``Happy Birthday, Charlie'' cake will be served.

The day in question is Feb. 12, and the honoree is Charles Darwin, who 
would turn 197 this Sunday had he not succumbed in 1882 to the 
natural-selection process of the grim reaper.

Across the U.S. and around the world, Darwin admirers are honoring the 
British naturalist with hundreds of lectures, parties, films, concerts, 
sermons and museum exhibitions. Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, will 
devote Sunday to the Cambrian explosion, which brought forth a diversity 
of animals on Earth about half a billion years ago -- and a slew of 
fossil records.

Shrewsbury, England, the scientist's birthplace, has assembled a chorus 
of 30 children, three adults and a chamber ensemble to perform 
``Darwin's Dream'' by conductor-composer Graham Treacher, the musical 
highlight of a monthlong festival.

In Scientists' Corner in Westminster Abbey, Darwin is probably resting 
peacefully of late. Since the beginning of last year, at least two U.S. 
court cases and the settlement in a third have favored the inquisitive 
scientist who released ``On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural 
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for 
Life'' in 1859, more than two decades after exploring the world on the 
H.M.S. Beagle.

Court Cases

In December, U.S. District Judge John Jones barred a Pennsylvania school 
district from teaching the ideas of ``intelligent design'' in science 
classes alongside Darwinian evolution. In January 2005, another federal 
court ordered the Cobb County, Georgia, school district to remove 
disclaimer stickers from science textbooks. Just this month, a 
legislator in Wisconsin promised to introduce a bill to outlaw 
``pseudoscience'' in science classes.

And in New York, at the American Museum of Natural History, some 140,000 
people have visited the ``Darwin'' exhibition since Nov. 19. That's 
one-third more than an Albert Einstein show attracted in a comparable 
period.

``Most of the conversations in the exhibition are hushed, almost 
reverent,'' says museum spokesman Michael Walker. There haven't been any 
nasty protests, he says.

Using specimens that Darwin collected, fossils and letters that he 
wrote, the curators document Darwin's theory: that humans and other life 
forms descended from a common ancestor, and that the variety and 
complexity of life on Earth reflect an evolutionary process of ``natural 
selection,'' in which species adapted to changes in the environment over 
millions of years.

Too Complicated

Many creationists shorten that span to some 6,000 years during which God 
created the planet's flora and fauna pretty much as they are today. 
Proponents of intelligent design, an outgrowth of creationism, hold that 
some organisms are too complicated to be explained by natural selection. 
They look hopefully to their friends in state legislatures. Alabama, 
Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah all have 
introduced ``anti-evolution'' bills.

But the bills may proceed slower than the Galapagos tortoises that 
greeted Darwin. Glenn Branch, 37-year-old deputy director of the 
National Center for Science Education, an Oakland, California-based 
nonprofit that defends the teaching of Darwin, detects a change of pace. 
In light of the Pennsylvania ruling, ``we are going to see fewer and 
fewer legislators willing to call for intelligent design,'' Branch 
predicts.

Floating Specimen

Darwin was born on Feb. 12, 1809, the same day as Abraham Lincoln. At 
least 600 birthday events will be held, twice as many as last year, says 
Robert Stephens, a 74-year-old biologist who heads Darwin Day 
Celebration, a Redwood City, California-based nonprofit that promotes 
science. The globe-spanning celebrations can be sampled on the special 
Web site, http://www.darwinday.org .

Londoners may take advantage of special tours through the Darwin Centre 
at the Natural History Museum on Cromwell Road that will show off 
zoological specimen that floated home aboard the Beagle. An ocean and a 
continent away, the University of California at Berkeley's Essig Museum 
of Entomology is offering a display of Galapagos finches, a species 
studied by Darwin.

One man who says he isn't planning to join in the fun on Darwin Day is 
Michael Behe, the 54-year-old author of ``Darwin's Black Box: The 
Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,'' a critique whose 10th anniversary 
edition will be published in March by Simon & Schuster's Free Press 
division. Molecular biology is ``irreducibly complex,'' confounding 
Darwinism, according to the author.

Compatible

``I probably won't attend'' any Darwin Day event anywhere, says Behe, a 
biochemistry professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 
``It's not simply meant to celebrate science or Darwin. It's an 
in-your-face exhibition, saying, `Look what we have on our side, and you 
guys who aren't with us are a bunch of dopes.'''

A talk on the compatibility between evolution and religious faith is 
promised at Christ Episcopal Church in Macon, Georgia. ``The Bible 
wasn't designed to be a textbook, certainly not a science book,'' says 
Wesley Smith, 52-year-old rector of the Macon church. ``You can espouse 
Darwin's theories and still believe in a loving Creator.''

The First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Diego plans a Darwin 
reception at 8 a.m. on Feb. 12, followed by a concert in the afternoon. 
Organizer Vicky Newman says the music will be from a genre called 
``scientific gospel,'' which aims in part to promote the theory of 
evolution.

Scopes Monkey Trial

``Darwin was a religious person,'' says Newman, 60, a research 
dietitian. ``We want to celebrate that he was a religious person as well 
as a scientist.''

Because he pondered the origin of life, Darwin looms large for 
theologians as well as scientists. ``In the U.S., there's a widespread 
belief that some conflict has to take place between Darwinism and 
Christianity. But that's not the case,'' says David Lampe, 42, a 
biologist at Duquesne, a Catholic university.

Religious zealots in the U.S. have long tried to influence the teaching 
of science. In the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, 
John Scopes in 1925 was found guilty of breaking a state law by teaching 
evolution. Lawyers Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan -- the 
subject of ``A Godly Hero,'' a new biography by Michael Kazin that Knopf 
published this month -- faced off at the trial.

``Every time evolution or the theory of natural selection gets 
`challenged' by schools or courts or politicians, it prompts more people 
to learn about Darwin's actual life and work,'' says Ann Weber, a 
53-year-old professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina 
at Asheville.

Weber, who teaches how Darwinian and other theories influenced schools 
of psychology, plans to mark Darwin's birthday by showing Stanley 
Kramer's 1960 film ``Inherit the Wind,'' based on the Scopes trial.

Back at the natural history museum in New York, staff scientists will be 
welcoming visitors bearing fossils and other mysterious objects for them 
to identify on Darwin Day. Everyone is welcome. As Walker sees it, 
``Darwin, with his insatiable curiosity of the natural world, would be 
pleased.''

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jeffrey Tannenbaum in New York at  [email-masked].

Last Updated: February 10, 2006 00:12 EST