Well, it looks like one. And if this is real, he needs only one more before he can canonize himself!
h/t: Taskin
The Pope performs a miracle!
October 8, 2015 • 12:30 pm
Tag: Darwin
Darwin Day in Wisconsin
February 7, 2010 • 12:20 pm
by Greg Mayer
The Darwin bicentennial year ends this week, as Friday, February 12th, begins the 201st year. The last event in the University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s Darwin 1809-1859-2009 commemoration is this coming Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 7 PM 
in Greenquist Hall 103, where I will be speaking on “The Origin of The Origin“.
In the talk, I’ll take a look at the surprisingly dramatic circumstances of the publication of The Origin on November 24, 1859. In the spring of 1858, while at work on his “species book”, Darwin received a manuscript from Alfred Russel Wallace, a correspondent of his working in the Malay Archipelago. In Wallace’s manuscript, Darwin saw his own theory in miniature, and despaired that his originality would be forestalled. Darwins’ friends Charles Lyell and J.D. Hooker arranged for a joint publication by Darwin and Wallace; Darwin, now spurred on, completed an “abstract” of his species book: the Origin, which, at 500 pages, was a rather substantial abstract. (Jerry was an earlier speaker in the series; video here.)
On Saturday, the 201st anniversary year gets off to a bang with the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s annual Darwin Day. There’ll be a full day of activities, headlined by my friend and colleague Jonathan Losos, who’ll speak on “Leaping Lizards! Studies of Ecology and Evolution in the Caribbean”. Over the lunch break there’s a workshop for teachers on lizards and island biogeography, and I’ll be participating. In the afternoon, there’ll be a panel discussion on communicating science, which might be of some interest to WEIT blog readers.
Both events are intended for general audiences, and are free and open to the public. If you’re in the area, please come. Details of both events, including schedules and directions, are here for Parkside (in Kenosha, just north of Illinois) and here for Madison.
Darwin in Cambridge (and Richard Dawkins too!)
May 14, 2009 • 1:04 pm
by Greg Mayer
John van Wyhe, of Christ’s College, Cambridge, director of the absolutely fabulous website The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (which I have had occasion to notice previously), has recently published a terrific short book entitled Darwin in Cambridge (Christ’s College, Cambridge). 
It’s not available yet on Amazon UK or Amazon, but you can order it direct from Christ’s. It provides a wealth of detail on Darwin’s life and studies in Cambridge, and is especially useful to someone (like me) less familiar with the organization of English universities. It is also beautifully illustrated, and my one complaint would be that the small octavo size does not do full justice to some of the illustrations.
Included in the book are several photographs of university and college ledgers which record Darwin’s various activities at Cambridge (see John’s analysis of Darwin’s student bills here, which have been widely misinterpreted by the media to say that Darwin spent more on shoes than books!). What struck me immediately was the figure on page 22, showing part of the ‘Books of subscriptions for degrees’ recording Darwin’s formal matriculation on February 20, 1828. It wasn’t just that the name of Adam Sedgwick, Darwin’s geological mentor, appears in the registry as having presided over the ceremony. It was the name of the student who signed the book just below Darwin: Richard Dawkins!
Five students from Christ’s College have signed the register, Darwin being the last, having signed “Charles Robert Darwin”. Below the Christ’s students, two students from Catharine Hall (now St. Catharine’s College) have signed the register, and immediately below Darwin’s signature appears the signature of the second Catharine’s student, “Richard Dawkins”.
The 20th and 21st centuries’ Richard Dawkins is, of course, an Oxonian; I don’t know if he’s any relation to the 19th century Cantabrigian who, for at least a little while on the afternoon of 20 February 1828, stood next to Charles Darwin.
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
April 7, 2009 • 8:40 pm
by Greg Mayer
I’m slipping in to make a quick plug here for one my favorite websites, The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, and its founder and director, John van Wyhe of Christ’s College, Cambridge. The website contains text and image copies of at least one edition of all Darwin’s works (and often of many other editions as well), an updated version of Freeman’s bibliographical handlist, and many, many other useful things; check it out yourself. It is undoubtedly the best scholarly website ever. John is the rising star of the new generation of Darwin scholars.
For those of you in or near southeastern Wisconsin, he will be speaking on Wednesday, April 8 at 7 PM at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, on Darwin: the True Story. The talk is part of UWP’s Darwin 1809-1859-2009 commemoration of the Darwin bi- and sesquicentennials, and is free and open to the public. Details here.
BBC program: “Did Darwin Kill God?”
April 4, 2009 • 5:22 am
Unsurprisingly, the answer is “of course not!”” In fact — also unsurprisingly — evolution seems to strengthen the narrator’s belief. This one-hour show was on the BBC last week, and although their website won’t play it in the US, the program has been put on YouTube in six segments. You can access segment 1 below, and then, if you want to watch the rest of the show, go here and click on the succeeding segments that appear next to it on YouTube.
Those crazy Germans play a Darwin-related April Fool joke
April 1, 2009 • 10:02 am
An alert reader from Basel has sent me a link to an April Fool article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, published in Munich. It describes a new movie in which Quentin Tarantino directs Tom Cruise in a movie about the life of Charles Darwin. Using my rough German (no time to translate the whole piece), the beginning reads:
Set visit: Cruise plays Darwin
GOD’S GLOVE COMPARTMENT
“Like Stauffenberg [the anti-Hitler Nazi who Cruise plays in a new movie] with sideburns.”: Tom Cruise and Quentin Tarantino film Darwin’s life on the Galapagos Islands — and even make evolution palatable to creationists.
Accompanying the article is an action scene from the movie:
Frank Egerton on Darwin and the Beagle
March 11, 2009 • 8:24 pm
by Greg Mayer
If you’re going to be in or near southeastern Wisconsin this Friday, March 13, the next presentation in “Darwin 1809-1859-2009”, the University of Wisconsin–Parkside’s series of events commemorating the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth and the sesquicentennial of the publication On the Origin of Species, is being held at noon in Greenquist Hall 101. My friend and colleague Frank Egerton will speak on “Ecological Aspects of Darwin’s Voyage on the Beagle“. Darwin’s five-year circumnavigation of the globe as a naturalist aboard the Royal Navy surveying vessel HMS Beagle was the formative event of his life, and greatly influenced all his subsequent work and views. Frank is an award winning historian of science, Professor Emeritus of History at UW–Parkside, and author of a biography of Hewett Cottrell Watson, one of Darwin’s key colleagues and correspondents, and of A History of the Ecological Sciences, appearing serially in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America.
The event is free and open to the public. Directions to the University are here.